16 of the Best Free Perl Books - Part 3

9. Learning Perl the Hard Way

Learning Perl the Hard Way is a book for people who already know how to program in another language, but have not previously developed in Perl. It tries to get through the basics as quickly as possible, and how to do fun things. It emphasizes good programming style in Perl.

Learning Perl the Hard Way has chapters on:

• Arrays and Scalars - describes the statements and operators needed to read command-line arguments, define and invoke subroutines, parse parameters, and read the contents of files
• Regular Expressions - covers pattern matching, anchors, quantifiers, alternation, capture sequences, minimal matching, extended patterns, operators, and subroutine semantics
• Hashes - with sections on stack operators, queue operators, hashes, frequency table, sort operator, checking whether an element is a member of a set, references to subroutines, hashes as parameters, markov generator, and generating random text
• Objects - goes through packages, the bless operator, methods, constructors, printing objects, and heaps
• Modules - examines variable-length codes, the frequency table, creating a new module, assembling the Huffman tree, inheritance, and more
• Callbacks and pipes

Learning Perl the Hard Way is a free book made available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

10. Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason

The Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason book documents the HTML::Mason framework in detail, including chapters on component syntax, Mason object APIs, a sample site walkthrough, recipes, and details on Mason's advanced features and how to use them.

The book shows individuals how to create large, complex, dynamically driven web sites that look good and are a snap to maintain. You will learn how to visualize multiple Mason-based solutions to any given problem and select among them. The book covers the latest line of Mason development 1.1x, which has many new features, including line number reporting based on source files, sub-requests, and easier use as a CGI.

This book is published under the Open Publication License.

11. Practical Perl Programming

Practical Perl Programming is written by Dave Marshall, a lecturer in the Computer Science at Cardiff University. This detailed book offers a through tutorial on the Perl programming language, based on course notes.

There is introductory material, the tutorial itself and recommended reading on the subject, presented in HTML format. A PDF version is available to Cardiff University students only.

This books covers the following areas:

• Numeric and String Literals
• Variables
• Arrays
• Operators
• Perl Statements
• Functions
• References
• Files - Input and Output in Perl
• Regular Expressions
• Reports
• Special Variables
• Handling Errors and Signals
• Objects in Perl
• Perl Modules
• Debugging
• Perl Command-Line Options
• Networking with Perl
• CGI Programming in Perl
• CGI:Input -- HTML Forms
• Example Perl CGI Scripts
• Using Perl with Web Servers
• A Quick Guide to HTML

12. Perl for the Web

Perl for the Web provides tools and strategies to improve the performance of existing Web applications in Perl. It also provides principles and ideas that help Web programmers create an extensible framework for future growth.

Topics covered include the need for speed, document management with templates and embedded Perl, faster performance using persistent Perl, good Web coding style, faster database access from Perl, and pairing XML with Perl for content management and B2B communication. Emphasis is placed on robust, scalable solutions for dynamic database-backed, template-based or XML-based Web sites.

The book's focus on optimization is a unique approach.