Perl 6 Fundamentals Now Available for Purchase

After about nine months of work, my book Perl 6 Fundamentals is now available for purchase on apress.com and springer.com.

The ebook can be purchased right now, and comes in the epub and PDF formats (with watermarks, but DRM free). The print form can be pre-ordered from Amazon, and will become ready for shipping in about a week or two.

I will make a copy of the ebook available for free for everybody who purchased an earlier version, "Perl 6 by Example", from LeanPub.

The book is aimed at people familiar with the basics of programming; prior Perl 5 or Perl 6 knowledge is not required. It features a practical example in most chapters (no mammal hierarchies or class Rectangle inheriting from class Shape), ranging from simple input/output and text formatting to plotting with python's matplotlib libraries. Other examples include date and time conversion, a Unicode search tool and a directory size visualization.

I use these examples to explain subset of Perl 6, with many pointers to more documentation where relevant. Perl 6 topics include the basic lexicographic structure, testing, input and output, multi dispatch, object orientation, regexes and grammars, usage of modules, functional programming and interaction with python libraries through Inline::Python.

Let me finish with Larry Wall's description of this book, quoted from his foreword:

It's not just a reference, since you can always find such materials online. Nor is it just a cookbook. I like to think of it as an extended invitation, from a well-liked and well-informed member of our circle, to people like you who might want to join in on the fun. Because joy is what's fundamental to Perl. The essence of Perl is an invitation to love, and to be loved by, the Perl community. It's an invitation to be a participant of the gift economy, on both the receiving and the giving end.