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Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

By Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Final Release Date: July 2000

Pages: 1104

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 ofThe 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.

Overview
1. Chapter 1 An Overview of Perl
  1. Getting Started
  2. Natural and Artificial Languages
  3. An Average Example
  4. Filehandles
  5. Operators
  6. Control Structures
  7. Regular Expressions
  8. List Processing
  9. What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You (Much)
The Gory Details
1. Chapter 2 Bits and Pieces
  1. Atoms
  2. Molecules
  3. Built-in Data Types
  4. Variables
  5. Names
  6. Scalar Values
  7. Context
  8. List Values and Arrays
  9. Hashes
  10. Typeglobs and Filehandles
  11. Input Operators
2. Chapter 3 Unary and Binary Operators
  1. Terms and List Operators (Leftward)
  2. The Arrow Operator
  3. Autoincrement and Autodecrement
  4. Exponentiation
  5. Ideographic Unary Operators
  6. Binding Operators
  7. Multiplicative Operators
  8. Additive Operators
  9. Shift Operators
  10. Named Unary and File Test Operators
  11. Relational Operators
  12. Equality Operators
  13. Bitwise Operators
  14. C-Style Logical (Short-Circuit) Operators
  15. Range Operator
  16. Conditional Operator
  17. Assignment Operators
  18. Comma Operators
  19. List Operators (Rightward)
  20. Logical and, or, not, and xor
  21. C Operators Missing from Perl
3. Chapter 4 Statements and Declarations
  1. Simple Statements
  2. Compound Statements
  3. if and unless Statements
  4. Loop Statements
  5. Bare Blocks
  6. goto
  7. Global Declarations
  8. Scoped Declarations
  9. Pragmas
4. Chapter 5 Pattern Matching
  1. The Regular Expression Bestiary
  2. Pattern-Matching Operators
  3. Metacharacters and Metasymbols
  4. Character Classes
  5. Quantifiers
  6. Positions
  7. Capturing and Clustering
  8. Alternation
  9. Staying in Control
  10. Fancy Patterns
5. Chapter 6 Subroutines
  1. Syntax
  2. Semantics
  3. Passing References
  4. Prototypes
  5. Subroutine Attributes
6. Chapter 7 Formats
  1. Format Variables
  2. Footers
7. Chapter 8 References
  1. What Is a Reference?
  2. Creating References
  3. Using Hard References
  4. Symbolic References
  5. Braces, Brackets, and Quoting
8. Chapter 9 Data Structures
  1. Arrays of Arrays
  2. Hashes of Arrays
  3. Arrays of Hashes
  4. Hashes of Hashes
  5. Hashes of Functions
  6. More Elaborate Records
  7. Saving Data Structures
9. Chapter 10 Packages
  1. Symbol Tables
  2. Autoloading
10. Chapter 11 Modules
  1. Using Modules
  2. Creating Modules
  3. Overriding Built-in Functions
11. Chapter 12 Objects
  1. Brief Refresher on Object-Oriented Lingo
  2. Perl's Object System
  3. Method Invocation
  4. Object Construction
  5. Class Inheritance
  6. Instance Destructors
  7. Managing Instance Data
  8. Managing Class Data
  9. Summary
12. Chapter 13 Overloading
  1. The overload Pragma
  2. Overload Handlers
  3. Overloadable Operators
  4. The Copy Constructor (=)
  5. When an Overload Handler Is Missing (nomethod and fallback)
  6. Overloading Constants
  7. Public Overload Functions
  8. Inheritance and Overloading
  9. Run-Time Overloading
  10. Overloading Diagnostics
13. Chapter 14 Tied Variables
  1. Tying Scalars
  2. Tying Arrays
  3. Tying Hashes
  4. Tying Filehandles
  5. A Subtle Untying Trap
  6. Tie Modules on CPAN
Perl as Technology
1. Chapter 15 Unicode
  1. Building Character
  2. Effects of Character Semantics
  3. Caveats
2. Chapter 16 Interprocess Communication
  1. Signals
  2. Files
  3. Pipes
  4. System V IPC
  5. Sockets
3. Chapter 17 Threads
  1. The Process Model
  2. The Thread Model
4. Chapter 18 Compiling
  1. The Life Cycle of a Perl Program
  2. Compiling Your Code
  3. Executing Your Code
  4. Compiler Backends
  5. Code Generators
  6. Code Development Tools
  7. Avant-Garde Compiler, Retro Interpreter
5. Chapter 19 The Command-Line Interface
  1. Command Processing
  2. Environment Variables
6. Chapter 20 The Perl Debugger
  1. Using the Debugger
  2. Debugger Commands
  3. Debugger Customization
  4. Unattended Execution
  5. Debugger Support
  6. The Perl Profiler
7. Chapter 21 Internals and Externals
  1. How Perl Works
  2. Internal Data Types
  3. Extending Perl (Using C from Perl)
  4. Embedding Perl (Using Perl from C)
  5. The Moral of the Story
Perl as Culture
1. Chapter 22 CPAN
  1. The CPAN modules Directory
  2. Using CPAN Modules
  3. Creating CPAN Modules
2. Chapter 23 Security
  1. Handling Insecure Data
  2. Handling Timing Glitches
  3. Handling Insecure Code
3. Chapter 24 Common Practices
  1. Common Goofs for Novices
  2. Efficiency
  3. Programming with Style
  4. Fluent Perl
  5. Program Generation
4. Chapter 25 Portable Perl
  1. Newlines
  2. Endianness and Number Width
  3. Files and Filesystems
  4. System Interaction
  5. Interprocess Communication (IPC)
  6. External Subroutines (XS)
  7. Standard Modules
  8. Dates and Times
  9. Internationalization
  10. Style
5. Chapter 26 Plain Old Documentation
  1. Pod in a Nutshell
  2. Pod Translators and Modules
  3. Writing Your Own Pod Tools
  4. Pod Pitfalls
  5. Documenting Your Perl Programs
6. Chapter 27 Perl Culture
  1. History Made Practical
  2. Perl Poetry
Reference Material
1. Chapter 28 Special Names
  1. Special Names Grouped by Type
  2. Special Variables in Alphabetical Order
2. Chapter 29 Functions
  1. Perl Functions by Category
  2. Perl Functions in Alphabetical Order
3. Chapter 30 The Standard Perl Library
  1. Library Science
  2. A Tour of the Perl Library
4. Chapter 31 Pragmatic Modules
  1. use attributes
  2. use autouse
  3. use base
  4. use blib
  5. use bytes
  6. use charnames
  7. use constant
  8. use diagnostics
  9. use fields
  10. use filetest
  11. use integer
  12. use less
  13. use lib
  14. use locale
  15. use open
  16. use overload
  17. use re
  18. use sigtrap
  19. use strict
  20. use subs
  21. use vars
  22. use warnings
5. Chapter 32 Standard Modules
  1. Listings by Type
  2. Benchmark
  3. Carp
  4. CGI
  5. CGI::Carp
  6. Class::Struct
  7. Config
  8. CPAN
  9. Cwd
  10. Data::Dumper
  11. DB_File
  12. Dumpvalue
  13. English
  14. Errno
  15. Exporter
  16. Fatal
  17. Fcntl
  18. File::Basename
  19. File::Compare
  20. File::Copy
  21. File::Find
  22. File::Glob
  23. File::Spec
  24. File::stat
  25. File::Temp
  26. FileHandle
  27. Getopt::Long
  28. Getopt::Std
  29. IO::Socket
  30. IPC::Open2
  31. IPC::Open3
  32. Math::BigInt
  33. Math::Complex
  34. Math::Trig
  35. Net::hostent
  36. POSIX
  37. Safe
  38. Socket
  39. Symbol
  40. Sys::Hostname
  41. Sys::Syslog
  42. Term::Cap
  43. Text::Wrap
  44. Time::Local
  45. Time::localtime
  46. User::grent
  47. User::pwent
6. Chapter 33 Diagnostic Messages

