Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Maybe you know your way around Perl, at least a little...but today you need a specific technique, or example, or solution. Where should you look? For years, Perl programmers have turned to OﾽReillyﾽs Perl Cookbook. Now they have a better option: Perl Cookbook, Second Edition.
Whatﾽs new here? Loads. Just look at the spine: This editionﾽs about 300 pages fatter. Leading Perl experts Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington have created more than 80 new recipes. Theyﾽve substantially updated another 100. Theyﾽve added an entirely new chapter on mod_perl, Apacheﾽs embedded Perl interpreter, covering everything from authentication and logging to advanced templating with Mason and the Template Toolkit. Their new chapter on XML covers everything from parsing and validation to transformation.
The whole bookﾽs been updated for Perl 5.8.1, the robust, stable version thatﾽs become the default standard while folks held their breath for Perl 6. And most of the code's been tested under BSD, Linux, and Solaris. (Except for the system programming examples, most of these recipes ought to work wherever Perl runs, including Windows and Mac OS X.)
While Perl Cookbook, Second Edition isnﾽt as a Perl tutorial, itﾽs organized so you can gradually deepen and solidify the skills you already have, even if theyﾽre rudimentary. For example, the authors start with ﾽrecipesﾽ for using Perlﾽs simplest data types and operators -- basic stuff, but invaluable to relative novices. Thereﾽs a full chapter on basics such as accessing substrings, parsing comma-separated data, and using Unicode strings. There are examples of representing floating point data, generating pseudo-random numbers, converting between numeric and string date formats, manipulating lists and arrays, and more. Thereﾽs also a detailed, start-to-finish demonstration of working with associative arrays, arguably Perlﾽs most useful data type.
Perl has always been an extraordinarily powerful pattern-matching tool. The authors offer nearly two dozen pattern matching recipes: for matching letters, words, multiple lines, nested and recursive patterns, and strings. Youﾽll find solutions for manipulating files, followed by four chapters on enhancing program flexibility and power -- including coverage of creating your own user-defined types.
If you can do it with Perl, chances are this book can help you do it better. Thereﾽs a full chapter on manipulating DBM files and using SQL and the DBI module to query and update external databases. Thereﾽs extensive coverage of process management and communication, and a full chapter on Perl sockets programming. In addition to the aforementioned mod_perl coverage, there are more than 50 recipes for building Internet applications and services: DNS, FTP, mail, LDAP, CGI, automated forms, cookies, HTTP, robots, and more.
In each chapter, Christiansen and Torkington start simple and move toward more complex solutions. Often, they present several approaches to solving the same or similar problems, outlining the trade-offs. As Perlfolk say, ﾽThereﾽs more than one way to do it.ﾽ But itﾽs amazing how often the best way is in here. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.
ANNOTATION
This recommended compendium provides problem resolution techniques and coding options for 19 different topics. From common and easy to obscure and difficult, this cookbook of Perl recipes contains practical wisdom for UNIX and Windows 95 environments. You should note, this is NOT a Perl tutorial, it assumes you have a Perl background.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. The first edition of Perl Cookbook was published in 1998 to universal acclaim. It quickly became known not only as one of the best books on Perl, but also as one of the best programming books for any language. With Perl Cookbook, a new type of programming book had been invented: not just a collection of tips and tricks, but a book that taught the nuances of programming through real-life problems and examples. This second edition of Perl Cookbook has been expanded to cover not only new features in Perl itself, but also new technologies that have emerged since the first edition. Two new chapters have been added and many existing chapters have been expanded. In all, 80 new recipes have been added, and more than 100 older recipes have been updated to include new modules or techniques. As with the first edition of Perl Cookbook, this book covers data manipulation (strings, numbers, dates, arrays, and hashes), file I/O, regular expressions, modules, references, objects, data structures, signal processing, database processing, graphical applications, interprocess communication, security, Internet programming, CGI, and LWP. Perl Cookbook has been called the most useful book ever written on Perl. It teaches programming in the most immediate way: by showing how things are done by the experts, and then explaining why they work. Perl Cookbook isn't a book about the Perl programming language, it's a book about how to program in Perl.
