Perl in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference

by Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour

Overview

This complete guide to the Perl programming language ranges widely through the Perl programmer's universe, gathering together in a convenient form a wealth of information about Perl itself and its application to CGI scripts, XML processing, network programming, database interaction, and graphical user interfaces. The book is an ideal reference for experienced Perl programmers and beginners alike. With more than a million dedicated programmers, Perl is proving to be the best language for the latest trends in computing and business, including network programming and the ability to create and manage web sites. It's a language that every Unix system administrator and serious web developer needs to know. In the past few years, Perl has found its way into complex web applications of multinational banks, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and hundreds of large corporations. In this second edition, Perl in a Nutshell has been expanded to include coverage of Perl 5.8, with information on Unicode processing in Perl, new functions and modules that have been added to the core language, and up-to-date details on running Perl on the Win32 platform. The book also covers Perl modules for recent technologies such as XML and SOAP. Here are just some of the topics contained in this book:

• Basic Perl reference
• Quick reference to built-in functions and standard modules
• CGI.pm and mod_perl
• XML::* modules
• DBI, the database-independent API for Perl
• Sockets programming
• LWP, the library for Web programming in Perl
• Network programming with the Net modules
• Perl/Tk, the Tk extension to Perl for graphical interfaces
• Modules for interfacing with Win32 systems

As part of the successful "in a Nutshell" book series from O'Reilly & Associates, Perl in a Nutshell is for readers who want a single reference for all their needs. "In a nutshell, Perl is designed to make the easy jobs easy, without making the hard jobs impossible." — Larry Wall, creator of Perl

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596002411
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/01/2002
Series:	In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	759
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.39(d)

About the Author

Nathan Patwardhan is an active Perl Monger and has extensive experience in system administration and application development for web based corporations. He is also the co-author of the first edition of Perl in a Nutshell and Programming with Perl Modules (distributed with the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kit).

Ellen Siever is a writer and editor specializing in Linux and other open source topics. In addition to Linux in a Nutshell, she coauthored Perl in a Nutshell. She is a long-time Linux and Unix user, and was a programmer for many years until she decided that writing about computers was more fun.

Stephen Spainhour co-authored Webmaster in a Nutshell, Perl in a Nutshell, 1st Edition, and contributed to many other OReilly titles. He is an avid fan of professional tennis, and when hes not checking for tennis scores on the Web, he enjoys cooking, electronic music, troubleshooting his home-built PC, and watching too much television.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2: Installing Perl The CPAN Architecture

CPAN represents the development interests of a cross-section of the Perl community. It contains Perl utilities, modules, documentation, and (of course) the Perl distribution itself CPAN was created by Jarkko Hietaniemi and Andreas Ming.

The home system for CPAN is funet.fi, but CPAN is also mirrored on many other sites around the globe. This ensures that anyone with an Internet connection can have reliable access to CPAN's contents at any time. Since the structure of all CPAN sites is the same, a user searching for the current version of, Perl. can be sure that the latest.tar.gz file is the same on every site.

The easiest way to access CPAN is to utilize the CPAN multiplex service at www.perl.com. The multiplexor tries to connect you to a local, fast machine on a large bandwidth hub. To use the multiplexor, go to http://www.perl.com/CPAN the multiplexor will, automatically route you to a site based on your domain.

If you prefer, you can choose a particular CPAN site, instead of letting the multiplexor choose one for you. To do that, go to the URL http://www.perl.com/CPAN (no wailing slash). When you omit the trailing slash, the CPAN multiplexor presents a menu of CPAN mirrors from which you select the one you want. It remembers your choice next time.

To get the current Perl distribution, click on latest.tar.gz. For ports to other systems, click on ports. The modules link is the one, you want if you're looking for a Perl module- from there you can get a full list of the modules, or you can access the modules directly by author, by CPAN category, or by module. (The section "Getting and Installing Modules" later in this chapter talks about installing modules. Click on doc for Perl documentation, FAQs, etc.

Installing Perl

Most likely your system administrator is responsible for installing and upgrading Perl. But if you are the system administrator, or you want to install Perl on your own system, sooner or later you will find yourself. installing a new version of Perl.

If you have been running Perl, and you are now going to install Perl 5.005, you need to be aware that it 'is not binary compatible with older versions. This means that you must rebuild and reinstall any dynamically loaded extensions that you built under earlier versions.

