Effective Perl Programming: Ways to Write Better, More Idiomatic Perl, Rough Cuts, 2nd Edition

Description

This is the Rough Cut version of the printed book.

For years, experienced programmers have relied on Effective Perl Programming to discover better ways to solve problems with Perl. Now, in this long-awaited second edition, three renowned Perl programmers bring together today’s best idioms, techniques, and examples: everything you need to write more powerful, fluent, expressive, and succinct code with Perl.

Nearly twice the size of the first edition, Effective Perl Programming, Second Edition, offers everything from rules of thumb to avoid common pitfalls to the latest wisdom for using Perl modules. You won’t just learn the right ways to use Perl: You’ll learn why these approaches work so well.

New coverage in this edition includes

• Reorganized and expanded material spanning twelve years of Perl evolution
• Eight new chapters on CPAN, databases, distributions, files and filehandles, production Perl, testing, Unicode, and warnings
• Updates for Perl 5.12, the latest version of Perl
• Systematically updated examples reflecting today’s best idioms

You’ll learn how to work with strings, numbers, lists, arrays, strictures, namespaces, regular expressions, subroutines, references, distributions, inline code, warnings, Perl::Tidy, data munging, Perl one-liners, and a whole lot more. Every technique is organized in the same Items format that helped make the first edition so convenient and popular.

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

About the Authors xix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Basics of Perl 9

Item 1. Find the documentation for Perl and its modules. 9

Item 2. Enable new Perl features when you need them. 12

Item 3. Enable strictures to promote better coding. 14

Item 4. Understand what sigils are telling you. 17

Item 5. Know your variable namespaces. 19

Item 6. Know the difference between string and numeric comparisons. 21

Item 7. Know which values are false and test them accordingly. 23

Item 8. Understand conversions between strings and numbers. 27

Item 9. Know the difference between lists and arrays. 31

Item 10. Don’t assign undef when you want an empty array. 34

Item 11. Avoid a slice when you want an element. 37

Item 12. Understand context and how it affects operations. 41

Item 13. Use arrays or hashes to group data. 45

Item 14. Handle big numbers with bignum. 47

Chapter 2: Idiomatic Perl 51

Item 15. Use $_ for elegance and brevity. 53

Item 16. Know Perl’s other default arguments. 56

Item 17. Know common shorthand and syntax quirks. 60

Item 18. Avoid excessive punctuation. 66

Item 19. Format lists for easy maintenance. 68

Item 20. Use foreach, map, and grep as appropriate. 70

Item 21. Know the different ways to quote strings. 73

Item 22. Learn the myriad ways of sorting. 77

Item 23. Make work easier with smart matching. 84

Item 24. Use given-when to make a switch statement. 86

Item 25. Use do {} to create inline subroutines. 90

Item 26. Use List::Util and List::MoreUtils for easy list manipulation. 92

Item 27. Use autodie to simplify error handling. 96

Chapter 3: Regular Expressions 99

Item 28. Know the precedence of regular expression operators. 99

Item 29. Use regular expression captures. 103

Item 30. Use more precise whitespace character classes. 110

Item 31. Use named captures to label matches. 114

Item 32. Use noncapturing parentheses when you need only grouping. 116

Item 33. Watch out for the match variables. 117

Item 34. Avoid greed when parsimony is best. 119

Item 35. Use zero-width assertions to match positions in a string. 121

Item 36. Avoid using regular expressions for simple string operations. 125

Item 37. Make regular expressions readable. 129

Item 38. Avoid unnecessary backtracking. 132

Item 39. Compile regexes only once. 137

Item 40. Pre-compile regular expressions. 138

Item 41. Benchmark your regular expressions. 139

Item 42. Don’t reinvent

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