Learning Perl, better known as "the Llama book," starts the reader on the way to mastering this core programming topic. Written by three prominent members of the Perl community who each have several years of experience teaching Perl around the world, this latest edition has been updated to account for the recent changes to the language up to Perl 5.10.

Perl is the language for people who want to get work done. It started as a tool for Unix system administrators who needed something powerful for small tasks. Since then, Perl has blossomed into a full-featured programming language used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and system administration -- on practically all platforms -- while remaining the favorite tool for the small daily tasks for which it was originally designed. You might start using Perl because you need it, but you'll continue to use it because you love it.

Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors wrote the Llama to match the pace and scope appropriate for readers getting started with Perl, while providing the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the Llama is famous.

The book includes exercises and solutions so you can practice what you've learned while it's still fresh in your mind. Here are just a few of the topics covered:

• Perl variable types
• Subroutines
• File operations
• Regular expressions
• Text processing
• Strings and sorting
• Process management
• Using third party modules

If you ask Perl programmers today what book they relied on most when they were learning Perl, you'll find that an overwhelming majority will point to the Llama. With good reason. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer.

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