Colophon

Title:

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

By:

Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print:

July 2000

Pages:

1104

Print ISBN:

978-0-596-00027-1

| ISBN 10:

0-596-00027-8

Larry Wall

Larry Wall originally created Perl while a programmer at Unisys. He now works full time guiding the future development of the language as a researcher and developer at O'Reilly & Associates. Larry is known for his idiosyncratic and thought-provoking approach to programming, as well as for his groundbreaking contributions to the culture of free software programming. He is the principal author of the bestselling Programming Perl, known colloquially as "the Camel book."

View Larry Wall's full profile page.
Tom Christiansen

Tom Christiansen is a freelance consultant specializing in Perl training and writing. 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, dabbling in music, linguistics, programming, and some half-dozen different spoken languages. Tom finally escaped UW-Madison with B.A.s in Spanish and computer science and an M.S. in computer science. He then spent five years at Convex as a jack-of-all-trades working on everything from system administration to utility and kernel development, with customer support and training thrown in for good measure. Tom also served two terms on the USENIX Association Board of directors. With over fifteen years' experience in UNIX system administration and programming, Tom presents seminars internationally. Living in the foothills above Boulder, Colorado, surrounded by mule deer, skunks, and the occasional mountain lion and black bear, Tom takes summers off for hiking, hacking, birding, music making, and gaming.

