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Tech Reviewers for Learning Perl 5th Edition

brian_d_foy on 2008-02-10T00:00:16

Last week I finished updating Learning Perl for Perl 5.10, and it's time for it's technical review before I turn in the book to the publisher at the end of the month. Anyone with 5.10 experience interested? Email me and I work out the details with you.

I'll have more to say about the newest edition later, but it's not a minor update. There's a completely new chapter on smart matching, and lots of additions to the regex stuff. Perl 5.10 adds some nice features for newbies.

Here are some of the things that we've added:

  • say
  • Named captures in regexes
  • Relative back references in regexes
  • state variables
  • stacked file test operators
  • defined-or
  • smart matching
  • given-when and for-when


I expect the book might just squeak in by YAPC::NA, but it should definitely be at OSCON.

Wow

sigzero on 2008-02-10T02:21:52

I was just wondering this morning if the series would be getting a refresher. It is only the Llama or the others as well (eventually)?

Re:Wow

brian_d_foy on 2008-02-10T05:35:03

Next month I'll look at the Alpaca to see what would change. I don't think there are many things that would change there except for converting any Makemaker stuff to Module::Build (but that's about a third of the book).

I think Vicunas is pretty safe for now, although I've been slowly taking notes for a possible second edition. We'll have to see if continued sales justify that though.

Everything else is waiting for its Perl 6 version, I think. :)