This book has 10 parts, as follows:
- Part I
Chapter 1 gets you oriented to Perl and the Perl community.
Chapter 2 gives you some pointers on installing Perl and its modules on your machine. This chapter introduces you to the CPAN archive and discusses using the CPAN module to retrieve the latest versions of Perl modules.
- Part II
Chapter 3 is about using the perl program itself. It covers environment variables, command-line options, and the differences in executing the Unix and Win32 versions of Perl.
Chapter 4 is the turbo-charged tutorial/reference to the Perl language. If you’ve never programmed before, then you might need a tutorial that goes more slowly. But if you have some experience with other programming languages, this chapter should teach you enough to start writing Perl programs.
Chapter 5 is a reference chapter for each of the built-in functions of Perl.
Chapter 6 is about using the Perl debugger to help locate the rare errors in your programs.
- Part III
Chapter 7 gives a quick introduction to Perl packages, Perl modules, and object-oriented programming in Perl.
Chapter 8 is a reference to each of the modules included in the standard Perl distribution.
- Part IV
Chapter 9 is a brief introduction to the concepts behind CGI programming.
Chapter 10 covers the very popular CGI.pm module, which is deemed essential by many CGI programmers.
Chapter 11 is about mod_perl, the Apache module that can be used to significantly improve CGI performance and allows you to embed Perl code into the Apache server itself.
- Part V
Chapter 12 gives a brief introduction to DBM databases in Perl and provides a reference to DBI, the Database Independence package that gives you a consistent interface to many different database packages.
- Part VI
Chapter 13 covers the modules for XML processing with Perl.
Chapter 14 gives an introduction to SOAP and web services in general, and to the SOAP::Lite module for SOAP programming with Perl.
- Part VII
Chapter 15 explains socket programming and how to use the IO:Socket module.
Chapter 16 covers the Net::SMTP and Net::POP3 modules for sending and reading email, and the Mail modules for manipulating email messages.
Chapter 17 explains the NNTP protocol and the Net::NNTP module for reading and posting Usenet news, and the News::Newsrc module for managing .newsrc files.
Chapter 18 explains the FTP protocol, the Net::FTP module for transferring files by FTP, and the Net::Netrc module for managing .netrc files.
Chapter 19 covers the Net::LDAP module for using LDAP directory services within Perl applications.
- Part VIII
Chapter 20 covers the most commonly used parts of the huge LWP library of modules for HTTP transactions.
- Part IX
Chapter 21 is a reference to the Tk extension to Perl, which creates graphical user interfaces from within a Perl program.
- Part X
Chapter 22 talks about the many Perl modules for working with the Win32 operating systems.
Chapter 23 covers the Win32::OLE modules for OLE automation.
Chapter 24 covers the Win32::ODBC module.