Specific installation instructions come in the README and 17VSTALL files of the Perl distribution kit. If. you don't already have the Perl distribution, you can download it from CPAN-the latest Unix distribution is in latest.tar.gz. The information in this section is an overview of the installation process. The gory details are in the INSTALL file, which you should look at before starting, especially if you haven't done an installation before. Note that operating systems other than Unix may have special instructions; if so, follow those instructions instead of what's in this section or in INSTALL Look for a file named READMExxx, where xxx is your OS name.

In addition to Perl itself, the standard distribution includes a set of core modules that are automatically installed with Perl. See the "Getting and Installing Modules" section later in this chapter for how to install modules that are not bundled with Perl; Chapter 8, Standard Modules, describes the standard modules in, some detail.

Installing on Unix

Typically, you'll get the Perl kit packed as either a tar file or as a set of shar (shell archive) scripts; in either case, the file will be in a compressed format. if you got your version of Perl directly from CPAN, it is probably in "tar-gzipped," format; tar and gzip are popular Unix data-archiving formats. In any case, once you've downloaded the distribution, you need to uncompress and unpack it. The filename indicates what kind of compression was used. A Z extension indicates you need to uncompress the file first, while a gz extension indicates you need to gunzip the file. You then unpack the file as appropriate, read the README and INSTALL files, and run a massive shell script called Configure, which tries to figure out everything about your system and creates the file Config.pm to store the information. After this is done, you do a series of "makes" to find header file dependencies, to compile Perl (and a2p, which translates awk scripts to Perl), to run regression tests, and to install Perl in your system directories.

One common problem is not making sure that Perl is linked against all the libraries it needs to build correctly. Also, you should say "yes" when Configure asks if you want dynamic loading, if your system supports it. Otherwise, you won't be able to install modules that use XS, which provides an interface between Perl and C.

If you are running Linux, some Linux distributions might not include a complete MakeMaker, which you need for installing modules. To be safe, you should make sure everything is there; one Way to do that is to check the Config.pm file. If MakeMaker is not correctly installed, you might need to build Perl yourself.

It's possible you'll get a compiled (binary) copy of Perl, rather than the source. in that case, make sure you get suidperl, a2p, s2p, and the Perl library routines. Install these files in the directories that your version was compiled for. Note that binary distributions of Perl are made available because they're handy, not because you are restricted from getting the source and compiling it yourself. The people who give you the binary distribution ought to provide you with some form of access to the source, if only a pointer to where they got the source. See the Copying file in the distribution for more information.

Perl examples

The Perl source distribution comes with some sample scripts in the eg/ subdirectory. Feel free to browse among them and use them. They are not installed automatically, however, so you need to copy them to the appropriate directory and possibly fix the #1 line to point to the right interpreter.

The files in the. t/ and lib/ subdirectories, although arcane in spots, can also serve as examples.

Patches

Since Perl is constantly being honed and improved, patches are sometimes made available through CPAN. Your distribution is likely to have had most of the patches applied already-run perl -v to check the patch level of your distribution. Patches are sent out with complete instructions on how to apply them using patch, which is available from the GNU project.

Installing on Win32

You need to obtain and install a copy of Perl yourself, unless you have had the good fortune of having a system administrator install Perl on your system.

For Perl 5.004, there are two different distributions for Win32 systems. The first is Perl for Win32, which was developed by ActiveState Tool Corporation. The second is actually the standard Perl distribution-Perl 5.004 added support for Win32 systems to the standard Perl distribution. In Perl 5.004, the two versions are largely compatible, with some of the Perl 5.004, code being based on the ActiveState port. However, there are also some differences: using either the ISAPI version of Perl or PerlScript with 5.004 requires the ActiveState distribution. On the other hand, the Win32 ports of mod_perl or Perl/Tk require the "native" (or standard) version of 5.004.

With Perl 5.005, this scenario has changed, and the two versions have been merged. if you look on CPAN, you'll see that there still seem to be two versions the ActiveState distribution, now known as ActivePerl, an& the standard distribution. The difference is that they are now based on the same source code. Get ActivePerl if you want to install from a binary distribution or get the standard distribution to build Perl from the source code.

