Learning Perl, Second Edition

Acknowledgments for the First Edition

First, I wholeheartedly thank Chick Webb and Taos Mountain Software (in Silicon Valley). The folks at TMS offered me an opportunity to write an introductory Perl course for them (with substantial assistance from Chick), and a chance to present their course a few times. From that experience, I gained the motivation and resources to write and repeatedly present a new course of my own, from which this book is derived. Without them, I don't think I'd be doing this, and I wish them continued success at marketing their course. (And if they're looking for a good text for a revision of their course, I just may have a suggestion...)

Thanks also to the reviewers: Perl Godfather Larry Wall (of course), Larry Kistler (Director of Education, Pyramid), fellow Perl trainer Tom Christiansen, and the students of the Learning Perl classes I taught at Intel and Pyramid, and—from O'Reilly & Associates: Tanya Herlick, Lar Kaufman, Lenny Muellner, Linda Mui, and Andy Oram.

This book was created and edited entirely on my personal Apple Macintosh Powerbook (first the 140, and now the 160 model). More often than not, I was away from my office while writing—sometimes in a park, sometimes in a hotel, sometimes waiting for the weather to clear so I could continue to snow-ski, but most often in restaurants. In fact, I wrote a substantial portion of this book at the Beaverton McMenamin's just down the road from my house. The McM's chain of brewpubs make and serve the finest ...