Perl Best Practices

Presents guidelines on the art of coding with Perl, covering such topics as naming conventions, data and control structures, program decomposition, interface design, and error handling.

Many programmers code by instinct, relying on convenient habits or a "style" they picked up early on. They aren't conscious of all the choices they make, like how they format their source, the names they use for variables, or the kinds of loops they use. They're focused entirely on problems they're solving, solutions they're creating, and algorithms they're implementing. So they write code in the way that seems natural, that happens intuitively, and that feels good. But if you're serious about your profession, intuition isn't enough. Perl Best Practices author Damian Conway explains that rules, conventions, standards, and practices not only help programmers communicate and coordinate with one another, they also provide a reliable framework for thinking about problems, and a common language for expressing solutions. This is especially critical in Perl, because the language is designed to offer many ways to accomplish the same task, and consequently it supports many incompatible dialects. With a good dose of Aussie humor, Dr. Conway (familiar to many in the Perl community) offers 256 guidelines on the art of coding to help you write better Perl code--in fact, the best Perl code you possibly can. The guidelines cover code layout, naming conventions, choice of data and control structures, program decomposition, interface design and implementation, modularity, object orientation, error handling, testing, and debugging. They're designed to work together to produce code that is clear, robust, efficient, maintainable, and concise, but Dr. Conway doesn't pretend that this is the one true universal and unequivocal set of best practices. Instead, Perl Best Practices offers coherent and widely applicable suggestions based on real-world experience of how code is actually written, rather than on someone's ivory-tower theories on howsoftware ought to be created. Most of all, Perl Best Practices offers guidelines that actually work, and that many developers around the world are already using. Much like Perl itself, these guidelines are about helping you to get your job done, without getting in the way. Praise for Perl Best Practices from Perl community members: "As a manager of a large Perl project, I'd ensure that every member of my team has a copy of Perl Best Practices on their desk, and use it as the basis for an in-house style guide."-- Randal Schwartz "There are no more excuses for writing bad Perl programs. All levels of Perl programmer will be more productive after reading this book."-- Peter Scott "Perl Best Practices will be the next big important book in the evolution of Perl. The ideas and practices Damian lays down will help bring Perl out from under the embarrassing heading of "scripting languages". Many of us have known Perl is a real programming language, worthy of all the tasks normally delegated to Java and C++. With Perl Best Practices, Damian shows specifically how and why, so everyone else can see, too."-- Andy Lester "Damian's done what many thought impossible: show how to build large, maintainable Perl applications, while still letting Perl be the powerful, expressive language that programmers have loved for years."-- Bill Odom "Finally, a means to bring lasting order to the process and product of real Perl development teams."-- Andrew Sundstrom "Perl Best Practices provides a valuable education in how to write robust, maintainable Perl, and is a definitive citation source when coaching other programmers."-- Bennett Todd"I've been teaching Perl for years, and find the same question keeps being asked: Where can I find a reference for writing reusable, maintainable Perl code? Finally I have a decent answer."-- Paul Fenwick"At last a well researched, well thought-out, comprehensive guide to Perl style. Instead of each of us developing our own, we can learn good practices from one of Perl's most prolific and experienced authors. I recommend this book to anyone who prefers getting on with the job rather than going back and fixing errors caused by syntax and poor style issues."-- Jacinta Richardson"If you care about programming in any language read this book. Even if you don't intend to follow all of the practices, thinking through your style will improve it."-- Steven Lembark"The Perl community's best author is back with another outstanding book. There has never been a comprehensive reference on high quality Perl coding and style until Perl Best Practices. This book fills a large gap in every Perl bookshelf."-- Uri Guttman

Presents guidelines on the art of coding with Perl, covering such topics as naming conventions, data and control structures, program decomposition, interface design, and error handling.

The sixth edition of this bestselling Perl tutorial includes recent changes to the language. Years of classroom testing and experience helped shape the book's pace and scope, and this edition is packed with exercises that let readers practice the concepts while they follow the text.

Take the next step toward Perl mastery with advanced concepts that make coding easier, maintenance simpler, and execution faster. Mastering Perl isn't a collection of clever tricks, but a way of thinking about Perl programming for solving debugging, configuration, and many other real-world problems you’ll encounter as a working programmer. The third in O’Reilly’s series of landmark Perl tutorials (after Learning Perl and Intermediate Perl), this fully upated edition pulls everything together and helps you bend Perl to your will. Explore advanced regular expressions features Avoid common problems when writing secure programs Profile and benchmark Perl programs to see where they need work Wrangle Perl code to make it more presentable and readable Understand how Perl keeps track of package variables Define subroutines on the fly Jury-rig modules to fix code without editing the original source Use bit operations and bit vectors to store large data efficiently Learn how to detect errors that Perl doesn’t report Dive into logging, data persistence, and the magic of tied variables

Part of the fun of programming in Perl lies in tackling tedious tasks with short, efficient, and reusable code. Often, the perfect tool is the one-liner, a small but powerful program that fits in one line of code and does one thing really well. In Perl One-Liners, author and impatient hacker Peteris Krumins takes you through more than 100 compelling one-liners that do all sorts of handy things, such as manipulate line spacing, tally column values in a table, and get a list of users on a system. This cookbook of useful, customizable, and fun scripts will even help hone your Perl coding skills, as Krumins dissects the code to give you a deeper understanding of the language. You'll find one-liners that: * Encode, decode, and convert strings * Generate random passwords * Calculate sums, factorials, and the mathematical constants π and e * Add or remove spaces * Number lines in a file * Print lines that match a specific pattern * Check to see if a number is prime with a regular expression * Convert IP address to decimal form * Replace one string with another And many more! Save time and sharpen your coding skills as you learn to conquer those pesky tasks in a few precisely placed keystrokes with Perl One-Liners.

A Perl expert can solve a problem in a few lines of well-tested code. Now you can unlock these powers for yourself. Modern Perl teaches you how Perl really works. It's the only book that explains Perl thoroughly, from its philosophical roots to the pragmatic decisions that help you solve real problems--and keep them solved. You'll understand how the language fits together and discover the secrets used by the global Perl community. This beloved guide is now completely updated for Perl 5.22. When you have to solve a problem now, reach for Perl. When you have to solve a problem right, reach for Modern Perl. Discover how to scale your skills from one-liners to asynchronous Unicode-aware web services and everything in between. Modern Perl will take you from novice to proficient Perl hacker. You'll see which features of modern Perl will make you more productive, and which features of this well-loved language are best left in the past. Along the way, you'll take advantage of Perl to write well-tested, clear, maintainable code that evolves with you. Learn how the language works, how to take advantage of the CPAN's immense trove of time-tested solutions, and how to write clear, concise, powerful code that runs everywhere. Specific coverage explains how to use Moose, how to write testable code, and how to deploy and maintain real-world Perl applications. This new edition covers the new features of Perl 5.20 and Perl 5.22, including all the new operators, standard library changes, bug and security fixes, and productivity enhancements. It gives you what you need to use the most up-to-date Perl most effectively, all day, every day. What You Need: Perl 5.16 or newer (Perl 5.20 or 5.22 preferred). Installation/upgrade instructions included.

A guide to getting the most out of Perl covers such topics as productivity hacks, user interaction, data munging, working with modules, object hacks, and debugging.