Get started with Perl 5 and learn the important core concepts of Perl programming, such as variables, flow control, expressions, and I/O. Additionally, this book covers pattern matching and shows that Perl is extremely flexible and powerful, and that it isn’t afraid of the cloud. After reading and using this book, you'll be able to start writing your own powerful scripts to solve many web and programming problems.

This is a book for those of us who believed that we didn’t need to learn Perl, and now we know it is more ubiquitous than ever. You’ll see that Perl has evolved into a multipurpose, multiplatform language present absolutely everywhere: heavy-duty web applications, the cloud, systems administration, natural language processing, and financial engineering. This book provides valuable insight into Perl’s role regarding all of these tasks and more giving you a great start in your Perl programming adventure.



What You Will Learn

Perform operations on scalar values
Use scalar, array, and associative array variables
Work with flow control statements such as if, unless, while, until, for, and foreach
Read and write directly to files with file handles
Use conditional expressions such as numeric and string comparison, regular expressions, file testing, and Perl statements
Format output with format statements
Search for and replace sub-strings within a string using regular expressions
Master Perl utilities such as split, join, index and more
Control the file system and processes from within a Perl script
Build functions for tasks including handling the scope of variables
Import existing modules into your Perl script.