This book covers complex techniques for managing production-ready Perl programs and explains methods for manipulating data and objects that may have looked like magic before. It gives you necessary background for dealing with networks, databases, and GUIs, and includes a discussion of internals to help you program more efficiently, and imbed Perl within C when necessary.

Sriram Srinivasan
Sriram Srinivasan ("Ram") is an expert on distributed object technologies, and develops Java middleware at WebLogic, San Francisco, for fun and profit. He actively pursues his interests in programming languages, databases, transaction processing, networking, and meaningful user interfaces. Sriram has been an enthusiastic user and teacher of Perl for the last six years, and currently teaches a course on advanced Perl programming for the extension program at the University of California at Berkeley. In his spare time, he dabbles in Indian classical music, charcoal drawing, cooking, and biking, and dreams of the day when he can say, "In his spare time, he dabbles in programming languages, ...".

Preface

xi

1. Data References and Anonymous Storage

1

(22)

Referring to Existing Variables

3

(5)

Using References

8

(5)

Nested Data Structures

13

(2)

Querying a Reference

15

(1)

Symbolic References

16

(1)

A View of the Internals

17

(4)

References in Other Languages

21

(1)

Resources

22

(1)

2. Implementing Complex Data Structures

23

(15)

User-Defined Structures

24

(1)

Example: Matrices

25

(3)

Professors, Students, Courses

28

(4)

Pass the Envelope

32

(2)

Pretty-Printing

34

(3)

Resources

37

(1)

3. Typeglobs and Symbol Tables

38

(13)

Perl Variables, Symbol Table, and Scoping

39

(3)

Typeglobs

42

(5)

Typeglobs and References

47

(1)

Filehandles, Directory Handles, and Formats

48

(3)

4. Subroutine References and Closures

51

(15)

Subroutine References

51

(2)

Using Subroutine References

53

(3)

Closures

56

(3)

Using Closures

59

(5)

Comparisons to Other Languages

64

(1)

Resources

65

(1)

5. Eval

66

(18)

The String Form: Expression Evaluation

67

(3)

The Block Form: Exception Handling

69

(3)

Watch Your Quotes

72

(1)

Using Eval for Expression Evaluation

72

(2)

Using Eval for Efficiency

74

(6)

Using Eval for Time-Outs

80

(1)

Eval in Other Languages

81

(2)

Resources

83

(1)

6. Modules

84

(15)

Basic Package

85

(2)

Packages and Files

87

(1)

Package Initialization and Destruction

88

(1)

Privacy

89

(2)

Importing Symbols

91

(2)

Nesting Packages

93

(1)

Autoloading

94

(1)

Accessing the Symbol Table

95

(2)

Language Comparisons

97

(2)

7. Object-Oriented Programming

99

(24)

OO: An Introduction

99

(2)

Objects in Perl

101

(13)

UNIVERSAL

114

(2)

Recap of Conventions

116

(4)

Comparison with Other OO Languages

120

(1)

Resources

121

(2)

8. Object Orientation: The Next Few Steps

123

(15)

Efficient Attribute Storage

123

(11)

Delegation

134

(1)

On Inheritance

135

(2)

Resources

137

(1)

9. Tie

138

(15)

Tying Scalars

139

(3)

Tying Arrays

142

(2)

Tying Hashes

144

(2)

Tying Filehandles

146

(1)

Example: Monitoring Variables

146

(5)

Comparisons with Other Languages

151

(2)

10. Persistence

153

(15)

Persistence Issues

154

(2)

Streamed Data

156

(3)

Record-Oriented Approach

159

(2)

Relational Databases

161

(6)

Resources

167

(1)

11. Implementing Object Persistence

168

(21)

Adaptor: An Introduction

170

(3)

Design Notes

173

(6)

Implementation

179

(8)

Resources

187

(2)

12. Networking with Sockets

189

(14)

Networking Primer

189

(2)

Socket API and IO::Socket

191

(2)

Handling Multiple Clients

193

(6)

Real-World Servers

199

(1)

IO Objects and Filehandles

200

(1)

Prebuilt Client Modules

201

(1)

Resources

202

(1)

13. Networking: Implementing RPC

203

(19)

Msg: Messaging Toolkit

203

(12)

Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)

215

(6)

Resources

221

(1)

14. User Interfaces with TK

222

(30)

Introduction to GUIs, Tk, and Perl/Tk

222

(2)

Starting with Perl/Tk

224

(2)

Widget Tour

226

(18)

Geometry Management

244

(3)

Timers

247

(1)

Event Bindings

248

(2)

Event Loops

250

(1)

Resources

251

(1)

15. GUI Example: Tetris

252

(9)

Introduction to Tetris

252

(1)

Design

253

(2)

Implementation

255

(6)

16. GUI Example: Man Page Viewer

261

(9)

man and perlman

261

(2)

Implementation

263

(6)

Resources

269

(1)

17. Template-Driven Code Generation

270

(10)

On Code Generation

270

(3)

Jeeves Example

273

(5)

Jeeves Overview

278

(2)

Jeeves Implementation

280

(7)

Sample Specification Parser

287

(2)

Resources

289

(1)

18. Extending Perl: A First Course

290

(19)

Writing an Extension: Overview

291

(3)

Example: Fractals with Perl

294

(3)

SWIG Features

297

(4)

XS Features

301

(3)

Degrees of Freedom

304

(1)

A Detour into Fractals

305

(3)

Resources

308

(1)

19. Embedding Perl: The Easy Way

309

(10)

Why Embed?

309

(2)

Embedding Overview

311

(2)

Examples

313

(3)

Adding Extensions

316

(1)

Resources

317

(2)

20. Perl Internals

319

(54)

Reading the Source

320

(1)

Architecture

321

(7)

Perl Value Types

328

(23)

Stacks and Messaging Protocol

351

(6)

Meaty Extensions

357

(10)

Easy Embedding API

367

(2)

A Peek into the Future

369

(1)

Resources

370

(3)

A. Tk Widget Reference

373

(13)

B. Syntax Summary

386

(7)

Index

393

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