[...]... version of Perl: Perl 6 Don’t throw away your Perl 5, which is still the current and stable version We don’t expect a stable version of Perl 6 for a while yet Perl 5 does everything it always did, and always will Perl 5 won’t disappear when Perl 6 shows up, and people may end up using both for several years The Perl 5 Porters maintain Perl 5 just like they always have and some of the good ideas from Perl. .. Check for links in the “ports” section on CPAN What Is CPAN? CPAN is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, your one-stop shop for Perl It has the source code for Perl itself, ready-to-install ports of Perl to all sorts of non-Unix systems,‡ examples, documentation, extensions to Perl, and archives of messages about Perl In short, CPAN is comprehensive CPAN is replicated on hundreds of mirror machines... have sprung up around Perl discussions One very popular one, Perl Monastery (http://www.perlmonks.org), has seen quite a bit of participation from many Perl book and column authors, including at least two of the authors of this book You can also check out http://learn .perl. org/ and its associated mailing list, beginners @perl. org For Perl news, try http://use .perl. org/ Many well-known Perl programmers also... about Perl 6, though What’s Perl Really Good For? Perl is good for quick-and-dirty programs that you whip up in three minutes Perl is also good for long-and-extensive programs that will take a dozen programmers three years to finish Of course, you’ll probably find yourself writing many programs that take you less than an hour to complete, from the initial plan to the fully tested code What Does Perl ... that ensures you’re using the right version: use 5.010; # this script requires Perl 5.10 or greater If you don’t see that use 5.010 in a code example, it should work all the way back to Perl 5.6 To see which version of Perl you have, try the -v command-line switch: prompt% perl -v Here are some of the new features from Perl 5.10 that we cover, and where appropriate, we still show you the old ways of... can’t do with Perl You wouldn’t want to write a interrupt-microkernel-level device driver in Perl (even though that’s been done), but most things that ordinary folks need most of the time are good tasks for Perl, from quick little one-off programs to major industrial-strength applications Perl is mostly fast That’s because nobody is developing Perl who doesn’t also use it— so we all want it to be fast... program slower Perl 6 should do a lot better in this regard, although it is too soon to tell (as we write this) A Whirlwind Tour of Perl So, you want to see a real Perl program with some meat? (If you don’t, just play along for now.) Here you are: #!/usr/bin /perl @lines = `perldoc -u -f atan2`; foreach (@lines) { s/\w]+)>/\U$1/g; print; } * Unless line two happens to be a compile-time operation,... been waiting for you to pitch a second book—Programming Perl is selling like gangbusters.” That started the effort over the next 18 months to finish the first edition of Learning Perl During that time, I was starting to see an opportunity to teach Perl classes outside Silicon Valley,† so I created a class based on the text I was writing for Learning Perl I gave a dozen classes for various clients (including... 5 just like they always have and some of the good ideas from Perl 6 have made it into Perl 5 We’re updating this book because Perl 5.10 just came out, and it looks like the Perl 5 Porters are already working on Perl 5.12 In 2000, Larry first proposed the next major release of Perl as the Perl community’s rewrite of Perl In the years that followed, a new interpreter called Parrot came to life, but not... through the production of the book Please let us know of any errors that you find, as well as suggestions for future editions, by writing to: O’Reilly Media, Inc 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, CA 95472 80 0-9 9 8-9 938 (in the U.S or Canada) 70 7-8 2 9-7 000 (international/local) 70 7-8 2 9-0 104 (fax) You can also send messages electronically To be put on our mailing list or to request a catalog, send . Learning Perl Other Perl resources from O’Reilly Related titles Advanced Perl Programming Intermediate Perl Mastering Perl Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials Perl Best Practices Perl Cookbook  Perl. Pocket Reference Perl in a Nutshell Perl Testing: A Developer’s Notebook  Practical mod -perl Perl Books Resource Center perl. oreilly.com is a complete catalog of O’Reilly’s books on Perl and related. | ix Preface Welcome to the fifth edition of Learning Perl, updated for Perl 5.10 and its latest fea- tures. This book is good even if you are still using Perl 5.6 (although, it’s been a long time