#440 Programming Perl

Book notes - Programming Perl: Unmatched power for text processing and scripting by Tom Christiansen, Brian D Foy, Larry Wall, Jon Orwant. First published January 1, 1991. Latest 4th edition in 2012.

Notes

Programming Perl, best known as the Camel Book among programmers, is a book about writing programs using the Perl programming language, revised as several editions (1991–2012) to reflect major language changes since Perl version 4.

I first read it in its second edition (1996). As of 2026, the book is in its 4th edition (2012).

Contents - Second Edition

Chapter 1: An Overview of Perl
Chapter 2: The Gory Details
Chapter 3: Functions
Chapter 4: References and Nested Data Structures
Chapter 5: Packages, Modules, and Object Classes
Chapter 6: Social Engineering
Chapter 7: The Standard Perl Library
Chapter 8: Other Oddments
Chapter 9: Diagnostic Messages

Source Code - 4th Edition

Example sources are maintained at https://resources.oreilly.com/examples/9780596004927/. Cloning to an example_source_v4 folder:

git clone https://resources.oreilly.com/examples/9780596004927 example_source_v4

Source Code - 2nd Edition

Example sources are maintained at https://resources.oreilly.com/examples/9781565921498/. Cloning to an example_source_v2 folder:

git clone https://resources.oreilly.com/examples/9781565921498 example_source_v2

Credits and References