=head1 NAME
-perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.31 $, $Date: 1999/04/14 03:46:19 $)
+perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Some URLs that might help you are:
http://language.perl.com/info/software.html
- http://www.perl.com/latest/
+ http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html#binary
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/
Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp
reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.
The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
-the creator of Perl, is now in its second edition:
+the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition:
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
- by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
- ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English)
- ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
- URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl2/
- (French, German, Italian, and Hungarian translations also
- available)
+ by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
+ 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
+ (English, translations to several languages are also available)
The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs
The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
- with Foreword by Larry Wall
- ISBN: 1-56592-243-3
- URL: http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
+ with Foreword by Larry Wall
+ 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. But if you're not, check
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"):
by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
with Foreword by Larry Wall
- ISBN: 1-56592-284-0
- URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
+ ISBN 1-56592-284-0 [2nd Edition July 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
Despite the picture at the URL above, the second edition of "Llama
Book" really has a blue cover, and is updated for the 5.004 release
What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
-Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow; those marked with
-a star may be ordered from O'Reilly.
+Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
=over
=item References
- *Programming Perl
- by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
+ Programming Perl
+ by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
+ ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
- *Perl 5 Desktop Reference
+ Perl 5 Pocket Reference
by Johan Vromans
+ ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
- *Perl in a Nutshell
+ Perl in a Nutshell
by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
+ ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/
=item Tutorials
-
- *Learning Perl [2nd edition]
+
+ Elements of Programming with Perl
+ by Andrew L. Johnson
+ ISBN 1884777805 [1st edition October 1999]
+ 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/
- *Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
+ Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
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/
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
- Cross-Platform Perl
- by Eric F. Johnson
+ Cross-Platform Perl
+ by Eric Foster-Johnson
+ ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000]
+ http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm
- MacPerl: Power and Ease
- by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, foreword by Matthias Neeracher
+ MacPerl: Power and Ease
+ by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor,
+ with foreword by Matthias Neeracher
+ ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998]
+ http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/
=item Task-Oriented
- *The Perl Cookbook
+ The Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
with foreword by Larry Wall
+ ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
- Perl5 Interactive Course [2nd edition]
+ Perl5 Interactive Course
by Jon Orwant
+ ISBN 1571690646 [1st edition June 1997]
- *Advanced Perl Programming
+ Advanced Perl Programming
by Sriram Srinivasan
+ ISBN 1-56592-220-4 [1st edition August 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/advperl/
Effective Perl Programming
by Joseph Hall
+ ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
+ http://www.awl.com/
=item Special Topics
- *Mastering Regular Expressions
- by Jeffrey Friedl
+ Mastering Regular Expressions
+ by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
+ ISBN 1-56592-257-3 [1st edition January 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/
- How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition]
+ How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site
by Lincoln Stein
+ ISBN 0-201-63389-2 [1st edition 1995]
+ http://www.awl.com/
+
+ Object Oriented Perl
+ Damian Conway
+ with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
+ ISBN 1884777791 [1st edition August 1999]
+ http://www.manning.com/Conway/
- *Learning Perl/Tk
+ Learning Perl/Tk
by Nancy Walsh
+ ISBN 1-56592-314-6 [1st edition January 1999]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperltk/
=back
To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick a site from
the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites.
From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
-following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
-
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to an ftp mirror)
- http://www.perl.org/CPAN
+following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors
+(the complete list contains 136 sites as of July 2000):
+
+ http://www.perl.com/CPAN/
+ http://www.cpan.org/CPAN/
+ http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
- http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
- ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/lang/CPAN/
+ ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://cpan.if.usp.br/pub/mirror/CPAN/
=head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
-subscription information. The Perl Institute attempts to maintain a
+subscription information. The Perl Mongers attempt to maintain a
list of mailing lists at:
- http://www.perl.org/maillist.html
+ http://www.perl.org/support/online_support.html#mail
=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
You'll probably want to trim that down a bit, though.
-ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost
-complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through
-12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
-
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,
and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
also all come with Perl.
-Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically
-provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl.
-Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The
-Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
-
-"Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need
-a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay
-only for what you need?
-
-"The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and
-support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten
-years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl
-at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl
-porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the
-DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The
-Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5
-Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part
-of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work
-will be donated to The Perl Institute."
-
-For more information, contact The Perl Clinic:
-
- Tel: +44 1483 424424
- Fax: +44 1483 419419
- Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/
- Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk
+Or you can purchase commercial incidence based support through the Perl
+Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
+
+"The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by
+ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many
+years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals
+on a wide range of platforms.
+
+"Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers,
+we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an
+explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
+
+Contact The Perl Clinic at:
+
+ www.PerlClinic.com
+
+ North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
+ Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
+ Fax: 1 604 606-4640
+
+ Europe (GMT)
+ Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
+ Fax: 00 44 1483 862801
See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
-=head2 What is perl.com?
+=head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
The perl.com domain is owned by Tom Christiansen, who created it as a
public service long before perl.org came about. Despite the name, it's a
http://conference.perl.com/
http://reference.perl.com/
+Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language. For
+details, see the Perl Mongers web site at http://www.perlmongers.org/.
+
+Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
+groups. See the Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more
+information about joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl
+user group.
+
+Perl Mongers also maintains the perl.org domain to provide general
+support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
+lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
+http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
+and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
+
+ http://history.perl.org/
+ http://bugs.perl.org/
+ http://www.news.perl.org/
+
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.