In the days before personal computers, BASIC was the easyprogramming language to learn, and serious programmers learnedFORTRAN or COBOL to do ?real work.? Today, many peoplehave discovered that Perl is both a great beginning programminglanguage and one that enables them to write powerful programswith little effort. If you?re interested in discovering how to program (or howothers program), Perl For Dummies, 4th Edition, is for you.If you already know something about programming (but not aboutPerl), this book is also for you. If you?re already an expertprogrammer, you?re still welcome to read this book; you canjust skip the basic stuff (you never know what kind of new tips andtricks you?ll pick up). This reference guide shows you how to use Perl under manydifferent operating systems, such as UNIX, many flavors of Windows(Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me, and WindowsXP), and Macintosh OS 9 and OS X; in fact, Perl runs on many moreoperating systems than these. Here's a sampling of what Perl For Dummies, 4th Edition,has to offer: Installing Perl on various platforms Nailing down the basics of building Perl programs Working with text and numbers Constructing lists and working with them Creating conditionals and loops Delving into more advanced features such as operators andfunctions Reading and writing files and directories Using subroutines for modularity Demystifying Web server programs Creating your own Internet clients The Perl programming language enables you to write fully workingcomputer programs with just a few steps. It?s particularlygood at common programming tasks, such as reading and writing textfiles, but it also excels at reducing the work that programmershave to do. Perl For Dummies, 4th Edition, shows you how todo all of that and how to modify programs to your heart?scontent. After all, one of the common phrases in the world of Perlprogrammers is, ?There's more than one way to doit.?