Perl is Precious

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, stable, cross platform dynamic programming language. Perl is Free Open Source software, licensed under its Artistic License, a variation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Perl was started by Larry Wall, who never did get his life back.

Getting perl

• The best way to get perl is to download and install the core perl translator from CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. Perl has no external standard: it is perl if you download it via CPAN, and is not otherwise. Source code and pre-compiled binaries ("ports") are available for a wide variety of platforms.
• You'll also want the CPAN, CPANPLUS, and/or PPM (Perl Package Manager, windows-only) modules, so that perl can install any contributed additional modules you would like to use. The core module set is (relatively) small; you will find that you frequently want to add additional packages to your base set.
• For the Eclipse addicts out there, the Eclipse Perl Integration project has a perl plugin.

Getting started

• Choose one of the quick start books
  • Learning Perl, 5th Edition - With the fifth edition, the llama book has really come into its own. Learning Perl now combines an accessible style with a rigorous approach, useful exercises, and under-the-hood discussions that tempt new and experienced perl programmers alike to keep exploring. Nice job, guys!
  • Computer Science & Perl Programming - a new O'Reilly offering, takes the language feature approach to perl, leveraging the best of the perl journal with some well-written glue to weave together a very nice piece of work.
• and one of the development books (yup, in parallel, otherwise folks tend to fall back on an IDE sort of mindset...):
  • Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook
  • Intermediate Perl, 1st Edition (Objects, References & Modules)
• it's never too early to start consulting
  • Perl Best Practices, by Damian Conway in order to understand why we do what we do.

Perl Reference Material

• perldoc - Perl's documentation portal, oriented towards exploring a particular distribution of the language.
• search.cpan explore perl by module, both core modules as well as contributed modules.
• AuthoringPerlModules - really, all perl development, as the module authoring environment is the development environment...
• The Perl Journal Now archived at Dr. Dobb's. For the moment, you'll need to search based on area of interest.
• Perl Training Australia - Perl Tips has a wealth of useful info

I found some Good Video tutorials for Perl http://www.scriptsocket.com/videos.php

Where to get help

• PerlMonks A repository of much accumulated wisdom as well as a place to hang out with other perl fanatics. Feeling uncertain about jumping in? Read How To Ask Questions The Smart Way and get involved with confidence.
  • Tutorials from PerlMonks
• Perl Mongers is where to find Perl User Groups.
• Perl Quality Assurance Projects is the seriously stuffy name for where to find the agile/behavior-driven-development/smoke-testing/seriously cool stuff.

Wonderful Perl articles

• Strong Typing, by M-J. Dominus, a wonderful article to help you understand why perl ended up with the type system it has, etc. Thanks to LeonChoi for finding this one.

-- RahulPendyal - 25 Jan 2009
-- HilaryHolz - 13 Mar 2009