Lecture Notes

• Interest in Various Languages in the Web (August 27, 2001)
• Module 1: Introduction to Perl and Basic Data Structures.
• Module 2: Control Structures and Regular Expression.
• Module 3: Functions, Packages and Modules.

Useful Perl Sites

• http://www.perl.com/: A well organized site that probably satisfies 90% of your Perl need.
• http://www.perldoc.com/: general perl documentation.
• http://search.cpan.org/: search CPAN modules.
• ActiveState: You can download ActiveState Perl for Win 32 here.
• Active State Perl Documentation: relatively fast.
• Yahoo's Perl directory: You may spent hundreds of hours here easily; quite extensive.

Perl Book Sites

• The Llama book website at O'Reilly: highly desirable if you own the book, not fast.
• The Camel book website at O'Reilly: highly desirable if you own the book, not fast.

Recommended Books

Perl has become a mature programming language and there are now many good books for Perl. The following is just what I like. Other books may work better for you.

• Larry Wall, et. al., "Programming Perl," third edition, O'Reilly, ISBN 0596000278: the newest camel book.  No other book in Perl is more authoritative.
• Randal Schwartz, et. al., "Learning Perl," O'Reilly, ISBN 1565922840: the Llama book.  Nice written and easy to understand.  I learned Perl by reading this book.
• Randal Schwartz, et. al., "Learning Perl on Win32 systems," O'Reilly, ISBN 1565923243: the Llama book on Windows.  Get this lizard book instead of the original Llama book if Windows are your main concern.
• Tom Christiansen, et. al, "Perl Cookbook," O'Reilly, ISBN 1565922433: indispensable for serious Perl developers.  A little dated.  Hope they will come up with a new edition soon.