Perl is a complex language that can be difficult to master. Perl advocates boast that "There's More Than One Way To Do It", but do you really want to learn several ways of saying the same thing to a computer?

To make Perl more accessible, Dr. Tim Maher has over the years designed and taught an essential subset of the language that is smaller, yet practical and powerful. With this engaging book you can now benefit from Minimal Perl, even if all you know about Unix is grep.

You will learn how to write simple Perl commands (many just one-liners) that go far beyond the limitations of Unix utilities, and those of Linux, MacOS/X, etc. And you¹ll acquire the more advanced Perl skills used in scripts by capitalizing on your knowledge of related Shell resources. Sprinkled throughout are many Unix-specific Perl tips.

This book is especially suitable for system administrators, webmasters, and software developers.

What's inside

• A simpler, yet still powerful Perl
• Development of concise commands and flexible scripts
• How to package custom software in reusable modules
• How to exploit CPAN modules to avoid reinventing the wheel
• Language features in tabular summaries
• 100+ reusable programs for: system administration, web development (HTML, CGI, Forms), networking, databases, finance, text analysis, and more

• Minimal Perl: for UNIX and Linux Users
  • Introducing Minimal Perl
  • Perl essentials
  • Perl as a (better) grep command
  • Perl as a (better) sed command
  • Perl as a (better) awk command
  • Perl as a (better) find command
• Minimal Perl: for UNIX and Linux Shell Programmers
  • Built-in functions
  • Scripting techniques
  • List variables
  • Looping facilities
  • Subroutines and variable scoping
  • Modules and the CPAN