The final chapters detail how inline extensions let Perl programs run snippets of other executable code, and how you can play with with the stuff you've learned. In using inline extensions, it helps to have that other programming language under your belt—Cozens uses C, Python, Ruby and CPR. The toy-filled final chapter has poetry playthings and even golf. My favorite, though, is "bleach," a module that does nothing much—but so cleverly, it's fun to trace its activity through the code!
Advanced Perl Programming is Safari-enabled, which means its contents are searchable online, if you have a subscription. But if you're an intermediate Perl user, wanting to move up a notch, what you really want is a copy of this manual at your desk, and hours to spend working through the examples. It's definitely worth the time.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
If I need introspection, I'll stick with one of the .NET languages like C# - they make it so easy
Otherwise, Perl is very powerful for many tasks
2 - DrPat
Actually, "introspection" is used as a technique to create more-advanced Perl code. Qua introspection, it might make more sense to use another language, but that doesn't advance your use of Perl, does it?
3 - bliffle
I did a bunch of perl programming around 2000 and thought it greatly inferior to Java. Also, the readability of other peoples code was horrible. But the parsing expressions were useful and concise, and I see that Ubuntu commandline uses them. Perl, like C and Python and Tcl and dozens of other languages, was designed to solve about 6 programming problems out of at least 1000, and thus is lame. in 50 years of programming I've only seen a couple that are comprehensive, like PL/I and Java.
4 - Bill
bride-obscurity