Free Software Magazine, April 20, 2006
Back Cover copy
You can do a lot of strange and wonderful things with the Perl language—if you know how. Many Perl programmers have been frustrated at one time or another because the system was missing some simple and obvious utility. Wicked Cool Perl Scripts is your guide to writing those utilities quickly and easily.
This book contains a wide variety of scripts including ones that make use of really cool Perl features (see script #1 Automatic Help Option) and Internet data mining (try script #18 Getting Stock Quotes or script #19 Comics Download).
It also contains games (like Teaching a Toddler, script #35), programs to make system administration easier (such as Mass File Renaming, script #21), and even a program to help someone hiking the Grand Canyon (script #42 Location Finder).
Even the most experienced programmer can benefit from script #46 the Regular Expression Grapher which shows you how a complex expression like /^.*(a|b|c).+$/ can be made into a simple, easily understood graph.
If you’re a Perl programmer who wants to learn the ins and outs as well as the hidden corners of the language, Wicked Cool Perl Scripts will show you simple and elegant hacks as well as some extreme examples of power programming. With Wicked Cool Perl Scripts in hand, you’ll be doing things you never even thought possible in Perl. You’ll be using the language to do real work, of course, but you’ll also be producing wickedly cool programs.
