Whether you are a complete novice or an experienced programmer, you hold in your hands the ideal guide to learning Perl. Originally created as a powerful text processing tool, Perl bas since evolved into a multipurpose, multiplatform language capable of implementing a variety of tasks such as System administration, CGI and network programming, and XML processing. In this book I'll provide valuable insight into Perl's role regarding ail of these tasks and more.

Commencing with a comprehensive overview of language basics, l'll intro-duce important concepts such as Perl's data types and control flow constructs. This material sets the stage for a discussion of more complex topics, such as writing custom functions, using regular expressions, and file input and output.

Next, we move on to the advanced topics of object-oriented programming, modules, CGI programming, and database administration with Perl's powerful database interface module, DBI. The examples and code provided offer you ail of the information you need to start writing your own powerful scripts to solve the problems listed above, and many more.

After years of experience programming in this powerful language, I've come to appreciate Perl's versatility and functionality for solving simple and highly complex problems alike. I am confident that once you have studied the material covered in this book, you'll feel the same!

• First Steps in Perl
• Scalars
• Control Flow Constructs
• Lists and Arrays
• Hashes
• Subroutines/Functions
• Regular Expressions
• Files and Data
• String Processing
• Interfacing to the Operating System
• Références
• Object-Oriented Perl
• Modules
• Introduction to CGI
• Perl and DBI
• Exercise Solutions