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Perl Hacks Tips & Tools for Programming, Debugging, and Surviving
Filed Under (Perl) by Abdul Jaleel Malik on 21-08-2008
Tagged Under : Hacks, Perl, Programming
Product Description
With more than a million dedicated programmers, Perl has proven to be the best computing language for the latest trends in computing and business. While other languages have stagnated, Perl remains fresh, thanks to its community-based development model, which encourages the sharing of information among users. This tradition of knowledge-sharing allows developers to find answers to almost any Perl question they can dream up.
And you can find many of those answers right here in "Perl Hacks," Like all books in O’Reilly’s Hacks Series, "Perl Hacks" appeals to a variety of programmers, whether you’re an experienced developer or a dabbler who simply enjoys exploring technology. Each hack is a short lesson–some are practical exercises that teach you essential skills, while others merely illustrate some of the fun things that Perl can do. Most hacks have two parts: a direct answer to the immediate problem you need to solve right now and a deeper, subtler technique that you can adapt to other situations. Learn how to add CPAN shortcuts to the Firefox web browser, read files backwards, write graphical games in Perl, and much more.
For your convenience, "Perl Hacks" is divided by topic–not according to any sense of relative difficulty–so you can skip around and stop at any hack you like. Chapters include: Productivity Hacks User Interaction Data Munging Working with Modules Object Hacks Debugging
Whether you’re a newcomer or an expert, you’ll find great value in "Perl Hacks," the only Perl guide that offers something useful and fun for everyone.
About the Author
chromatic is the technical editor of the O’Reilly Network, where he edits Perl.com, ONLamp.com, and the Linux and Security dev centers. He is also the author of O’Reilly’s "Extreme Programming Pocket Guide", "Running Weblogs with Slash", and "Perl Testing: A Developer’s Notebook", as well as the editor of "BSD Hacks" and "Gaming Hacks". He is the original author of Test::Builder, the foundation for most modern testing modules in Perl 5, and has contributed many of the tests for core Perl. He has given tutorials and presentations at several Perl conferences, including OSCON.
Damian Conway holds a PhD in Computer Science and is an honorary Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Currently he runs an international IT training company–Thought stream–which provides programmer development from beginner to master class level throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia. Damian was the winner of the 1998, 1999, and 2000 Larry Wall Awards for Practical Utility. The best technical paper at the annual Perl Conference was subsequently named in his honour. He is a member of the technical committee for The Perl Conference, a keynote speaker at many Open Source conferences, a former columnist for The Perl Journal, and author of the book Object Oriented Perl. In 2001 Damian received the first "Perl Foundation Development Grant" and spent 20 months working on projects for the betterment of Perl. A popular speaker and trainer, he is also the author of numerous well-known Perl modules, including Parse::Rec Descent (a sophisticated parsing tool), Class::Contract (design-by-contract programming in Perl), Lingua::EN::Inflect (rule-based English transformations for text generation), Class::Multimethods (multiple dispatch polymorphism), Text::Auto format (intelligent automatic reformatting of plaintext), Switch (Perl’s missing case statement), NEXT (resumptive method dispatch), Filter::Simple (Perl-based source code manipulation), Quantum::Super positions (auto-parallelization of serial code using a quantum mechanical metaphor), and Lingua::Romana::Perligata (programming in Latin). Most of his time is now spent working with Larry Wall on the design of the new Perl 6 programming language.
Curtis "Ovid" Poe is a Senior Programmer at Kineticode, Inc. and lives in Portland, OR. Earlier this century, displaying his usual stellar sense of timing, Ovid switched from mainframes to Web programming in Perl and promptly watched the dot-com industry implode. Despite this minor setback and working for several currently non-existent companies, Ovid stuck with Perl and actually discovered he liked it. A frequent speaker at user groups and author of numerous CPAN modules and a popular Perl CGI course, Ovid is a Perl Foundation Steering Committee member and also heads the TPF grant committee.
Perl is a language with a rich and expressive vocabulary. Since its original release in 1987, it’s moved from quick-and-dirty extraction and reporting to web programming, data munging, GUI building, automation gluing, and full-blown application development. It’s the duct tape of the Internet and a Swiss-Army chainsaw.
Like duct tape and multi tools, Perl can do just about anything you can imagine and really want to do.
If you just want to get your job done quickly, you can write the simplest, easiest Perl you know and go on to other things. If you want to build big applications, you can do that with some experience and a little discipline. If you want to solve your problem and don’t mind a little help, the CPAN is there to give you a hand.
That’s all very productive, and being productive can be fulfilling…but Perl can also be fun.
Imagine a litter of kittens, tumbling across the floor in a ball of teeth and claws and fur and tiny little growls. They’re playing, sure, but they’re also practicing the skills they need to survive in the scary wild world. They’re careful not to hurt each other, but the tactics and surprises of one clever kitten can teach the others valuable lessons.
What makes a Perl guru? It’s knowledge, partly, but it’s mostly the curiosity to play with the language, discover surprises, and even invent a few of your own. That’s why this book was so much fun to write. Here are 101 tips, tricks, and techniques from some of the best Perl programmers in the world. Some are immediately productive. Some are sneak attacks that you might only use when you have no other choice. Most of them have two parts: the immediate problem you need to solve right now and a deeper, subtler technique that you can adapt to other situations. All of them are worth studying.
It’s good to be productive. That’s why you program in Perl. Add in the fun of learning especially lessons it took these Perl gurus years to learn and you’ll be ready for anything. Amaze your friends. Astound your coworkers. Walk into the jungle of code and specifications and customer requests with the confidence that you can take down any problem that jumps out at you.
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Tags: Hacks, Perl, Programming