=head1 NAME
-perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)
+perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.3 $, $Date: 2001/11/09 08:06:04 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Some URLs that might help you are:
http://www.cpan.org/ports/
- http://language.perl.com/info/software.html
+ http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html
Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp
port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with clear
commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is
http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you
+http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you
via DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the
end) for how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/
has a nice interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY
ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998]
http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
-If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book
-might suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out
+If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
+suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out the
+Llama book:
- Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"):
- by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
- with Foreword by Larry Wall
- ISBN 1-56592-284-0 [2nd Edition July 1997]
- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
+ Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
+ by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
+ ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
-Despite the picture at the URL above, the second edition of "Llama
-Book" really has a blue cover and was updated for the 5.004 release
-of Perl. Various foreign language editions are available, including
-I<Learning Perl on Win32 Systems> (the "Gecko Book").
+If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and
+possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much
+hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the
+delightful book
-If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and possibly
-even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much hand-holding as
-we try to provide in the Llama or its defurred cousin the Gecko, please
-check out the delightful book, I<Perl: The Programmer's Companion>,
-written by Nigel Chapman.
+ Perl: The Programmer's Companion
+ by Nigel Chapman
+ ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
+ http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
+ http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
+
+If you are more at home in Windows the following is available
+(though unfortunately rather dated).
+
+ Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book")
+ by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
+ with foreword by Larry Wall
+ ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
Addison-Wesley (http://www.awlonline.com/) and Manning
(http://www.manning.com/) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
-such as Object Oriented Programming with Perl by Damian Conway and
-Network Programming with Perl by Lincoln Stein.
+such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
+I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
Learning Perl
- by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
- with foreword by Larry Wall
- ISBN 1-56592-284-0 [2nd edition July 1997]
- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
+ by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
+ ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
Perl: The Programmer's Companion
by Nigel Chapman
- ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1st edition October 1997]
- http://catalog.wiley.com/title.cgi?isbn=047197563X
+ ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
+ http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
+ http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
Cross-Platform Perl
by Eric Foster-Johnson
=head2 Perl in Magazines
-The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl, I<The
-Perl Journal> contained tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
-announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> had columns on web
+The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl,
+I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
+announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web
development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
-expressions, and networking, and sponsored the Obfuscated Perl
-Contest. Sadly, this publication is no longer in circulation, but
-should it be resurrected, it will most likely be announced on
-http://use.perl.org/ .
-
-Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry high-quality articles
-on Perl are I<Web Techniques> (see http://www.webtechniques.com/),
-I<Performance Computing> (http://www.performance-computing.com/), and Usenix's
-newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>, at http://www.usenix.org/.
-Randal's Web Technique's columns are available on the web at
-http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ .
+expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
+and the Perl Poetry Contests. As of mid-2001, the dead tree version
+of TPJ will be published as a quarterly supplement of SysAdmin
+magazine ( http://www.sysadmin.com/ ) For more details on TPJ,
+see http://www.tpj.com/
+
+Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on
+Perl are I<Web Techniques> ( http://www.webtechniques.com/ ),
+I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ),
+I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ),
+and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>
+( http://www.usenix.org/ )
+
+The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
+http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
+http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
+http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
=head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
One may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code
for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org.
+[Note: This only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.]
=head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
-Have you tried Deja or AltaVista? Those are the
-best archives. Just look up "*perl*" as a newsgroup.
-
- http://www.deja.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=terse&showsort=date&maxhits=25&subjects=&groups=*perl*&authors=&fromdate=&todate=
+The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
+content.
-You might want to trim that down a bit, though.
+http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=comp.lang.perl.misc
-You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism
-than a file listing, preferably one that allows you to retrieve
-articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at least author, date,
-subject, thread (as in "trn") and probably keywords. The best
-solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is
-very slow to select on 18000 articles.
-
-If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections, please
-let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
+If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
+same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
+to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
+seek.
=head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
-Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriads of
+Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
better for everyone.
=head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
-The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted on a
-T3 line courtesy of Songline Systems, a software-oriented subsidiary of
-O'Reilly and Associates. Other starting points include
-
- http://language.perl.com/
- http://conference.perl.com/
- http://reference.perl.com/
+The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted by
+The O'Reilly Network, a subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language which
maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy
Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
All rights reserved.
-When included as an integrated part of the Standard Distribution
-of Perl or of its documentation (printed or otherwise), this works is
-covered under Perl's Artistic License. For separate distributions of
-all or part of this FAQ outside of that, see L<perlfaq>.
+This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+under the same terms as Perl itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff