Learning Perl, Fifth Edition - New from O'Reilly

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or interview with the
author, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7314 or kathrynb@oreilly.com

Learning Perl, Fifth Edition - New From O'Reilly
Making Easy Things Easy and Hard Things Possible

Sebastopol, CA--Among Perl programmers, the classic instruction books are
affectionately referred to according to the animals on their covers: the
Camel book (Programming Perl), the Llama book (Learning Perl), and the
Alpaca book (Intermediate Perl). By no means do these books make up the
entire sum of knowledge about Perl; each animal merely represents a step
on the path to mastery of the language. 

"Learning Perl," (O'Reilly, US $39.99) now in its fifth edition, serves as
the traditional starting point for the programmer looking to learn Perl. 
As authors Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy say, "If
you're looking for the best way to spend your first 30 to 45 hours with
the Perl programming language, you've found it." The book is a carefully
paced introduction to the language that is the workhorse of the Internet,
as well as the language of choice for system administrators, web hackers,
and casual programmers around the world. 

This book reflects the combined experience of its authors, who have taught
Perl at Stonehenge Consulting since 1991. Years of classroom testing and
experience helped shape the book's pace and scope, and this edition is
packed with exercises that let you practice the concepts while you follow
the text.  "The fifth edition is updated for Perl 5.10, and includes a new
chapter on the new smart-match feature and the given-when control
structure," says foy, when asked about the new content in the book,
adding, "We also expanded the regular expression chapters for new regex
features."

Topics include:

- Perl data & variable types
- Subroutines
- File operations
- Regular expressions
- String manipulation
- Lists & sorting
- Process management
- Smart matching
- Using third party modules

Originally relied on by sys admins for heavy-duty text processing, Perl is
now a full-featured programming language suitable for almost any task on
almost any platform-from short fixes on the command line to web
applications, bioinformatics, finance, and much more.  "The killer feature
of Perl is CPAN, which has over 15,000 third party
Modules," explains foy. "To access that huge library of work, you need to
use Perl."

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bio, and samples, see:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106/

Learning Perl, Fifth Edition
Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
ISBN: 978-0-596-52010-6, 328 pages, US $39.99
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
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