ActivePerl

The canonical source for the ActivePerl distribution at the time of this writing is at http://www.activestate.com. Included in the distribution are:

• Perl for Win32
• Binary for the core Perl distribution
• Perl for ISAPI
• IIS plug-in for use with ISAPI-compliant web servers
• PerlScript
• ActiveX scripting engine
• Perl Package Manager

Manager for Perl modules and extensions

The ActivePerl binary comes as a self-extracting executable that uses the standard Win32 InstallShield setup wizard to guide you through the installation process. By default, Perl is installed into the directory C:\perl\version, where version is the current version number (e.g., 5.005). Unless you choose to customize your setup, the default installation does not modify your registry other than to add an entry so you can uninstall Perl. For information on customizing your installation, see the Win32 FAQ on the ActiveState web site. The installation also associates the We extension .pl with Perl and adds the directory into which you installed Perl to your PATH environment variable.

Standard Perl distribution

The standard Perl distribution is available from, CPAN, where you'll find binary and source distributions for Perl 5.004 for both Windows NT and Windows 95, and the source distribution for Perl 5.005. You can get the binary for Perl 5.004 as either a .tar.gz file or a zip file. The source distributions come as targz files, which you can extract using a. utility that -supports gzip files, tar files, and long filenames. Ports of both GNU gzip and tar are available for the various Win32 platforms, or you can use a graphical zip archive program such as WinZip. Make sure you preserve the directory structure when you unpack the distribution. . . .

