Where can I get more information on Perl?
We'll cover five areas here: USENET (where you're probably reading
this), publications, the reference guide, examples on the Internet,
and Perl instructional courses.
A. USENET
You should definitely read the USENET comp.lang.perl newsgroup or
mailing list for all sorts of discussions regarding the language,
bugs, features, history, humor, and trivia. In this respect, it
functions both as a comp.lang.* style newsgroup and also as a user
group for the language; in fact, there's a mailing list called
``perl-users'' that is bidirectionally gatewayed to the newsgroup; see
question #38 for details. Larry Wall is a very frequent poster here,
as well as many (if not most) of the other seasoned Perl programmers.
It's the best place for the very latest information on Perl.
B. PUBLICATIONS
If you've been dismayed by the ~80-page troffed Perl man page (or is
that man treatise?) you should look to ``the Camel Book'', written by
Larry and Randal Schwartz <merlyn@ora.com>, published as a Nutshell
Handbook by O'Reilly & Associates and entitled _Programming Perl_.
Besides serving as a reference guide for Perl, it also contains
tutorial material and is a great source of examples and cookbook
procedures, as well as wit and wisdom, tricks and traps, pranks and
pitfalls. The code examples contained therein are available via
anonymous FTP from ftp.uu.net in
/published/oreilly/nutshell/perl/perl.tar.Z for your retrieval.
Corrections and additions to the book can be found in the Perl man
page right before the BUGS section under the heading ERRATA AND
ADDENDA.
If you can't find the book in your local technical bookstore, the book
may be ordered directly from O'Reilly by calling 1-800-998-9938 if in
North America and 1-707-829-0515. The book's ISBN is 0-937175-64-1.
Autographed copies are *NO LONGER* available from TECHbooks --
you'll have to nab the authors in person if you want one. Larry
routinely carries around a camel stamp for just such an occasion.
Reasonably substantiated rumor has it that there will be another Perl
book out pretty soon, this one aimed more at beginners. Look for it
from ORA towards the beginning of 93.
Another ORA book by Randal Schwartz is scheduled for imminent
release. It is entitled _Learning Perl_ (``The LLama Book'') and
covers the basics of Perl in a tutorial fashion.
Larry Wall has published a 3-part article on perl in Unix World
(August through October of 1991), and Rob Kolstad also had a 3-parter
in Unix Review (May through July of 1990). Tom Christiansen also has
a brief overview article in the trade newsletter Unix Technology
Advisor from November of 1989. You might also investigate "The Wisdom
of Perl" by Gordon Galligher from SunExpert magazine; April 1991
Volume 2 Number 4. The Dec 92 Computer Language magazine also
contains a cover article on Perl, "Perl: the Programmers Toolbox".
Many other articles on Perl have been recently published. If you
have references, especially on-line copies, please mail them to
the FAQ maintainer for inclusion is this notice.
The USENIX LISA (Large Installations Systems Administration) Conference
have for several years now included many papers of tools written in
Perl. Old proceedings of these conferences are available; look in
your current issue of ";login:" or send mail to office@usenix.org
for further information.
C. INTERNET
For other examples of Perl scripts, look in the Perl source directory in
the eg subdirectory.
The site with the biggest repository of Perl scripts right now
seems to be coombs.anu.edu.au [150.203.76.2]. That directory
has an INDEX with over 300 lines in it, each describing what
the script does. This is maintained by mark@coombs.anu.edu.au .
Note: European users please use the mirror site on
src.doc.ic.ac.uk[149.169.2.1 in
/pub/computing/programming/languages/perl/coombs-scripts
The link speed would be a lot better for all. Contact
L.McLoughlin@doc.ic.ac.uk for more information. It is updated daily.
Another source for examples, currently only for anonymous FTP, is on
convex.com [130.168.1.1]. This contains, amongst other things,
a copy of the newsgroup up through Aug 91, a text retrieval database
for the newsgroup, a rather old and short troff version of Tom Christiansen's
perl tutorial (this was the version presented at Washington DC USENIX),
and quite a few of Tom's scripts. You can look at the INDEX file
in /pub/perl/INDEX for a list of what's in that directory.
The Convex and Ohio State archives are mirrored on uunet
in /languages/perl/scripts-{convex,osu}.
There's also a #Perl channel on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where
Tom and Randal have been known to hang out. That's real-time,
free Perl support. What more can you ask? :-)
D. REFERENCE GUIDE
A nice reference guide by Johan Vromans <jv@mh.nl> is also available;
It is distributed in LaTeX (source) and PostScript (ready to
print) forms. Obsolete versions may still be available in TeX and troff
forms, although these don't print as nicely. The official kit
includes both LaTeX and PostScript forms, and can be FTP'd from
ftp.cs.ruu.nl [131.211.80.17], file /pub/DOC/perlref-4.035.tar.Z.
The reference guide comes with the O'Reilly book in a nice, glossy
card format.
E. PERL COURSES
Various technical conferences, including USENIX, LISA, SUG, WCSAS, AUUG,
FedUnix, and Europen have been sponsoring tutorials of varying lengths
on Perl at their system administration and general conferences. You
might consider attending one of these. These public classes are
typically taught by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@usenix.com>. Both Tom
and Randal Schwartz <merlyn@ora.com> also teach Perl at customer
sites. Classes can run from one day up to a week ranging over a wide
range of subject matter (most are two or three days), and can include
lab time if you want; having lab time with exercises is generally of
great benefit. Send us mail if your organization is interested in
having a Perl class taught at your site, or if you'd like to know when
the next public appearances are.