1.4 For Further Information

1.4 For Further Information

We've collected what we consider to be the best online and offline resources for Perl in the following sections. If you run into problems or just want to expand your horizons, do check out the books, web sites, and mailing lists summarized here.

1.4.1 Further Information on Perl

Appendix A summarizes the essential elements of Perl's syntax, up to and including its object orientation. It also provides a full guide to the use of the very helpful perldoc command, which is the best way to access online manual page information on Perl once it has been installed.

1.4.1.1 Perl web sites

The following web sites provide good springboards into the world of Perl:

http://www.perl.com: Contains everything you ever wanted to know about Perl.
http://www.perl.org: Another central resource for Perl users.
http://learn.perl.org: Site dedicated to people fresh to Perl.
http://history.perl.org
http://www.wall.org: Information on the history of Perl.

1.4.1.2 Perl mailing lists

One of the wonderful benefits of open source tools like Perl is the large number of people out there willing to help you. There are literally hundreds of Perl mailing lists to choose from. Fortunately, there is one site for keeping tabs on all of them:

http://lists.perl.org: An excellent central resource for tracking down virtually every kind of Perl mailing list you could possibly think of.
[email protected]: Send a blank email here to get attached to the Perl beginners' mailing list.
[email protected]: Once registered, you can post your questions here.
[email protected]: When you're ready to move on to other lists, you can unsubscribe by sending another blank email to the preceding address.
http://archive.develooper.com: Before posting any questions, you may want to check the Perl archive first.

1.4.1.3 Perl books

There are enough books on Perl to fill the capacious saddles of several very large camels. Here we'll list just a few of our favorite general texts.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3 (the Llama book): Learning Perl, by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen, 3rd ed. (O'Reilly & Associates, 2001)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin (the Gecko book): Learning Perl on Win32 Systems, by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen (O'Reilly & Associates, 1997)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3 (the Camel book): Programming Perl, by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant, 3rd ed. (O'Reilly & Associates, 2000)
http://www.roth.net/books/extensions2: Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, by Dave Roth, 2nd ed. (New Riders Publishing, 2001)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut: Perl in a Nutshell, by Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan (O'Reilly & Associates, 1998)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/advperl (the Panther book): Advanced Perl Programming, by Sriram Srinivasan (O'Reilly & Associates, 1997)
http://www.effectiveperl.com (the Shiny Ball book): Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl, by Joseph N. Hall (Addison-Wesley, 1998)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex (the Owls book): Mastering Regular Expressions: Powerful Techniques for Perl and Other Tools, by Jeffrey Friedl (O'Reilly & Associates, 1997)
http://www.manning.com/Conway/index.html (the Renaissance book): Object Oriented Perl, by Damian Conway (Manning, 1999)

1.4.2 Further Information on Perl DBI

If you want to learn more about Perl DBI, first check out Appendix B. It's likely you'll need more detailed information, however, if you're planning to do anything complex. Here are some recommended resources.

1.4.2.1 Perl DBI web sites

The following sites are the best places to go for more information:

http://dbi.perl.org: Central home page for the Perl DBI project and the best place to start
http://dbi.perl.org/doc/faq.html: Central FAQ for Perl DBI

1.4.2.2 Perl DBI mailing lists

The DBI Users mailing list is the information backbone for the entire DBI community, and you'll find a great deal of help available there. However, it's generally considered good form if you at least search the DBI FAQ located at http://dbi.perl.org/doc/faq.html, and possibly the following mail archives, before posting any new questions:

http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=dbi-users: The folks at perl.org maintain the DBI Users mailing list, and you can register yourself with them at this web address.
[email protected]: To subscribe to the mailing list, send an empty email here.
[email protected]: Once you've been successfully registered by perl.org, you can post your Perl DBI questions and comments via this email link.
[email protected]: To unsubscribe from the mailing list, post an empty email here.
http://archive.develooper.com/[email protected]: The main archive attached to the central DBI Users mailing list, organized by date and threaded topic.
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/dbi: Another searchable archive for the DBI mailing list. Again, you may want to search through this archive before posting any new mailing list questions.

1.4.2.3 Perl DBI books

Two O'Reilly books complement the one you're reading right now. The first contains much more detail on the Perl DBI API; the second also describes Perl DBI, as well as many other open source technologies (including Tcl and Python) and their parallel use of OCI:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldbi: Programming the Perl DBI: Database Programming with Perl, by Alligator Descartes and Tim Bunce (O'Reilly & Associates, 2000).
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oracleopen: Oracle & Open Source: Tools and Applications, by Andy Duncan and Sean Hull (O'Reilly & Associates, 2001).