Learning Perl, 6th Edition

Chapter 1. Introduction

Welcome to the Llama book!

This is the sixth edition of a book that has been enjoyed by over half a million readers since 1993. At least, we hope they’ve enjoyed it. It’s a sure thing that we enjoyed writing it.^[4]

Questions and Answers

You probably have some questions about Perl, and maybe even some about this book; especially if you’ve already flipped through it to see what’s coming. So, we’ll use this chapter to answer them, including how to find answers that we don’t provide.

Is This the Right Book for You?

If you’re anything like us, you probably didn’t get to browse this book before you bought it. As we finish up this edition, the bookstore Borders is closing many of its stores and other booksellers aren’t doing much better. You might be reading this book in a digital form that you downloaded, or as HTML in Safari Books Online. How can you find out if this book is the one you want to buy if you can’t look at it first? How can we warn you off if you need to buy the book to read this paragraph?

This is not a reference book. It’s a tutorial on the very basics of Perl, which is just enough for you to create simple programs mostly for your own use. We don’t cover every detail of every topic, and we spread out some of the topics over several chapters so you pick up concepts as you need them.

Our intended readers are people who know at least a little bit about programming and just need to learn Perl. We assume that you have at least some background in using a terminal, ...