SYNOPSIS
Originally designed for manipulating files and data, the Perl programming language has since matured into a mature object-oriented language, while maintaining the elegance and simplicity that attracted programmers from the very start. Perl has become the language best suited both for system administration tasks and for CGI programming on the World Wide Web.
The Perl Cookbook is a collection of problems, solutions, and examples for anyone programming in Perl. Topics range from beginner questions to techniques that even the most experienced Perl programmers might learn from. You'll find hundreds of "recipes" for Perl, including:
Parsing comma-separated values in a string Matrix multiplication Manipulating dates Generating all possible permutations for an array Retrieving items from a hash in the order they were inserted Making a list unique Inverting a hash Using regular expressions to match against multibyte characters Reading and writing records from files Creating GUIs using Tk Working with Curses and ReadKey Object-oriented programming Accessing SQL databases Automatically downloading files from the Internet Securely processing CGI forms Writing networked servers and clients The Perl Cookbook is written by Tom Christiansen, coauthor of the bestselling Programming Perl and Learning Perl, and Nathan Torkington, the maintainer of the Frequently Asked Questions list on the Usenet newsgroup, comp.lang.perl.misc.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Two experienced Perl writers present a collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for Perl programmers. Topics range from beginner questions to techniques for experienced programmers. Covered topics include manipulation of strings, numbers, dates, and hashes, reading and writing text and binary files, pattern matching and text substitutions, and signals and exceptions. Others subjects are objects and classes, accessing text and SQL databases, graphical applications, writing secure scripts, and Internet applications programming. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
AUTHOR DESCRIPTION
Tom Christiansen is an author and lecturer who's been intimately involved with Perl development on a daily basis since Larry first released it to the general public in 1987. After working for several years for TSR Hobbies (of Dungeons and Dragons fame), he set off for college where he spent a year in Spain and five in America pursuing a classical education in computer science, mathematics, music, linguistics, and Romance philology. He eventually escaped UW-Madison without a Ph.D., but with a B.A. in Spanish and in computer science, plus an M.S. in computer science specializing in operating systems design and in computational linguistics.
Coauthor of Programming Perl, Learning Perl, and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems from O'Reilly and Associates, Tom is also the major caretaker of Perl's free online documentation, developer of the www.perl.com Web site, coauthor of the Perl Frequently Asked Questions list, president of The Perl Journal, and frequent technical reviewer for O'Reilly and Associates. Tom served two terms on the USENIX Association Board of Directors.
Tom lives high in idyllic Boulder, Colorado, where he gives public seminars on all aspects of Perl programming. When he can be coaxed out of the People's Republic of Boulder, Tom travels around the world giving public and private lectures and workshops on UNIX, Perl, and the Web on five continents and in three languages. He takes the summers off to pursue his hobbies of reading, backpacking, gardening, birding, gaming, music making, and recreational programming.
Nathan Torkington has never climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He adamantly maintains that he wasnowhere near the grassy knoll. He has never mustered superhuman strength to lift a burning trolley car to free a trapped child, and is yet to taste human flesh. Nat has never served as a mercenary in the Congo, line-danced, run away to join the circus, spent a year with the pygmies, finished the Death By Chocolate, or been miraculously saved when his cigarillo case stopped the bullet.
Nat is not American, though he is learning the language. He is from Ti Point, New Zealand. People from Ti Point don't do these things. They grow up on fishing boats and say things like "She'll be right, mate." Nat did. He went to high school at Mahurangi College, university at Victoria University of Wellington, and moved to America when he met his wife, Jenine. His hobbies are bluegrass music and Perl. When he's not being a system administrator and family man, Nat teaches Perl and writes and edits for The Perl Journal.
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