Foreword; Second Edition Update;Preface; What This Book Is About; Retrieving Exercises; Additional Resources; How to Get Perl; Conventions Used in This Book; Support; Acknowledgments for the First Edition; Acknowledgments for the Second Edition; We''d Like to Hear from You;Chapter 1: Introduction; 1.1 History of Perl; 1.2 Purpose of Perl; 1.3 Availability; 1.4 Basic Concepts; 1.5 A Stroll Through Perl; 1.6 Exercise;Chapter 2: Scalar Data; 2.1 What Is Scalar Data?; 2.

2 Numbers; 2.3 Strings; 2.4 Scalar Operators; 2.5 Scalar Variables; 2.6 Scalar Operators and Functions; 2.7 as a Scalar Value; 2.8 Output with print; 2.9 The Undefined Value; 2.

10 Exercises;Chapter 3: Arrays and List Data; 3.1 What Is a List or Array?; 3.2 Literal Representation; 3.3 Variables; 3.4 Array Operators and Functions; 3.5 Scalar and List Context; 3.6 as an Array; 3.7 Variable Interpolation of Arrays; 3.

8 Exercises;Chapter 4: Control Structures; 4.1 Statement Blocks; 4.2 The if/unless Statement; 4.3 The while/until Statement; 4.4 The for Statement; 4.5 The foreach Statement; 4.6 Exercises;Chapter 5: Hashes; 5.1 What Is a Hash?; 5.

2 Hash Variables; 5.3 Literal Representation of a Hash; 5.4 Hash Functions; 5.5 Hash Slices; 5.6 Exercises;Chapter 6: Basic I/O; 6.1 Input from STDIN; 6.2 Input from the Diamond Operator; 6.3 Output to STDOUT; 6.

4 Exercises;Chapter 7: Regular Expressions; 7.1 Concepts About Regular Expressions; 7.2 Simple Uses of Regular Expressions; 7.3 Patterns; 7.4 More on the Matching Operator; 7.5 Substitutions; 7.6 The split and join Functions; 7.7 Exercises;Chapter 8: Functions; 8.

1 Defining a User Function; 8.2 Invoking a User Function; 8.3 Return Values; 8.4 Arguments; 8.5 Private Variables in Functions; 8.6 Semiprivate Variables Using local; 8.7 File-Level my( ) Variables; 8.8 Exercises;Chapter 9: Miscellaneous Control Structures; 9.

1 The last Statement; 9.2 The next Statement; 9.3 The redo Statement; 9.4 Labeled Blocks; 9.5 Expression Modifiers; 9.6 && and as Control Structures; 9.7 Exercises;Chapter 10: Filehandles and File Tests; 10.1 What Is a Filehandle?; 10.

2 Opening and Closing a Filehandle; 10.3 A Slight Diversion: die; 10.4 Using Filehandles; 10.5 The -x File Tests; 10.6 The stat and lstat Functions; 10.7 Exercises;Chapter 11: Formats; 11.1 What Is a Format?; 11.2 Defining a Format; 11.

3 Invoking a Format; 11.4 More About the Fieldholders; 11.5 The Top-of-Page Format; 11.6 Changing Defaults for Formats; 11.7 Exercises;Chapter 12: Directory Access; 12.1 Moving Around the Directory Tree; 12.2 Globbing; 12.3 Directory Handles; 12.

4 Opening and Closing a Directory Handle; 12.5 Reading a Directory Handle; 12.6 Exercises;Chapter 13: File and Directory Manipulation; 13.1 Removing a File; 13.2 Renaming a File; 13.3 Creating Alternate Names for a File: Linking; 13.4 Making and Removing Directories; 13.5 Modifying Permissions; 13.

6 Modifying Ownership; 13.7 Modifying Timestamps; 13.8 Exercises;Chapter 14: Process Management; 14.1 Using system and exec; 14.2 Using Backquotes; 14.3 Using Processes as Filehandles; 14.4 Using fork; 14.5 Summary of Process Operations; 14.

6 Sending and Receiving Signals; 14.7 Exercises;Chapter 15: Other Data Transformation; 15.1 Finding a Substring; 15.2 Extracting and Replacing a Substring; 15.3 Formatting Data with sprintf( ); 15.4 Advanced Sorting; 15.5 Transliteration; 15.6 Exercises;Chapter 16: System Database Access; 16.

1 Getting Password and Group Information; 16.2 Packing and Unpacking Binary Data; 16.3 Getting Network Information; 16.4 Exercise;Chapter 17: User Database Manipulation; 17.1 DBM Databases and DBM Hashes; 17.2 Opening and Closing DBM Hashes; 17.3 Using a DBM Hash; 17.4 Fixed-Length Random Access Databases; 17.

5 Variable-Length ( Text) Databases; 17.6 Exercises;Chapter 18: Converting Other Languages to Perl; 18.1 Converting awk Programs to Perl; 18.2 Converting sed Programs to Perl; 18.3 Converting Shell Programs to Perl; 18.4 Exercise;Chapter 19: CGI Programming; 19.1 The CGI.pm Module; 19.

2 Your CGI Program in Context; 19.3 Simplest CGI Program; 19.4 Passing Parameters via CGI; 19.5 Less Typing; 19.6 Form Generation; 19.7 Other Form Elements; 19.8 Creating a Guestbook Program; 19.9 Troubleshooting CGI Programs; 19.

10 Perl and the Web: Beyond CGI Programming; 19.11 Further Reading; 19.12 Exercises;Exercise Answers; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6; Chapter 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12; Chapter 13; Chapter 14; Chapter 15; Chapter 16; Chapter 17; Chapter 18; Chapter 19;Libraries and Modules; Library Terminology; Standard Modules; CPAN: Beyond the Standard Library;Networking Clients; A Simple Client; A Webget Client; An Interactive Client; Further Reading on Networking;Topics We Didn''t Mention; Full Interprocess Communications; The Debugger; The Command Line; Other Operators; Many, Many More Functions; Many, Many Predefined Variables; Symbol Table Manipulation with *FRED; Additional Regular-Expression Features; Packages; Embeddible, Extensible; And Other Stuff;Colophon;.