In its first five years of existence, The Perl Journal ran 247 articles by over 120 authors. Every serious Perl programmer subscribed to it, and every notable Perl guru jumped at the opportunity to write for it. TPJ explained critical topics such as regular expressions, databases, and object-oriented programming, and demonstrated Perl's utility for fields as diverse as astronomy, biology, economics, AI, and games. The magazine gave birth to both the Obfuscated Perl Contest and the Perl Poetry contest, and remains a proud and timeless achievement of Perl during one of its most exciting periods of development.
Computer Science and Perl Programming is the first volume of The Best of the Perl Journal, compiled and re-edited by the original editor and publisher of The Perl Journal, Jon Orwant. In this series, we've taken the very best (and still relevant) articles published in TPJ over its 5 years of publication and immortalized them into three volumes. This volume has 70 articles devoted to hard-core computer science, advanced programming techniques, and the underlying mechanics of Perl.
Here's a sample of what you'll find inside:
Other books tell you how to use Perl, but this book goes far beyond that: it shows you not only how to use Perl, but what you could use Perl for. This is more than just The Best of the Perl Journal — in many ways, this is the best of Perl.
These are the best and most timeless articles printed in "The Perl Journal." Topics include networking, software development, coding style, internals, and others.
ForewordPrefaceChapter 1: IntroductionBeginner ConceptsChapter 2: All About ArraysChapter 3: Perfect ProgrammingChapter 4: PrecedenceChapter 5: The Birth of a One-LinerChapter 6: Comparators, Sorting, and HashesChapter 7: What Is Truth? Chapter 8: Using Object-Oriented ModulesChapter 9: Unreal NumbersChapter 10: CryptoContextChapter 11: ReferencesChapter 12: Perl HeresiesRegular ExpressionsChapter 13: Understanding Regular Expressions, Part IChapter 14: Understanding Regular Expressions, Part IIChapter 15: Understanding Regular Expressions, Part IIIChapter 16: Nibbling StringsChapter 17: How Regexes WorkComputer ScienceChapter 18: Infinite ListsChapter 19: CompressionChapter 20: MemoizationChapter 21: ParsingChapter 22: Trees and Game TreesChapter 23: B_TreesChapter 24: Making Life and Death Decisions with PerlChapter 25: Information RetrievalChapter 26: RandomnessChapter 27: Random Number Generators and XSProgramming TechniquesChapter 28: Suffering from BufferingChapter 29: ScopingChapter 30: Seven Useful Uses of localChapter 31: Parsing Command-Line OptionsChapter 32: Building a Better Hash with tieChapter 33: Source FiltersChapter 34: OverloadingChapter 35: Building Objects Out of ArraysChapter 36: Hiding Objects with ClosuresChapter 37: Multiple Dispatch in PerlSoftware DevelopmentChapter 38: Using Other Languages from PerlChapter 39: SWIGChapter 40: BenchmarkingChapter 41: Building Software with ConsChapter 42: MakeMakerChapter 43: Autoloading Perl CodeChapter 44: Debugging and Devel::NetworkingChapter 45: Email with AttachmentsChapter 46: Sending Mail Without sendmailChapter 47: Filtering MailChapter 48: Net::TelnetChapter 49: Microsoft OfficeChapter 50: Client-Server Applications Chapter 51: Managing Streaming AudioChapter 52: A 74-Line Ip TelephoneChapter 53: Controlling ModemsChapter 54: Using Usenet from PerlChapter 55: Transferring Files with FTPChapter 56: Spidering an FTP SiteChapter 57: DNS Updates with PerlDatabasesChapter 58: DBIChapter 59: Using DBI with Microsoft AccessChapter 60: DBI CaveatsChapter 61: Beyond Hardcoded Database Applications with DBIx::RecordsetChapter 62: Win32::ODBCChapter 63: Net::LDAPChapter 64: Web Databases the Genome Project WayChapter 65: Spreadsheet::WriteExcelInternalsChapter 66: How to Improve PerlChapter 67: Components of the Perl DistributionChapter 68: Basic Perl AnatomyChapter 69: Lexical AnalysisChapter 70: Debugging Perl Programs with -DChapter 71: MicroperlColophon
Anonymous
Posted May 18, 2004
Ahh how I miss The Perl Journal. This volume brings me right back to the good old days of humor and fine code. Unfortunately, The Perl Journal has been relegated to a quarterly supplement appearing in Sys Admin magazine. Thankfully, some of the knowledge found in the pages of The Perl Journal has been compiled here. Computer Science and Perl Programming is a collection of 70 articles from The Perl Journal. It is the first volume of a set of three and, in my opinion, the best volume. Jon Orwant, the original editor of The Perl Journal, has done a great job in putting together this volume. This volume is divided into tips for beginners, regular expressions, data structures, networking, databases, software development processes, object-oriented programming, and advanced Perl programming techniques. I particularly enjoyed the regular expressions, and networking sections. The data structures section was also very useful, as data structures in Perl can tend to be a bit odd. This volume has a good bit of programming knowledge crammed into it, and seems to be a bit more serious than the other two volumes. All in all, a great read and a great reference to keep around. I would definitely advise anyone interested in Perl to pick up this set, you won¿t regret it.
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Overview
In its first five years of existence, The Perl Journal ran 247 articles by over 120 authors. Every serious Perl programmer subscribed to it, and every notable Perl guru jumped at the opportunity to write for it. TPJ explained critical topics such as regular expressions, databases, and object-oriented programming, and demonstrated Perl's utility for fields as diverse as astronomy, biology, economics, AI, and games. The magazine gave birth to both the Obfuscated Perl Contest and the Perl Poetry contest, and remains...