Table of Contents

Preface; How This Book Is Organized; Conventions in This Book; How to Contact Us; Acknowledgments for the First Edition; Acknowledgments for the Second Edition; Part I: Getting Started; Chapter 1: Introduction to Perl; 1.1 What's Perl Good For?; 1.2 Perl Development; 1.3 Which Platforms Support Perl?; 1.4 Perl Resources; Chapter 2: Installing Perl; 2.1 The CPAN Architecture; 2.2 How Is CPAN Organized?; 2.3 Installing Perl; 2.4 Getting and Installing Modules; 2.5 Documentation; Part II: Language Basics; Chapter 3: The Perl Executable; 3.1 Command Processing; 3.2 Command-Line Options; 3.3 Environment Variables; 3.4 The Perl Compiler; 3.5 Threads; Chapter 4: The Perl Language; 4.1 Program Structure; 4.2 Data Types and Variables; 4.3 Statements; 4.4 Special Variables; 4.5 Operators; 4.6 Regular Expressions; 4.7 Subroutines; 4.8 References and Complex Data Structures; 4.9 Filehandles; 4.10 Signals; 4.11 Unicode; 4.12 Formats; 4.13 Pod; Chapter 5: Function Reference; 5.1 Perl Functions by Category; 5.2 abs; 5.3 accept; 5.4 alarm; 5.5 atan2; 5.6 bind; 5.7 binmode; 5.8 bless; 5.9 caller; 5.10 chdir; 5.11 chmod; 5.12 chomp; 5.13 chop; 5.14 chown; 5.15 chr; 5.16 chroot; 5.17 close; 5.18 closedir; 5.19 connect; 5.20 cos; 5.21 crypt; 5.22 dbmclose; 5.23 dbmopen; 5.24 defined; 5.25 delete; 5.26 die; 5.27 do; 5.28 dump; 5.29 each; 5.30 endgrent; 5.31 endhostent; 5.32 endnetent; 5.33 endprotoent; 5.34 endpwent; 5.35 endservent; 5.36 eof; 5.37 eval; 5.38 exec; 5.39 exists; 5.40 exit; 5.41 exp; 5.42 fcntl; 5.43 fileno; 5.44 flock; 5.45 fork; 5.46 formline; 5.47 getc; 5.48 getgrent; 5.49 getgrgid; 5.50 getgrnam; 5.51 gethostbyaddr; 5.52 gethostbyname; 5.53 gethostent; 5.54 getlogin; 5.55 getnetbyaddr; 5.56 getnetbyname; 5.57 getnetent; 5.58 getpeername; 5.59 getpgrp; 5.60 getppid; 5.61 getpriority; 5.62 getprotobyname; 5.63 getprotobynumber; 5.64 getprotoent; 5.65 getpwent; 5.66 getpwnam; 5.67 getpwuid; 5.68 getservbyname; 5.69 getservbyport; 5.70 getservent; 5.71 getsockname; 5.72 getsockopt; 5.73 glob; 5.74 gmtime; 5.75 goto; 5.76 grep; 5.77 hex; 5.78 index; 5.79 int; 5.80 ioctl; 5.81 join; 5.82 keys; 5.83 kill; 5.84 last; 5.85 lc; 5.86 lcfirst; 5.87 length; 5.88 link; 5.89 listen; 5.90 local; 5.91 localtime; 5.92 log; 5.93 lstat; 5.94 map; 5.95 mkdir; 5.96 msgctl; 5.97 msgget; 5.98 msgrcv; 5.99 msgsnd; 5.100 my; 5.101 next; 5.102 no; 5.103 oct; 5.104 open; 5.105 opendir; 5.106 ord; 5.107 our; 5.108 pack; 5.109 package; 5.110 pipe; 5.111 pop; 5.112 pos; 5.113 print; 5.114 printf; 5.115 prototype; 5.116 push; 5.117 q/string/; 5.118 quotemeta; 5.119 rand; 5.120 read; 5.121 readdir; 5.122 readline; 5.123 readlink; 5.124 readpipe; 5.125 recv; 5.126 redo; 5.127 ref; 5.128 rename; 5.129 require; 5.130 reset; 5.131 return; 5.132 reverse; 5.133 rewinddir; 5.134 rindex; 5.135 rmdir; 5.136 scalar; 5.137 seek; 5.138 seekdir; 5.139 select; 5.140 select; 5.141 semctl; 5.142 semget; 5.143 semop; 5.144 send; 5.145 sethostent; 5.146 setgrent; 5.147 setnetent; 5.148 setpgrp; 5.149 setpriority; 5.150 setprotoent; 5.151 setpwent; 5.152 setservent; 5.153 setsockopt; 5.154 shift; 5.155 shmctl; 5.156 shmget; 5.157 shmread; 5.158 shmwrite; 5.159 shutdown; 5.160 sin; 5.161 sleep; 5.162 socket; 5.163 socketpair; 5.164 sort; 5.165 splice; 5.166 split; 5.167 sprintf; 5.168 sqrt; 5.169 srand; 5.170 stat; 5.171 study; 5.172 sub; 5.173 substr; 5.174 symlink; 5.175 syscall; 5.176 sysopen; 5.177 sysread; 5.178 sysseek; 5.179 system; 5.180 syswrite; 5.181 tell; 5.182 telldir; 5.183 tie; 5.184 tied; 5.185 time; 5.186 times; 5.187 truncate; 5.188 uc; 5.189 ucfirst; 5.190 umask; 5.191 undef; 5.192 unlink; 5.193 unpack; 5.194 unshift; 5.195 untie; 5.196 use; 5.197 utime; 5.198 values; 5.199 vec; 5.200 wait; 5.201 waitpid; 5.202 wantarray; 5.203 warn; 5.204 write; Chapter 6: Debugging; 