Learning Perl. 8th Ed

 Welcome to the Llama book, our affectionate name for our book covering Perl 5.

 This is the eighth edition of a book that millions of readers have enjoyed since we released the first one in 1993. We hope they’ve enjoyed it. It’s a sure thing that we enjoyed writing it. At least, that’s how we remember it after we’ve turned in the book and waited the months it took to see it show up on shelves. And by “shelves,” we mean online.

 This is the second edition of our popular Perl 5 book after the release of Perl 6, a lan‐ guage that started its life as something based on Perl but has now taken on a life of its own with the new name “Raku.” Unfortunately, that bit of history means both lan‐ guages have “Perl” in the name even though they are only lightly related. It’s likely that you want Perl 5 and this book unless you know that you don’t. And from this point, “Perl” means Perl 5, the same Perl that’s been getting work done for a couple of decades.