"Learn all you need to know about Perl from this definitive, hands-on reference. Perl expert Martin Brown will walk you through everything--from the basics of writing your first script and understanding Perl’s syntax to the complexities of processing data, communicating with external databases, and communicating over the Web. Along the way, you’ll learn how to network, design user interfaces, and write scripts that work under UNIX, Windows, and MacOS. Also covers how to interface to an external C library and embed the Perl interpreter into your C programs. For building, developing, and fine-tuning robust Perl applications, you’ll want this thorough guide! *Master Perl basics--understand the building blocks of expressions, statements and declarations *Learn to create your code with subroutines, packages and modules *Communicate with external files, databases and other machines over your network *Convert your subroutines and modules into methods and objects *Organize your data with Perl’s complex structures and interfaces *Create cross-platform compatible user interface solutions *Work with XML, HTML, and generate Web scripts to solve your problems *Maximize your scripts performance and debug your code before it’s released"