Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Larger Cover

By Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Released: August 2003

Pages: 968

Find a Perl programmer, and you'll find a copy of Perl Cookbook nearby. Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. The book contains hundreds of rigorously reviewed Perl "recipes" and thousands of examples ranging from brief one-liners to complete applications.

The second edition of Perl Cookbook has been fully updated for Perl 5.8, with extensive changes for Unicode support, I/O layers, mod_perl, and new technologies that have emerged since the previous edition of the book. Recipes have been updated to include the latest modules. New recipes have been added to every chapter of the book, and some chapters have almost doubled in size.

Covered topic areas include:

Manipulating strings, numbers, dates, arrays, and hashes
Pattern matching and text substitutions
References, data structures, objects, and classes
Signals and exceptions
Screen addressing, menus, and graphical applications
Managing other processes
Writing secure scripts
Client-server programming
Internet applications programming with mail, news, ftp, and telnet
CGI and mod_perl programming
Web programming

Since its first release in 1998, Perl Cookbook has earned its place in the libraries of serious Perl users of all levels of expertise by providing practical answers, code examples, and mini-tutorials addressing the challenges that programmers face. Now the second edition of this bestselling book is ready to earn its place among the ranks of favorite Perl books as well.

Whether you're a novice or veteran Perl programmer, you'll find Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition to be one of the most useful books on Perl available. Its comfortable discussion style and accurate attention to detail cover just about any topic you'd want to know about. You can get by without having this book in your library, but once you've tried a few of the recipes, you won't want to.

Chapter 1 Strings
1. Introduction
2. Accessing Substrings
3. Establishing a Default Value
4. Exchanging Values Without Using Temporary Variables
5. Converting Between Characters and Values
6. Using Named Unicode Characters
7. Processing a String One Character at a Time
8. Reversing a String by Word or Character
9. Treating Unicode Combined Characters as Single Characters
10. Canonicalizing Strings with Unicode Combined Characters
11. Treating a Unicode String as Octets
12. Expanding and Compressing Tabs
13. Expanding Variables in User Input
14. Controlling Case
15. Properly Capitalizing a Title or Headline
16. Interpolating Functions and Expressions Within Strings
17. Indenting Here Documents
18. Reformatting Paragraphs
19. Escaping Characters
20. Trimming Blanks from the Ends of a String
21. Parsing Comma-Separated Data
22. Constant Variables
23. Soundex Matching
24. Program: fixstyle
25. Program: psgrep
Chapter 2 Numbers
1. Introduction
2. Checking Whether a String Is a Valid Number
3. Rounding Floating-Point Numbers
4. Comparing Floating-Point Numbers
5. Operating on a Series of Integers
6. Working with Roman Numerals
7. Generating Random Numbers
8. Generating Repeatable Random Number Sequences
9. Making Numbers Even More Random
10. Generating Biased Random Numbers
11. Doing Trigonometry in Degrees, Not Radians
12. Calculating More Trigonometric Functions
13. Taking Logarithms
14. Multiplying Matrices
15. Using Complex Numbers
16. Converting Binary, Octal, and Hexadecimal Numbers
17. Putting Commas in Numbers
18. Printing Correct Plurals
19. Program: Calculating Prime Factors
Chapter 3 Dates and Times
1. Introduction
2. Finding Today's Date
3. Converting DMYHMS to Epoch Seconds
4. Converting Epoch Seconds to DMYHMS
5. Adding to or Subtracting from a Date
6. Difference of Two Dates
7. Day in a Week/Month/Year or Week Number
8. Parsing Dates and Times from Strings
9. Printing a Date
10. High-Resolution Timers
11. Short Sleeps
12. Program: hopdelta
Chapter 4 Arrays
1. Introduction
2. Specifying a List in Your Program
3. Printing a List with Commas
4. Changing Array Size
5. Implementing a Sparse Array
6. Iterating Over an Array
7. Iterating Over an Array by Reference
8. Extracting Unique Elements from a List
9. Finding Elements in One Array but Not Another
10. Computing Union, Intersection, or Difference of Unique Lists
11. Appending One Array to Another
12. Reversing an

Chapter 1 Strings

Introduction

Accessing Substrings

Establishing a Default Value

Exchanging Values Without Using Temporary Variables

Converting Between Characters and Values

Using Named Unicode Characters

Processing a String One Character at a Time

Reversing a String by Word or Character

Treating Unicode Combined Characters as Single Characters

Canonicalizing Strings with Unicode Combined Characters

Treating a Unicode String as Octets

Expanding and Compressing Tabs

Expanding Variables in User Input

Controlling Case

Properly Capitalizing a Title or Headline

Interpolating Functions and Expressions Within Strings

Indenting Here Documents

Reformatting Paragraphs

Escaping Characters

Trimming Blanks from the Ends of a String

Parsing Comma-Separated Data

Constant Variables

Soundex Matching

Program: fixstyle

Program: psgrep

Chapter 2 Numbers

Introduction

Checking Whether a String Is a Valid Number

Rounding Floating-Point Numbers

Comparing Floating-Point Numbers

Operating on a Series of Integers

Working with Roman Numerals

Generating Random Numbers

Generating Repeatable Random Number Sequences

Making Numbers Even More Random

Generating Biased Random Numbers

Doing Trigonometry in Degrees, Not Radians

Calculating More Trigonometric Functions

Taking Logarithms

Multiplying Matrices

Using Complex Numbers

Converting Binary, Octal, and Hexadecimal Numbers

Putting Commas in Numbers

Printing Correct Plurals

Program: Calculating Prime Factors

Chapter 3 Dates and Times

Introduction

Finding Today's Date

Converting DMYHMS to Epoch Seconds

Converting Epoch Seconds to DMYHMS

Adding to or Subtracting from a Date

Difference of Two Dates

Day in a Week/Month/Year or Week Number

Parsing Dates and Times from Strings

Printing a Date

High-Resolution Timers

Short Sleeps

Program: hopdelta

Chapter 4 Arrays

Introduction

Specifying a List in Your Program

Printing a List with Commas

Changing Array Size

Implementing a Sparse Array

Iterating Over an Array

Iterating Over an Array by Reference

Extracting Unique Elements from a List

Finding Elements in One Array but Not Another

Computing Union, Intersection, or Difference of Unique Lists

Appending One Array to Another

Reversing an