Perl and O’Reilly go together like peanut butter and jelly. Perl’s creator, Larry Wall, even works there, guiding the future of the language. Then, of course, there’s O’Reilly’s “camel book,” Programming Perl, one of the world’s few truly legendary computer books. So if you’re looking for an authoritative Perl language reference, you’d expect O’Reilly to offer a great one. And they do.
Perl in a Nutshell, Second Edition combines a complete overview of working with Perl and a thorough reference. If you’ve fooled with Perl (or even another scripting language) even a little, the book’s introductory tutorials will be all you’ll need to move forward. If you’re an experienced Perlmonger, they’re a perfect refresher.

It’s all here, from installation through debugging and Win32 support. The heart of the book: coverage of Perl modules that extend the language in virtually every imaginable direction. Perl in a Nutshell, Second Edition covers virtually all the most widely used modules in the most popular areas of Perl development: CGI.pm, mod_perl for Apache, DBI for connecting with your friendly neighborhood database; new tools for XML and SOAP processing; network, web, and email programming modules; and more. It’s an immense, well-organized resource for every Perl developer.