| Programming Perl is not just a book about Perl; it is also a unique introduction to the language and its culture, as one might expect only from its authors. This third edition has been expanded to cover Version 5.6 of Perl. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other features that have been added or improved since the previous edition. From the Publisher:
Perl is a powerful programming language that
has grown in popularity since it first appeared in 1988.
The first edition of this book, Programming Perl, hit
the shelves in 1990, and was quickly adopted as the
undisputed bible of the language. Since then, Perl
has grown with the times, and so has this book.
Programming Perl is not just a book about Perl. It is
also a unique introduction to the language and its culture,
as one might expect only from its authors. Larry Wall is
the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective on
the evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom
Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language,
and lives and breathes the complexities of Perl internals
as few other mortals do. Jon Orwant is the editor of
The Perl Journal, which has brought together the Perl
community as a common forum for new developments in Perl.
Any Perl book can show the syntax of Perl's functions, but only
this one is a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies
of the language. Any Perl book can explain typeglobs,
pseudohashes, and closures, but only this one shows
how they really work. Any Perl book can say that my is faster
than local, but only this one explains why. Any Perl book
can have a title, but only this book is affectionately known by all
Perl programmers as "The Camel."
This third edition of Programming Perl has been expanded to
cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics
include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other
new features that have been added since the previous edition.
About the Author
Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl. He has also authored some other popular free programs available for Unix, including the rn news reader and the ubiquitous patch program. By training, Larry is actually a linguist, having wandered about both U.C. Berkeley and U.C.L.A. as a grad student. Over the course of years, he has spent time at Unisys, JPL, NetLabs, and Seagate, playing with everything from discrete event simulators to network-management systems, with the occasional spacecraft thrown in. It was at Unisys, while Larry was trying to glue together a bicoastal configuration management system over a 1200 baud encrypted link using a hacked-over version of Netnews, that Perl was born. Larry currently works for O'Reilly & Associates.
Tom Christiansen is a freelance consultant specializing in Perl training and writing. Tom has been involved with Perl since day zero of its initial public release in 1987. Lead author of The Perl Cookbook, co-author of Programming Perl, Learning Perl, and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems, Tom is also the major caretaker of Perl's online documentation. He holds undergraduate degrees in computer science and Spanish and a master's in computer science. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Dr. Jon Orwant is the CTO of O'Reilly & Associates and Editor in Chief of The Perl Journal. He is the co-author of Mastering Algorithms with Perl (O'Reilly) and author of the Perl 5 Interactive Course (Macmillan). Before joining O'Reilly, he was a member of the Electronic Publishing Group at the MIT Media Lab, where he received his Ph.D. for research involving the prediction of user behavior, the automation of game programming, and computer-generated personalized news and entertainment. Jon also serves on the advisory boards of VerticalSearch.com, Focalex, Inc., and YourCompass, Inc.
Jon is a frequent speaker at conferences, speaking to such diverse gatherings as (most recently) programmers, journalists, and lottery executives. He enjoys writing both code and prose, and his three biggest vices are gambling, wine, and mathematics. He also created the world's first Internet stock-picking game in 1994 (a Perl TCP/IP server written in one night to settle a bet) but never thought of making money from it. He is embarrassed to be related, however distantly, to both Billy Crystal and Milton Berle.
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