View Tom Christiansen's full profile page.
Jon Orwant

Jon Orwant, a well-known member of the Perl community, founded The Perl Journal and co-authored OReillys bestseller, Programming Perl, 3rd Edition.

View Jon Orwant's full profile page.

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Programming Perl, Third Edition is a dromedary (one-hump camel). Camels are large ruminant mammals, weighing between 1,000 and 1,600 pounds and standing six to seven feet tall at the shoulders. They are well known for their use as draft and saddle animals in the desert regions, especially of Africa and Asia. Camels can go for days without water. If food is scarce, they will eat anything, even their owner's tent. Camels live up to 50 years. Melanie Wang was the production editor and copyeditor for Programming Perl, Third Edition. Colleen Gorman and Maureen Dempsey provided quality control. Maeve O'Meara, Mary Sheehan, Emily Quill, Jeffrey Holcomb, Ann Schirmer, Colleen Gorman, Darren Kelly, Madeleine Newell, and Betty Hugh provided production support. Ellen Troutman Zaig wrote the index.Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.Alicia Cech and David Futato designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. The authors' text in POD was converted by Lenny Muellner into DocBook 3.1 SGML. The print version of this book was created by translating the SGML source into a set of gtroff macros using a Perl filter developed at O'Reilly & Associates by Norman Walsh. Steve Talbott designed and wrote the underlying macro set on the basis of the GNU gtroff -ms macros; Lenny Muellner adapted them to SGML and implemented the book design. The GNU groff text formatter version 1.11 was used to generate PostScript output. Mike Sierra provided crucial help with the Chinese and Japanese Unicode characters in Chapter 15. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Rhon Porter using Macromedia FreeHand 8 and Adobe Photoshop 5.Whenever possible, our books use RepKover&#153, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

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oreillyProgramming Perl, 3rd Edition

4.4

(based on 17 reviews)

67%

of respondents would recommend this to a friend.

Pros

Helpful examples (3)
Well-written (3)

Cons

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Expert (3)
Intermediate (3)

Reviewed by 17 customers

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6/8/2011

(6 of 6 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Excellent book, but hold off for 4th ed

By Dr. David

from Urbana, IL

About Me Developer, Educator, Scientist researcher

Pros

Accurate
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Outdated

Best Uses

Expert
Intermediate

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

A few summers ago I decided to learn Perl inside and out, and it started with my buying and reading this excellent book. If you have already played with Perl before, this text will fill in all the gaps in your understanding of the language. It may even work well for a beginner, but Learning Perl is probably better for that. Furthermore, it is peppered with small quips of humor, even in the appendix!

Before doing that, I once checked out this book from the library and attempted to skip to the chapter on nested data structures. I did not understand references and I was very confused. On my second time through I set out to read the book from start to finish and I did not have any trouble with the material. In other words, read the book straight through on your first pass. Thereafter, it serves as an excellent reference. I keep it on my desk at all times.

All this having been said, the Camel Book is getting a new edition, slated (as of this writing) to come out in October! Finally! If you only have time during the summer months, then this third edition will certainly teach you much, but if you can hold off, I recommend waiting.

3/23/2011

(2 of 3 customers found this review helpful)

3.0

Needs revised

By Dan

from Hummelstown, PA

About Me Hobbyist

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Cons

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Expert
Intermediate

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

This book is very out of date. It really needs revised, as Perl is up to 5.12 and this book only covers 5.6. I guess they are waiting for Perl 6 to be released before redoing this book, but I think that is a horrible mistake. Perl 6 is design by committee, and I'm betting won't be finalized until 2015 or so.

You are better off using Learning,Intermediate, and Mastering Perl than this book as of now.

10/22/2010

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Excellent to learn and refrence from

By Brian, Web Developer

from Ohio

About Me Designer, Developer, Sys Admin

Pros

Accurate
Concise
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Difficult to understand

Best Uses

Expert
Intermediate

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

I wanted to learn Perl for web development projects. I like a programming book to not only help me learn the language, but to be a great reference; I like to learn languages inside and out.

This book is excellent for any programmer wanting to learn the language (I don't believe it was intended by the authors to be for a beginner). This is the best programming book that I've read. You learn enough to program in Perl in the introduction chapter. They go over many of the details of programming in the language including humor throughout to prevent it from being dry text.

The only thing that I find wrong with it is that some of the things they go over could have been worded in a much more understandable way. They have a very concise way of writing; they carefully choose the way they word things so that if you study the text, you'll know what they are talking about. This is a good thing, but some of it results in simple things being explained in a confusing way, when it should be easy to understand and concise at the same time.

