Perl Hacks: Tips and Tools for Programming, Debugging, and Surviving at Dominant Systems Book Store

With more than a million dedicated programmers, Perl has proven to be the best computing language for the latest trends in computing and business. While other languages have stagnated, Perl remains fresh, thanks to its community-based development model, which encourages the sharing of information among users. This tradition of knowledge-sharing allows developers to find answers to almost any Perl question they can dream up.

And you can find many of those answers right here in Perl Hacks. Like all books in O'Reilly's Hacks Series, Perl Hacks appeals to a variety of programmers, whether you're an experienced developer or a dabbler who simply enjoys exploring technology. Each hack is a short lesson--some are practical exercises that teach you essential skills, while others merely illustrate some of the fun things that Perl can do. Most hacks have two parts: a direct answer to the immediate problem you need to solve right now and a deeper, subtler technique that you can adapt to other situations. Learn how to add CPAN shortcuts to the Firefox web browser, read files backwards, write graphical games in Perl, and much more.

For your convenience, Perl Hacks is divided by topic--not according to any sense of relative difficulty--so you can skip around and stop at any hack you like. Chapters include:

Productivity Hacks
User Interaction
Data Munging
Working with Modules
Object Hacks
Debugging

Whether you're a newcomer or an expert, you'll find great value in Perl Hacks, the only Perl guide that offers something useful and fun for everyone.

