Perl Hacks
Tricks and Secrets of Perl: Clever, Cute, and Horrifying "Perl Hacks"
The identity of those who first called Perl "the duct tape of the Internet" or a "Swiss Army chainsaw" is lost in the mists of antiquity (well, more than five years, which is the same thing in the fast-moving world of technology), but no one can argue with the importance of the language. Since its original release in 1987, it's moved from quick-and-dirty extraction and reporting to web programming, data munging, GUI building, automation gluing, and full-blown application development. System administrators who once swore by shell scripts now break out Perl, tool programmers live on CPAN downloading modules to build on the work of others, and web administrators would never contemplate a server without a Perl install.
Like duct tape and multi-tools, Perl can do just about anything you can imagine and really want to do. If you just want to get your job done quickly, you can write the simplest, easiest Perl you know and then move on to other things. If you want to build big applications, you can do that--with some experience and a little discipline. If you want to solve your problem and don't mind a little help, the CPAN is there to lend a hand. Larry Wall has said that Perl's motto is "there's more than one way to do it" but with that richness comes the question "how do I do it?"
Each hack is a short lesson. Some are practical exercises that teach you essential skills, while others 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.
