Distilling many years of Perl experience--including an insiders look at Perl development (the authors are members of the Perl 6 core development team)--Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, 2nd Edition is an unparalleled preview of major changes in the widely-anticipated Perl 6. This sneak peek of what's coming in Perl includes succinct but thorough coverage of groundbreaking new developments in Parrot--the language-independent interpreter engine that will execute code written in the new Perl 6 language. Designed to be language independent, Parrot can be used to interpret other dynamic languages such as Python, Tcl, Ruby, and even Java.

Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials also uncovers the most revolutionary change in the language itself--Apocalypse 12 on objects. The Apocalypse design documents (in the sense of "revealing", not "end-of-the-world") explain significant changes in new Perl 6 features, numbered according to the chapters in O'Reilly's landmark Camel book , Programming Perl.

Apocalypse 12 is the result of cutting-edge research in object-oriented languages and is guaranteed to grab the attention of any serious Perl programmer. Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials also includes expanded coverage of Apocalypse 5 (regular expressions) and Apocalypse 6 (subroutines).

Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials is the only book available to chart the course of the long but fruitful voyage of Perl 6. It reveals all the ingenious developments that will make Perl 6 more powerful and easier to use.

Learning Perl, better known as "the Llama book", starts the programmer on the way to mastery. Written by three prominent members of the Perl community who each have several years of experience teaching Perl around the world, this latest edition has been updated to account for all the recent changes to the language up to Perl 5.8.

Perl is the language for people who want to get work done. It started as a tool for UNIX system administrators who needed something powerful for small tasks. Since then, Perl has blossomed into a full-featured programming language used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and system administration--on practically all platforms--while remaining the favorite tool for the small daily tasks it was designed for. You might start using Perl because you need it, but you'll continue to use it because you love it.

Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the Llama to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers getting started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the Llama is famous.

Perl is a versatile, powerful programming language used in a variety of disciplines, ranging from system administration to web programming to database manipulation. One slogan of Perl is that it makes easy things easy and hard things possible. This book is about making the leap from the easy things to the hard ones.

Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules offers a gentle but thorough introduction to advanced programming in Perl. Written by the authors of the best-selling Learning Perl, this book picks up where that book left off. Topics include:

• Packages and namespaces
• References and scoping
• Manipulating complex data structures
• Object-oriented programming
• Writing and using modules
• Contributing to CPAN

Following the successful format of Learning Perl, each chapter in the book is designed to be small enough to be read in just an hour or two, ending with a series of exercises to help you practice what you've learned. To use the book, you just need to be familiar with the material in Learning Perl and have ambition to go further.

Perl is a different language to different people. It is a quick scripting tool for some, and a fully-featured object-oriented language for others. It is used for everything from performing quick global replacements on text files, to crunching huge, complex sets of scientific data that take weeks to process. Perl is what you make of it. But regardless of what you use Perl for, this book helps you do it more effectively, efficiently, and elegantly.

Perl 6 Essentials is the first book that offers a peek into the next major version of the Perl language. Written by members of the Perl 6 core development team, the book covers the development not only of Perl 6 syntax but also Parrot, the language-independent interpreter developed as part of the Perl 6 design strategy. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of Perl. It will satisfy their curiosity and show how changes in the language will make it more powerful and easier to use.