6.1 The Perl Debugger; 6.2 Debugger Commands; 6.3 Using the Debugger; 6.4 Customizing the Debugger; 6.5 The Perl Profiler; 6.6 The perlbug Program; Part III: Modules; Chapter 7: Packages, Modules, and Objects; 7.1 Namespaces and Packages; 7.2 Modules; 7.3 Object-Oriented Perl; 7.4 Object Syntax; Chapter 8: Standard Modules; 8.1 AnyDBM_File; 8.2 Attribute::Handlers; 8.3 attributes; 8.4 attrs; 8.5 AutoLoader; 8.6 AutoSplit; 8.7 autouse; 8.8 B; 8.9 B::Asmdata; 8.10 B::Assembler; 8.11 B::Bblock; 8.12 B::Bytecode; 8.13 B::C; 8.14 B::CC; 8.15 B::Concise; 8.16 B::Debug; 8.17 B::Deparse; 8.18 B::Disassembler; 8.19 B::Lint; 8.20 B::Showlex; 8.21 B::Stackobj; 8.22 B::Terse; 8.23 B::Xref; 8.24 base; 8.25 Benchmark; 8.26 bigint; 8.27 bignum; 8.28 bigrat; 8.29 blib; 8.30 bytes; 8.31 ByteLoader; 8.32 Carp; 8.33 CGI; 8.34 CGI::Apache; 8.35 CGI::Carp; 8.36 CGI::Cookie; 8.37 CGI::Fast; 8.38 CGI::Pretty; 8.39 CGI::Push; 8.40 CGI::Switch; 8.41 charnames; 8.42 Class::ISA; 8.43 Class::Struct; 8.44 Config; 8.45 constant; 8.46 CPAN; 8.47 CPAN::FirstTime; 8.48 CPAN::Nox; 8.49 Cwd; 8.50 Data::Dumper; 8.51 DB; 8.52 DB_File; 8.53 Devel::DProf; 8.54 Devel::PPPort; 8.55 Devel::SelfStubber; 8.56 diagnostics; 8.57 Digest; 8.58 Digest::MD5; 8.59 DirHandle; 8.60 Dumpvalue; 8.61 DynaLoader; 8.62 encoding; 8.63 English; 8.64 Env; 8.65 Errno; 8.66 Exporter; 8.67 ExtUtils::Command; 8.68 ExtUtils::Command::MM; 8.69 ExtUtils::Constant; 8.70 ExtUtils::Embed; 8.71 ExtUtils::Install; 8.72 ExtUtils::Installed; 8.73 ExtUtils::Liblist; 8.74 ExtUtils::MakeMaker; 8.75 ExtUtils::Manifest; 8.76 ExtUtils::Miniperl; 8.77 ExtUtils::Mkbootstrap; 8.78 ExtUtils::Mksymlists; 8.79 ExtUtils::MM; 8.80 ExtUtils::MM_Any; 8.81 ExtUtils::MM_BeOS; 8.82 ExtUtils::MM_DOS; 8.83 ExtUtils::MM_NW5; 8.84 ExtUtils::MM_OS2; 8.85 ExtUtils::MM_Unix; 8.86 ExtUtils::MM_UWIN; 8.87 ExtUtils::MM_VMS; 8.88 ExtUtils::MM_Win32; 8.89 ExtUtils::MY; 8.90 ExtUtils::Packlist; 8.91 ExtUtils::testlib; 8.92 Fatal; 8.93 Fcntl; 8.94 fields; 8.95 File::Basename; 8.96 File::CheckTree; 8.97 File::Compare; 8.98 File::Copy; 8.99 File::DosGlob; 8.100 File::Find; 8.101 File::Path; 8.102 File::Spec; 8.103 File::Spec::Cygwin; 8.104 File::Spec::Mac; 8.105 File::Spec::OS2; 8.106 File::Spec::Unix; 8.107 File::Spec::VMS; 8.108 File::Spec::Win32; 8.109 File::stat; 8.110 File::Temp; 8.111 FileCache; 8.112 FileHandle; 8.113 Filter::Simple; 8.114 Filter::Util::Call; 8.115 FindBin; 8.116 GDBM_File; 8.117 Getopt::Long; 8.118 Getopt::Std; 8.119 Hash::Util; 8.120 I18N::Collate; 8.121 I18N::Langinfo; 8.122 I18N::LangTags; 8.123 I18N::LangTags::List; 8.124 if; 8.125 integer; 8.126 IO; 8.127 IO::File; 8.128 IO::Handle; 8.129 IO::Pipe; 8.130 IO::Seekable; 8.131 IO::Select; 8.132 IO::Socket; 8.133 IPC::Msg; 8.134 IPC::Open2; 8.135 IPC::Open3; 8.136 IPC::Semaphore; 8.137 IPC::SysV; 8.138 less; 8.139 lib; 8.140 List::Util; 8.141 locale; 8.142 Math::BigFloat; 8.143 Math::BigInt; 8.144 Math::BigInt::Calc; 8.145 Math::BigRat; 8.146 Math::Complex; 8.147 Math::Trig; 8.148 MIME::Base64; 8.149 MIME::QuotedPrint; 8.150 NDBM_File; 8.151 Net::Cmd; 8.152 Net::Config; 8.153 Net::Domain; 8.154 Net::FTP; 8.155 Net::hostent; 8.156 Net::netent; 8.157 Net::Netrc; 8.158 Net::NNTP; 8.159 Net::Ping; 8.160 Net::POP3; 8.161 Net::protoent; 8.162 Net::servent; 8.163 Net::SMTP; 8.164 Net::Time; 8.165 O; 8.166 ODBM_File; 8.167 Opcode; 8.168 ops; 8.169 overload; 8.170 PerlIO; 8.171 PerlIO::Scalar; 8.172 PerlIO::Via; 8.173 Pod::Functions; 8.174 Pod::Html; 8.175 Pod::ParseLink; 8.176 Pod::Text; 8.177 POSIX; 8.178 re; 8.179 Safe; 8.180 Scalar::Util; 8.181 SDBM_File; 8.182 Search::Dict; 8.183 SelectSaver; 8.184 SelfLoader; 8.185 Shell; 8.186 sigtrap; 8.187 Socket; 8.188 sort; 8.189 Storable; 8.190 strict; 8.191 subs; 8.192 Switch; 8.193 Symbol; 8.194 Sys::Hostname; 8.195 Sys::Syslog; 8.196 