Zone 2

If you ask Perl programmers today what book they relied on most when they were learning Perl, you'll find that an overwhelming majority will name Learning Perl--also known affectionately as "the Llama." The first edition of Learning Perl appeared in 1993 and has been a bestseller ever since. Written by two of the most prominent and active members of the Perl community, this book is the quintessential tutorial for the Perl programming language.

Perl began as a tool for Unix system administrators, used for countless small tasks throughout the workday. It has since blossomed into a full-featured programming language on practically every computing platform, and is used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and (of course) system administration--all this while still remaining the perfect tool for the small daily tasks it was designed for. Perl is quick, fun, and eminently useful. Many people start using Perl because they need it, but they continue to use Perl because they love it.

The third edition of Learning Perl has not only been updated for Perl 5.6, but has also been rewritten from the ground up to reflect the needs of programmers learning Perl today. Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the book to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers trying to get started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the book is famous.

This edition of the Llama includes an expanded and more gently-paced introduction to regular expressions, new exercises and solutions designed so readers can practice what they've learned while it's still fresh in their minds, and an overall reworking to bring Learning Perl into the new millennium.

Perl is a language for getting your job done. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer.

If you’re thinking about migrating to the PostgreSQL open source database system, this guide provides a concise overview to help you quickly understand and use PostgreSQL’s unique features. Not only will you learn about the enterprise class features in the 9.2 release, you’ll also discover that PostgeSQL is more than just a database system—it’s also an impressive application platform.

With numerous examples throughout this book, you’ll learn how to achieve tasks that are difficult or impossible in other databases. If you’re an existing PostgreSQL user, you’ll pick up gems you may have missed along the way.

• Learn basic administration tasks, such as role management, database creation, backup, and restore
• Apply the psql command-line utility and the pgAdmin graphical administration tool
• Explore PostgreSQL tables, constraints, and indexes
• Learn powerful SQL constructs not generally found in other databases
• Use several different languages to write database functions
• Tune your queries to run as fast as your hardware will allow
• Query external and variegated data sources with Foreign Data Wrappers
• Learn how to replicate data, using built-in replication features