All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

"Embedding and Extending Perl" Available for Pre-Order

KM on 2002-05-22T12:45:48

Simon writes "You can now pre-order Tim Jenness' and my long-awaited new book, Embedding and Extending Perl from Amazon. This will be the definitive book on XS, embedding Perl and the Perl internals - it also contains a C tutorial for Perl programmers, details of SWIG, Inline and other extending methods, and an extensive reference to the Perl API." Yay! I know I have been looking forward to this.

More details?

barryp on 2002-05-22T12:54:42

Both the Amazon and Manning sites provide very little details on this book. In fact, I couldn't find any mention of it on the Manning website. Where can we see a Table of Contents? Thanks.

Re:More details?

Simon on 2002-05-22T13:59:00

Manning are working on a web site for the book right now. Meanwhile, Slash won't let me post a full table of contents, but here's a list of chapters:
  • Chapter 1. C for Perl Programmers
  • Chapter 2. Introduction to XS
  • Chapter 3. Advanced C
  • Chapter 4. Perl's Variable Types
  • Chapter 5. The Perl 5 API
  • Chapter 6. Advanced XS Programming
  • Chapter 7. Alternatives to XS
  • Chapter 8. Embedding Perl in C
  • Chapter 9. Embedding Case Study
  • Chapter 10. Introduction to Perl Internals
  • Chapter 11. Hacking Perl

Re:More details?

hanamaki on 2002-05-22T14:35:50

Probably the book I really need! If my lazzines continues I may even need it in September 2002 when the book comes out:-)

Well, Chapter 7.5 could be the stuff I really need, but do you cover my headache maker
"Arrays of structs"? Please, say yes.

Re:More details?

barryp on 2002-05-22T18:55:11

Thanks, Simon. Based on the full TOC on your site, this looks like a must-have. But, will the arrival of Perl 6 not break your book, or will the Perl API in Perl 6 mimic that in Perl 5?

Re:More details?

Simon on 2002-05-22T21:09:36

will the arrival of Perl 6 not break your book

You'd think I'd have thought of that before writing it, eh? OK, here it is: Perl 6 isn't even on the horizon yet. I'm betting it'll be at least two years (Yes, Perl 6 is nearly two years old already, and the beta was due last year. Work it out.) before we see a 6.0.0.

Even then, I reckon another another year or so before it gets reasonably well used. Remember the fun we had trying to persuade people to move to Perl 5 from Perl 4? That one was backwards compatible. This one isn't.

So that gives the book a shelf-life of at least three years, which is good going for a tech book. :) And then at the end of those three years, there will still be many, many millions of lines of Perl 5 code out there. CPAN is not going to go away, and people will still be supporting legacy Perl 5 code. You'll notice that COBOL books still sell.

So I'm happy that this book will continue to do good service for at least another five years. During which time, of course, we can work on the second edition... if there is one. :)

Re:More details?

barryp on 2002-05-23T08:38:38

At last! An honest-to-God opinion of when we can expect to see Perl 6 'in the flesh'. Thanks for the reply. Good luck with the book, I look forward to reading it.

Re:More details?

samtregar on 2002-05-23T17:16:00

Well put. The next time a publisher sends me a put-off using Perl 6 as an excuse I'll be sure to send them this link.

-sam

C tutorial for Perl programmers

jdavidb on 2002-05-22T15:51:37

I remember a time when I knew C well enough I wouldn't have needed this. Now I can't program any language besides Perl unless I have a reference book at my side. :)