Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language.
Created by Larry Wall, Perl looks like C but subsumes a lot of features originally found in utilities such as sed, awk, and tr.
Although it doesn't allow you to get as close to the system as C, perl is an excellent choice to quickly develop complex CGI programs.
Perl's strength is precisely what most CGI programs need -- powerful and flexible text manipulation facilities.
Programming Perl (2nd Edition) - The Camel Book - Perl may be best-known for its almost cultlike following among Unix gurus and authors of Web-server scripts; nonetheless, the language is suitable for utilitarian programming tasks of all kinds and on all platforms. Programming Perl provides an authoritative yet thoroughly lighthearted introduction to Perl, offering a fast-paced overview of the language and its powerful features. The book covers everything from basic control statements to regular expressions to using objects and interfacing with other languages. A Perl function reference and an extensive glossary are included, as is a valuable list of common mistakes that inexperienced programmers are likely to encounter.
Learning Perl (2nd Edition) - The Llama Book - This second edition of Learning Perl, designed for those who seek a rapid working knowledge of Perl and sporting a new foreword by Perl author Larry Wall, fully covers the world of Perl, version 5. In this new edition, program examples and exercise answers have been radically updated to reflect typical usage under Perl 5, and numerous details have been added or modified. In addition, you'll find new sections introducing Perl references and CGI programming. Perl is a high-level, multipurpose language. It is used in diverse system administration tasks, while also playing an endless variety of roles in other areas. These range from data reduction and report generation to distributed computing and assorted auxiliary roles in software development. Perl has even encroached upon the territory of C and other programming languages. Learning Perl, written by a leading Perl instructor, provides a systematic, step-by-step, tutorial approach to learning the language. There are numerous short code examples punctuating a relaxed, informal, and precise tour of all the main features of the language. In addition, each chapter contains exercise problems, together with their solutions. Anyone who works through the book will be capable of programming with a broad and productive range of Perl features. For a comprehensive and detailed guide to advanced programming with Perl, read O'Reilly's companion book, Programming Perl.
Perl Cookbook - The Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. Topics range from beginner questions to techniques that even the most experienced Perl programmers can learn from. More than just a collection of tips and tricks, the Perl Cookbook is the long-awaited companion volume to Programming Perl, filled with previously unpublished Perl arcana. The recipes are well documented and the examples aren't too arcane; even beginners will be able to pick up the lessons taught here. The authors write in relatively easy-to-understand language (for a technical guide). Through this book and its arsenal of recipes, you will learn many new things about Perl to help you through your toughest projects.
Advanced Perl Programming (Nutshell Handbook) - TThis 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.
Mastering Regular Expressions: Powerful Techniques for Perl and Other Tools (O'Reilly Nutshell) - Regular expressions are a central element of UNIX utilities like egrep and programming languages such as Perl. But whether you're a UNIX user or not, you can benefit from a better understanding of regular expressions since they work with applications ranging from validating data-entry fields to manipulating information in multimegabyte text files. Mastering Regular Expressions quickly covers the basics of regular-expression syntax, then delves into the mechanics of expression-processing, common pitfalls, performance issues, and implementation-specific differences. Written in an engaging style and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.