Nevertheless, a wonderful read, and THE book for programming Perl.

1/2/2004

(3 of 3 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By Jerry M. Howell II

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

Very Nice. A definite must have if you program in Perl. This book complements learning Perl so nicely.

10/24/2003

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By Cheryl M.

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

Like a lot of the other comments, I believe this is an excellent book... The humor is great and makes a dry subject so much easier to digest... While I agree it is not a book for beginners, I think it should be required reading for Computer Science students as it describes common programming concepts in terms of common English concepts, humorously at that...

I have only 2 complaints... 1. The index really needs work! 2. I wish the standard module reference noted which versions they apply to... This is my first attempt at writing Perl code and I need to write for cross-platform systems that may be at many different Perl 5.x version levels... It's frustraing to find a real cool and useful module only to find it doesn't work on the version of Perl we have installed. It's hard enough testing on multiple platforms, let alone multiple versions.

7/16/2003

(4 of 4 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By wortwart

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

This is not "Learning Perl in 28 Lessons" - there are better books to learn the syntax and to write reasonable programmes in short time. Obviously, the authors' focus is not on didactics. Anyway, this is the definitive reference, as well to the technical as to the cultural aspects of Perl. And it's fun to read it (if you define "fun" properly).

1/14/2003

(3 of 3 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By David T.

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

This programming book was by far the best I've read from any company. This is the first book I got from Oreilly, and the first book I got on PERL - and I was amazingly surprised that a "text book" could be written so well. The book is very well designed, with just enough off-topicness to keep the book interesting while reading it. In many ways this book seems more like a story book than the old mundane books I read in the past from other companies. I highly respect this book , and hope that I can find other books from this same company for other subjects.

5/5/2002

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By Steve

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

This book is great! It is like no other language book I have read. I could actually read this book miles away from a computer and still feel confident in perl. This book is NOT for the beginner and having at least basic UNIX experience is required(you have no excuse, linux is FREE or sorry GNU/Linux). The one point that does bite is that the book is not rigidly structured but it does not race too far forward that you are left with an example that is not understandable. I would recommend this book to those who want to learn Perl fast and at a slow pace(I've heard Learning Perl is good). The authors(which include Perl creator Larry Wall) have produced a solid Perl book. Good book,go buy!

3/26/2002

(4 of 7 customers found this review helpful)

3.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By vinit

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

It is a good book for basic knowledge and for people with less programming background. This is the only book I have used so far so I can not make a better judgement but there were lot of places where it makes reference to c++ programming and unix commands and talk about it a lot. for someone who is not a computer geek or does not know another programming language its better to find a book which includes every single basic concept(ofcourse if you have time)Capters 1-10 and 15 were really well explained. but other chapters had more text but they were hard to understand.

My overall experience was good. I guess I just need to read it one more time as it says in preface to find out some humor and detailed concepts

1/17/2002

(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition Review

By Rebecca

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Programming Perl, 3rd Edition:

This book is very well written and has a lovely style to it unusual in computing books. It makes easy work of difficult concepts.

However, I would like to point out that the index is not very good at all. In fact, in some cases it is completely wrong, especially towards the end of the book. This means that using it as reference material can lead to much aggravation.

Rebecca

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Immediate Access - Go Digital what's this?

Overview

Chapter 1 An Overview of Perl

The Gory Details

Chapter 2 Bits and Pieces

Chapter 3 Unary and Binary Operators

Chapter 4 Statements and Declarations

Chapter 5 Pattern Matching

Chapter 6 Subroutines

Chapter 7 Formats

Chapter 8 References

Chapter 9 Data Structures

Chapter 10 Packages

Chapter 11 Modules

Chapter 12 Objects

Chapter 13 Overloading

Chapter 14 Tied Variables

Perl as Technology

Chapter 15 Unicode

Chapter 16 Interprocess Communication

Chapter 17 Threads

Chapter 18 Compiling

Chapter 19 The Command-Line Interface

Chapter 20 The Perl Debugger

Chapter 21 Internals and Externals

Perl as Culture

Chapter 22 CPAN

Chapter 23 Security

Chapter 24 Common Practices

Chapter 25 Portable Perl

Chapter 26 Plain Old Documentation

Chapter 27 Perl Culture

Reference Material

Chapter 28 Special Names

Chapter 29 Functions

Chapter 30 The Standard Perl Library

Chapter 31 Pragmatic Modules

Chapter 32 Standard Modules

Chapter 33 Diagnostic Messages

Colophon

Larry Wall

Tom Christiansen

Jon Orwant

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