Advanced Perl Programming

William “Bo” Rothwell’s Advanced Perl Programming continues where his previous book left off, more or less, as it guides you through advanced techniques of the Perl programming language starting with command-line options, references, and arrays and hashes from advanced data types. Next, you’ll learn about typeglobs for symbolic entries.

Additionally, you’ll see advanced subroutine handling, then packages and namespaces. Furthermore, you’ll build advanced modules and install CPAN modules. Unlike Java and C++, modules have been around in Perl for a long time now. Along the way, you’ll learn and use POD mark up language for Perl documentation.

Moreover, you’ll get a survey of the many advanced features and data structures of the current Perl programming language. You’ll also get a survey of the new features of the latest Perl 5.x release. After reading and using this book, you’ll have the tools, techniques, and source code to be an expert Perl programmer.

What You Will Learn

• Carry out command-line parsing and extract scripts
• Create references; return values from a reference; work with the ref Function and strict refs
• Work with advanced Perl data types using arrays, hashes, and hash of hashes
• Use Typeglobs for symbol table entries
• Build modules and install CPAN modules
• Write documentation for Perl using POD
• Work with the newest features in Perl, including the smartmatch operator, yada yada, automated regex modifiers, the CORE namespace and more

Who This Book Is For

Those with experience with Perl or who have read Rothwell’s prior books, Beginning Perl Programming and Pro Perl Programming.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Command-Line Options

Chapter 2: References

Chapter 3: Advanced Data Types: Arrays

Chapter 4: Advanced Data Types: Hashes

Chapter 5: Typeglobs

Chapter 6: Advanced Subroutine Handling

Chapter 7: Packages and Namespaces

Chapter 8: Building Modules

Chapter 9: Installing CPAN Modules

Chapter 10: POD

Chapter 11: Advanced Features

Chapter 12: Advanced Data Structures

Chapter 13: New Features

About the Author

At the impressionable age of 14, William “Bo” Rothwell crossed paths with a TRS-80 Micro Computer System (affectionately known as a “Trash 80”). Soon after the adults responsible for Bo made the mistake of leaving him alone with the TSR-80. He immediately dismantled it and held his first computer class, showing his friends what made this “computer thing” work. Since this experience, Bo’s passion for understanding how computers work and sharing this knowledge with others has resulting in a rewarding career in IT training. His experience includes Linux, Unix, DevOps tools, and programming languages such as Perl, Python, Tcl, and BASH.