Cover of Learning Perl

Learning Perl

Learning Perl, better known as "the Llama book", starts the programmer on the way to mastery. Written by three prominent members of the Perl community who each have several years of experience teaching Perl around the world, this edition has been updated to account for all the recent changes to the language up to Perl 5.8.

Read more

Perl is the language for people who want to get work done. It started as a tool for Unix system administrators who needed something powerful for small tasks. Since then, Perl has blossomed into a full-featured programming language used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and system administration—on practically all platforms—while remaining the favorite tool for the small daily tasks it was designed for. You might start using Perl because you need it, but you'll continue to use it because you love it.

Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the Llama to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers getting started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the Llama is famous.

The book includes new exercises and solutions so you can practice what you've learned while it's still fresh in your mind. Here are just some of the topics covered:

Perl variable types

subroutines

file operations

regular expressions

text processing

strings and sorting

process management

using third party modules

If you ask Perl programmers today what book they relied on most when they were learning Perl, you'll find that an overwhelming majority will point to the Llama. With good reason. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 312 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Learning Perl? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Learning Perl. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Perl Cookbook Shares perl, computer, technical
  2. Perl in a Nutshell Shares perl, technical, computer
  3. DNS and BIND Shares technical, computer, computer science
  4. Learning the vi and Vim Editors Shares technical, computer, computer science

“People who read Learning Perl tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Mastering Regular Expressions
  2. sed & awk
  3. Learning the bash Shell
  4. Java in a Nutshell

“If you want more of the same (science about technology), start with these.”

  1. PHP and MySQL Web Development
  2. Hacker's Delight
  3. Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby
  4. CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

“If it was the perl that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Programming the Perl DBI
  2. Modern Perl
  3. Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook
  4. Perl & CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual Quick- Start Guide

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Learning Python
  2. Learn Python The Hard Way
  3. Programming PHP
  4. Ruby Cookbook