Customer Reviews & Comments
This book is for experienced working Perl programmers - most likely system administrators but not necessarily - that need working solutions to real problems you'll most likely find in the workplace. There are a few diversions into such "cute" ideas as building animations in Perl, but most of these hacks are for the working programmer who is looking for ways to automate processes, build interfaces that don't get in the way of developers, and thoroughly test and simulate code. Amazon does not show the table of contents so I review this book in the context of the table of contents. Chapter 1, Productivity Hacks The hacks in this chapter are about relentless automation - saving time and effort. They allow you to find the information you want, automate repeated tasks, and find ways not to have to think about things that you do all the time. Chapter 2, User Interaction Menus, graphics, beeps, and command lines: these are all ways your programs grab user attention. This chapter is about keeping your users happy and even making your interfaces "pretty" with Perl. People may not notice when your code stays out of their way, but you know by their grimaces when it becomes an obstacle. My favorite hack in this chapter was Hack #16 "Interactive Graphical Apps". This uses sdlperl, which is a binding of the C low-level graphical library SDL for the Perl language. The hack is a short example program animating a colored rectangle and its fading tail. It first creates the needed series of surfaces, with a fading color and transparency, then animates sprites along a periodic path. It is a good example of using a GUI in PERL. Chapter 3, Data Munging Perl exists to extract, reformat, and report data. This chapter is about novel ways to connect to data and databases that are not "kludgy". For example, Hack #21 is "Use Any Spreadsheet As a Data Source". In it you use the Spreadsheet::Read module to give you a single interface to the data of most spreadsheet formats available, hiding all the troublesome work that deals with the parsers and portability, yet being flexible enough to get to the guts of the spreadsheet. In Hack #20, "Read Files Backwards" suppose you have a server process that continually writes its status to a file. You only care about its current status, not its historical data. If its status is up, everyone is happy. If its status is down, you need to panic and notify everyone, thus you need to read the log file backwards and this hack shows you how. Chapter 4, Working with Modules Perl 5's greatest invention is the concept of the module - a unit of reusable code. If you're doing any serious work with Perl, you'll spend a lot of time working with modules: installing them, upgrading them, loading them, working around weird and unhelpful features, and even distributing them. It makes a lot of sense to understand how Perl and modules interact and how to work with them effectively. Chapter 5, Object Hacks Abstraction, encapsulation, and genericity are the keys to designing large, maintainable systems. Some people claim that Perl doesn't really do OO, but they're wrong and these hacks demonstrate that by building some powerful abstractions. Chapter 6, Debugging Someday you'll have to dig through a pile of Perl left by an obnoxious coworker. This chapter prepares you for the worst with a toolkit full of tips and techniques to disarm the weirdest code you can imagine. Chapter 7, Developer Tricks Maintaining a program is different from maintaining an entire system. This is doubly true if you work with other people. If anything, discipline and consistency are more important than ever. This chapter is all about testing code, working with benchmarks, and even simulating hostile environments. Chapter 8, Know Thy Code If you really want to take advantage of the deeper mysteries of Perl, you have to be able to look deeply into the language, the libraries, and the interpreter itself--as well as your own code--and understand what's happening. Chapter 9, Expand Your Perl Foo This chapter explores a few of the odder ideas in the world of Perl. Then you'll be ready to discover your own. The explicit list of hacks is as follows: Chapter 1. Productivity Hacks Hack 1. Add CPAN Shortcuts to Firefox Hack 2. Put Perldoc to Work Hack 3. Browse Perl Docs Online Hack 4. Make the Most of Shell Aliases Hack 5. Autocomplete Perl Identifiers in Vim Hack 6. Use the Best Emacs Mode for Perl Hack 7. Enforce Local Style Hack 8. Don't Save Bad Perl Hack 9. Automate Checkin Code Reviews Hack 10. Run Tests from Within Vim Hack 11. Run Perl from Emacs Chapter 2. User Interaction Hack 12. Use $EDITOR As Your UI Hack 13. Interact Correctly on the Command Line Hack 14. Simplify Your Terminal Interactions Hack 15. Alert Your Mac Hack 16. Interactive Graphical Apps Hack 17. Collect Configuration Information Hack 18. Rewrite the Web Chapter 3. Data Munging Hack 19. Treat a File As an Array Hack 20. Read Files Backwards Hack 21. Use Any Spreadsheet As a Data Source Hack 22. Factor Out Database Code Hack 23. Build a SQL Library Hack 24. Query Databases Dynamically Without SQL Hack 25. Bind Database Columns Hack 26. Iterate and Generate Expensive Data Hack 27. Pull Multiple Values from an Iterator Chapter 4. Working with Modules Hack 28. Shorten Long Class Names Hack 29. Manage Module Paths Hack 30. Reload Modified Modules Hack 31. Create Personal Module Bundles Hack 32. Manage Module Installations Hack 33. Presolve Module Paths Hack 34. Create a Standard Module Toolkit Hack 35. Write Demos from Tutorials Hack 36. Replace Bad Code from the Outside Hack 37. Drink to the CPAN Hack 38. Improve Exceptional Conditions Hack 39. Search CPAN Modules Locally Hack 40. Package Standalone Perl Applications Hack 41. Create Your Own Lexical Warnings Hack 42. Find and Report Module Bugs Chapter 5. Object Hacks Hack 43. Turn Your Objects Inside Out Hack 44. Serialize Objects (Mostly) for Free Hack 45. Add Information with Attributes Hack 46. Make Methods Really Private Hack 47. Autodeclare Method Arguments Hack 48. Control Access to Remote Objects Hack 49. Make Your Objects Truly Polymorphic Hack 50. Autogenerate Your Accessors Chapter 6. Debugging Hack 51. Find Compilation Errors Fast Hack 52. Make Invisible Characters Apparent Hack 53. Debug with Test Cases Hack 54. Debug with Comments Hack 55. Show Source Code on Errors Hack 56. Deparse Anonymous Functions Hack 57. Name Your Anonymous Subroutines Hack 58. Find a Subroutine's Source Hack 59. Customize the Debugger Chapter 7. Developer Tricks Hack 60. Rebuild Your Distributions Hack 61. Test with Specifications Hack 62. Segregate Developer and User Tests Hack 63. Run Tests Automatically Hack 64. See Test Failure Diagnostics -- in Color! Hack 65. Test Live Code Hack 66. Cheat on Benchmarks Hack 67. Build Your Own Perl Hack 68. Run Test Suites Persistently Hack 69. Simulate Hostile Environments in Your Tests Chapter 8. Know Thy Code Hack 70. Understand What Happens When Hack 71. Inspect Your Data Structures Hack 72. Find Functions Safely Hack 73. Know What's Core and When Hack 74. Trace All Used Modules Hack 75. Find All Symbols in a Package Hack 76. Peek Inside Closures Hack 77. Find All Global Variables Hack 78. Introspect Your Subroutines Hack 79. Find Imported Functions Hack 80. Profile Your Program Size Hack 81. Reuse Perl Processes Hack 82. Trace Your Ops Hack 83. Write Your Own Warnings Chapter 9. Expand Your Perl Foo Hack 84. Double Your Data with Dualvars Hack 85. Replace Soft References with Real Ones Hack 86. Optimize Away the Annoying Stuff Hack 87. Lock Down Your Hashes Hack 88. Clean Up at the End of a Scope Hack 89. Invoke Functions in Odd Ways Hack 90. Glob Those Sequences Hack 91. Write Less Error-Checking Code Hack 92. Return Smarter Values Hack 93. Return Active Values Hack 94. Add Your Own Perl Syntax Hack 95. Modify Semantics with a Source Filter Hack 96. Use Shared Libraries Without XS Hack 97. Run Two Services on a Single TCP Port Hack 98. Improve Your Dispatch Tables Hack 99. Track Your Approximations Hack 100. Overload Your Operators Hack 101. Learn from Obfuscations

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