Chapter 1 An Overview of Perl

1. Getting Started
2. Natural and Artificial Languages
3. An Average Example
4. Filehandles
5. Operators
6. Control Structures
7. Regular Expressions
8. List Processing
9. What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You (Much)

Chapter 2 Bits and Pieces

1. Atoms
2. Molecules
3. Built-in Data Types
4. Variables
5. Names
6. Scalar Values
7. Context
8. List Values and Arrays
9. Hashes
10. Typeglobs and Filehandles
11. Input Operators

Chapter 3 Unary and Binary Operators

1. Terms and List Operators (Leftward)
2. The Arrow Operator
3. Autoincrement and Autodecrement
4. Exponentiation
5. Ideographic Unary Operators
6. Binding Operators
7. Multiplicative Operators
8. Additive Operators
9. Shift Operators
10. Named Unary and File Test Operators
11. Relational Operators
12. Equality Operators
13. Bitwise Operators
14. C-Style Logical (Short-Circuit) Operators
15. Range Operator
16. Conditional Operator
17. Assignment Operators
18. Comma Operators
19. List Operators (Rightward)
20. Logical and, or, not, and xor
21. C Operators Missing from Perl

Chapter 4 Statements and Declarations

1. Simple Statements
2. Compound Statements
3. if and unless Statements
4. Loop Statements
5. Bare Blocks
6. goto
7. Global Declarations
8. Scoped Declarations
9. Pragmas

Chapter 5 Pattern Matching

1. The Regular Expression Bestiary
2. Pattern-Matching Operators
3. Metacharacters and Metasymbols
4. Character Classes
5. Quantifiers
6. Positions
7. Capturing and Clustering
8. Alternation
9. Staying in Control
10. Fancy Patterns

Chapter 6 Subroutines

1. Syntax
2. Semantics
3. Passing References
4. Prototypes
5. Subroutine Attributes

Chapter 7 Formats

1. Format Variables
2. Footers

Chapter 8 References

1. What Is a Reference?
2. Creating References
3. Using Hard References
4. Symbolic References
5. Braces, Brackets, and Quoting

Chapter 9 Data Structures

1. Arrays of Arrays
2. Hashes of Arrays
3. Arrays of Hashes
4. Hashes of Hashes
5. Hashes of Functions
6. More Elaborate Records
7. Saving Data Structures

Chapter 10 Packages

1. Symbol Tables
2. Autoloading

Chapter 11 Modules

1. Using Modules
2. Creating Modules
3. Overriding Built-in Functions

Chapter 12 Objects

1. Brief Refresher on Object-Oriented Lingo
2. Perl's Object System
3. Method Invocation
4. Object Construction
5. Class Inheritance
6. Instance Destructors
7. Managing Instance Data
8. Managing Class Data
9. Summary

Chapter 13 Overloading

1. The overload Pragma
2. Overload Handlers
3. Overloadable Operators
4. The Copy Constructor (=)
5. When an Overload Handler Is Missing (nomethod and fallback)
6. Overloading Constants
7. Public Overload Functions
8. Inheritance and Overloading
9. Run-Time Overloading
10. Overloading Diagnostics

Chapter 14 Tied Variables

1. Tying Scalars
2. Tying Arrays
3. Tying Hashes
4. Tying Filehandles
5. A Subtle Untying Trap
6. Tie Modules on CPAN

Chapter 15 Unicode

1. Building Character
2. Effects of Character Semantics
3. Caveats

Chapter 16 Interprocess Communication

1. Signals
2. Files
3. Pipes
4. System V IPC
5. Sockets

Chapter 17 Threads

1. The Process Model
2. The Thread Model

Chapter 18 Compiling

1. The Life Cycle of a Perl Program
2. Compiling Your Code
3. Executing Your Code
4. Compiler Backends
5. Code Generators
6. Code Development Tools
7. Avant-Garde Compiler, Retro Interpreter

Chapter 19 The Command-Line Interface

1. Command Processing
2. Environment Variables

Chapter 20 The Perl Debugger

1. Using the Debugger
2. Debugger Commands
3. Debugger Customization
4. Unattended Execution
5. Debugger Support
6. The Perl Profiler

Chapter 21 Internals and Externals

1. How Perl Works
2. Internal Data Types
3. Extending Perl (Using C from Perl)
4. Embedding Perl (Using Perl from C)
5. The Moral of the Story

Chapter 22 CPAN

1. The CPAN modules Directory
2. Using CPAN Modules
3. Creating CPAN Modules

Chapter 23 Security

1. Handling Insecure Data
2. Handling Timing Glitches
3. Handling Insecure Code

Chapter 24 Common Practices

1. Common Goofs for Novices
2. Efficiency
3. Programming with Style
4. Fluent Perl
5. Program Generation

Chapter 25 Portable Perl

1. Newlines
2. Endianness and Number Width
3. Files and Filesystems
4. System Interaction
5. Interprocess Communication (IPC)
6. External Subroutines (XS)
7. Standard Modules
8. Dates and Times
9. Internationalization
10. Style

Chapter 26 Plain Old Documentation

1. Pod in a Nutshell
2. Pod Translators and Modules
3. Writing Your Own Pod Tools
4. Pod Pitfalls
5. Documenting Your Perl Programs

Chapter 27 Perl Culture

1. History Made Practical
2. Perl Poetry

Chapter 28 Special Names

1. Special Names Grouped by Type
2. Special Variables in Alphabetical Order

Chapter 29 Functions

1. Perl Functions by Category
2. Perl Functions in Alphabetical Order

Chapter 30 The Standard Perl Library

1. Library Science
2. A Tour of the Perl Library

Chapter 31 Pragmatic Modules

1. use attributes
2. use autouse
3. use base
4. use blib
5. use bytes
6. use charnames
7. use constant
8. use diagnostics
9. use fields
10. use filetest
11. use integer
12. use less
13. use lib
14. use locale
15. use open
16. use overload
17. use re
18. use sigtrap
19. use strict
20. use subs
21. use vars
22. use warnings

Chapter 32 Standard Modules

1. Listings by Type
2. Benchmark
3. Carp
4. CGI
5. CGI::Carp
6. Class::Struct
7. Config
8. CPAN
9. Cwd
10. Data::Dumper
11. DB_File
12. Dumpvalue
13. English
14. Errno
15. Exporter
16. Fatal
17. Fcntl
18. File::Basename
19. File::Compare
20. File::Copy
21. File::Find
22. File::Glob
23. File::Spec
24. File::stat
25. File::Temp
26. FileHandle
27. Getopt::Long
28. Getopt::Std
29. IO::Socket
30. IPC::Open2
31. IPC::Open3
32. Math::BigInt
33. Math::Complex
34. Math::Trig
35. Net::hostent
36. POSIX
37. Safe
38. Socket
39. Symbol
40. Sys::Hostname
41. Sys::Syslog
42. Term::Cap
43. Text::Wrap
44. Time::Local
45. Time::localtime
46. User::grent
47. User::pwent

Chapter 33 Diagnostic Messages