16 of the Best Free Perl Books
Individuals wanting to learn and develop their understanding
of the Perl programming language have a huge selection of books to
choose from. There are hundreds of
enlightening Perl books that are available to purchase at reasonable
cost. However, given that Perl is an open source programming language,
with an eclectic heritage written by Larry Wall and a cast of
thousands, it is satisfying to see that some authors have made their
Perl publications available to download without charge, and released
under a freely distributable license.
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting,
dynamic programming language released under the GPL or Artistic
license. It is available for most operating systems. Perl is
implemented as an interpreted (not compiled) language. It is
procedural, with variables, expressions, assignment statements, control
structures, blocks and subroutines. Whilst Perl is not an acronym, it
is sometimes known as Practical Extraction and Report Language and
lightheartedly as the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
Perl can be used for a large number of tasks. It is often used
to write CGI scripts. It is also frequently used for text manipulation,
general web programming, networking, system administration,
prototyping,
database access, and graphical programming. One of the most powerful
features of Perl is its extensive library of modules. Many of these
modules are available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
which mirrors over 100,000 Perl modules.
The focus of this article is to select some of the finest Perl
books which are available to download for free. The majority of the
books
featured here can also be freely distributed. So get reading, learning
and
sharing.
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1. Modern Perl
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Modern Perl is designed to help programmers of
all levels of proficiency. The book is not only a Perl tutorial. It
concentrates on Perl 5.12 and 5.14, to
demonstrate the latest and most effective time-saving
features.
Modern Perl explains how and why the language works, so
that the full power of Perl can be unleashed.
Modern Perl is one way to describe the way the world's
most effective Perl 5 programmers work. They use language idioms. They
take advantage of the CPAN. They show good taste and craft to write
powerful, maintainable, scalable, concise, and effective code.
This book providing a wealth of information on:
- The Perl Philosophy
- Perl and its Community focusing on CPAN, community
and development sites
- The Perl Language introducing names,
variables, values, control flow, scalars, arrays, hashes, coercion,
packages, references, and nested data structures
- Operators - a series of one or more symbols used as
part of the syntax
- Functions - a discrete, encapsulated unit of behaviour
- Regular Expressions and Matching - the use of these
expressions gives Perl its incredible text processing power
- Objects - discrete, unique entities with their own
identities
- Style and Efficacy explaining the importance of
writing maintainable, idiomatic, and effective Perl
- Managing Real Problems covering testing, handling
warnings, files, modules, distributions, and more
- Perl Beyond Syntax
- What to Avoid
The electronic versions of this book are released under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported License.
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2. Beginning Perl
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Beginning Perl is a book which as its name suggest is
written
for individuals that are new to programming who want to learn Perl. It
starts from the absolute basics of Perl, guiding the reader carefully
through up to complex operations such as using Perl as
a CGI language.
The book covers the following topics:
- Installing Perl on Windows and UNIX
- Making use of online Perl resources like CPAN
- First principles in programming and the Perl syntax
- Working with simple values
- Lists and Hashes
- Loops and Decisions
- Regular Expressions
- Working with files and databases
- Writing web pages in Perl
- Subroutines
- Running and Debugging Perl
- Modules
- Using Perl as an object-oriented language
- Perl and Databases
- The World of Perl
The book is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License.
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3. Higher Order Perl
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Higher-Order Perl: Transforming Programs with Programs
is a book with the goal to teach Perl programmers with a strong C and
Unix background how to use techniques with roots in functional
programming languages like Lisp that are available in Perl as well, but
less known. It is about functional programming techniques in Perl. It
is about how to write functions that can modify
and manufacture other functions.
The contents of the book:
- Recursion and callbacks
- Dispatch tables
- Caching and memoization
- Iterators
- From recursion to iterators
- Infinite streams
- Higher-order functions and currying
- Parsing
- Declarative programming
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4. Practical mod_perl
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Practical mod_perl is regarded as the definitive book on
how to use,
optimize, and troubleshoot mod_perl. It is an extensive guide
to the nuts and bolts of the powerful and popular combination of Apache
and mod_perl. From writing and debugging scripts to keeping your server
running without failures, the techniques in this book will help you
squeeze every ounce of power out of your server.
mod_perl is an Apache module that builds the power of
the Perl programming language directly into the Apache web server,
giving rise to a fast and powerful web programming environment.
The book covers the following topics, and more:
- Configuring mod_perl optimally for your web site
- Porting and optimizing programs for a mod_perl
environment
- Performance tuning: getting the very fastest
performance from your site
- Controlling and monitoring the server to circumvent
crashes and clogs
- Integrating with databases efficiently and painlessly
- Debugging tips and tricks
- Maximizing security
The complete book is available online under the terms of
the CreativeCommons Attribution Share-Alike License.
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Next
Section: 16 of the Best Free Perl Books - Part 2
This article is divided into four parts:
Part
1, Part
2, Part
3, Part
4
Last Updated Saturday, March 16 2013 @ 07:20 PM EST
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