Term::Cap; 8.197 Term::Complete; 8.198 Term::ReadLine; 8.199 Test; 8.200 Test::Builder; 8.201 Test::Harness; 8.202 Test::More; 8.203 Test::Simple; 8.204 Text::Abbrev; 8.205 Text::Balanced; 8.206 Text::ParseWords; 8.207 Text::Soundex; 8.208 Text::Tabs; 8.209 Text::Wrap; 8.210 Thread; 8.211 Thread::Queue; 8.212 Thread::Semaphore; 8.213 Thread::Signal; 8.214 Thread::Specific; 8.215 Tie::Array, Tie::StdArray; 8.216 Tie::File; 8.217 Tie::Handle; 8.218 Tie::Hash; 8.219 Tie::Memoize; 8.220 Tie::RefHash; 8.221 Tie::Scalar; 8.222 Tie::SubstrHash; 8.223 Time::gmtime; 8.224 Time::HiRes; 8.225 Time::Local; 8.226 Time::localtime; 8.227 Time::tm; 8.228 UNIVERSAL; 8.229 User::grent; 8.230 User::pwent; 8.231 utf8; 8.232 vars; 8.233 vmsish; 8.234 XS::Typemap; Part IV: CGI; Chapter 9: CGI Overview; 9.1 A Typical CGI Interaction; 9.2 URL Encoding; 9.3 Extra Path Information; 9.4 CGI Environment Variables; Chapter 10: The CGI.pm Module; 10.1 HTML Tag Generation; 10.2 Importing Method Groups; 10.3 Maintaining State; 10.4 Named Parameters; 10.5 Using JavaScript Features; 10.6 Debugging; 10.7 CGI.pm Reference; Chapter 11: Web Server Programming with mod_perl; 11.1 Design of mod_perl; 11.2 Installing mod_perl; 11.3 mod_perl Handlers; 11.4 Running CGI Scripts with mod_perl; 11.5 Server-Side Includes with mod_perl; 11.6 <Perl> Sections; 11.7 Apache:: Modules; Part V: Databases; Chapter 12: Databases and Perl; 12.1 DBM Databases and DBM Hashes; 12.2 Design of DBI; 12.3 DBI Methods; 12.4 DBI Environment Variables; Part VI: XML and SOAP; Chapter 13: XML and Perl; 13.1 XML Parsing and Validation; 13.2 XML::Parser Methods; 13.3 Expat Handlers; 13.4 XML::Parser Styles; 13.5 Expat Encodings; 13.6 XML::Parser::ContentModel Methods; Chapter 14: SOAP; 14.1 What Is SOAP?; 14.2 SOAP::Lite; 14.3 SOAP::Data; 14.4 SOAP::Serializer; 14.5 SOAP::Fault; Part VII: Network Programming; Chapter 15: Sockets; 15.1 Built-in Socket Functions; 15.2 The IO::Socket Module; Chapter 16: Email Connectivity; 16.1 The Net Modules; 16.2 The Mail Modules; Chapter 17: Usenet News; 17.1 The NNTP Protocol; 17.2 Net::NNTP; 17.3 The News::Newsrc Module; Chapter 18: FTP; 18.1 The FTP Protocol; 18.2 Net::FTP; 18.3 FTP Configuration with Net::Netrc; Chapter 19: Lightweight Directory Access with Net::LDAP; 19.1 How Data Is Stored in LDAP; 19.2 Searching an LDAP Directory with Net::LDAP; 19.3 Adding an Entry to the Directory with Net::LDAP; 19.4 Net::LDAP Methods; Part VIII: LWP; Chapter 20: The LWP Library; 20.1 LWP Overview; 20.2 The LWP Modules; 20.3 The HTTP Modules; 20.4 The HTML Modules; 20.5 The URI Module; Part IX: Perl/Tk; Chapter 21: Perl/Tk; 21.1 Widgets; 21.2 Geometry Managers; 21.3 Common Widget Configuration Options; 21.4 The Button Widget; 21.5 The Checkbutton Widget; 21.6 The Radiobutton Widget; 21.7 The Label Widget; 21.8 The Entry Widget; 21.9 The Scrollbar Widget; 21.10 The Listbox Widget; 21.11 The Text Widget; 21.12 The Canvas Widget; 21.13 The Scale Widget; 21.14 The Menubutton Widget; 21.15 The Menu Widget; 21.16 The Optionmenu Widget; 21.17 The Frame Widget; 21.18 The Toplevel Widget; Part X: Win32; Chapter 22: Win32 Modules and Extensions; 22.1 Win32::Clipboard; 22.2 Win32::Console; 22.3 Win32::ChangeNotify; 22.4 Win32::Eventlog; 22.5 Win32::File; 22.6 Win32::FileSecurity; 22.7 Win32::Internet; 22.8 Win32::IPC; 22.9 Win32::Mutex; 22.10 Win32::NetAdmin; 22.11 Win32::NetResource; 22.12 Win32::PerfLib; 22.13 Win32::Pipe; 22.14 Win32::Process; 22.15 Win32::Registry; 22.16 Win32::Semaphore; 22.17 Win32::Service; 22.18 Win32::Shortcut; 22.19 Win32 Extensions; Chapter 23: OLE Automation; 23.1 Creating Objects; 23.2 Automation Methods and Properties; 23.3 Win32::OLE::Enum; 23.4 Win32::OLE::Variant; 23.5 Win32::OLE::Const; Chapter 24: ODBC Extension for Win32; 24.1 ODBC Methods and Properties; Colophon;

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Perl and O’Reilly go together like peanut butter and jelly. Perl’s creator, Larry Wall, even works there, guiding the future of the language. Then, of course, there’s O’Reilly’s “camel book,” Programming Perl, one of the world’s few truly legendary computer books. So if you’re looking for an authoritative Perl language reference, you’d expect O’Reilly to offer a great one. And they do.

Perl in a Nutshell, Second Edition combines a complete overview of working with Perl and a thorough reference. If you’ve fooled with Perl (or even another scripting language) even a little, the book’s introductory tutorials will be all you’ll need to move forward. If you’re an experienced Perlmonger, they’re a perfect refresher.

It’s all here, from installation through debugging and Win32 support. The heart of the book: coverage of Perl modules that extend the language in virtually every imaginable direction. Perl in a Nutshell, Second Edition covers virtually all the most widely used modules in the most popular areas of Perl development: CGI.pm, mod_perl for Apache, DBI for connecting with your friendly neighborhood database; new tools for XML and SOAP processing; network, web, and email programming modules; and more. It’s an immense, well-organized resource for every Perl developer. (Bill Camarda)

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

bn.com

Fatbrain Review

This excellent desktop reference provides quick and detailed information on the Perl language. It covers modules, provides cross-platform implementation and includes a concise Perl language and module reference. For best understanding, you should be comfortable using the Perl scripting language.

The authors very briefly cover the installation of UNIX and Win32 platforms, interpreters and compilers. Their language reference section details Perl statements, declarations, scopes, operators, syntax expressions, options, parameters and values. The text also includes complete and concise explanations that specify defaults, executions, return values and rationales. The largest section describes standard modules, explains their functions and details their structure and implementation. This publication is also an excellent reference for WWW connectivity and networking. It details the LPW library for Web access and applications. It also covers the CGI.pm module, mod_perl Web server programming, socket modules and e-mail connectivity. GUI extensions include Perl/Tk, Win32 Modules and extensions.

A great reference kit for UNIX programmers and complementary volume for this is Perl Resource Kit, UNIX edition. If you deal with multiple platforms then, try Perl 5 Complete.