Get started with Perl 5 and learn the important core concepts of Perl programming, such as variables, flow control, expressions, and I/O. Additionally, this book covers pattern matching and shows that Perl is extremely flexible and powerful, and that it isn't afraid of the cloud. After reading and using this book, you'll be able to start writing your own powerful scripts to solve many web and programming problems.   This is a book for those of us who believed that we didn't need to learn Perl, and now we know it is more ubiquitous than ever. You'll see that Perl has evolved into a multipurpose, multiplatform language present absolutely everywhere: heavy-duty web applications, the cloud, systems administration, natural language processing, and financial engineering. This book provides valuable insight into Perl's role regarding all of these tasks and more giving you a great start in your Perl programming adventure. What You Will Learn Perform operations on scalar values Use scalar, array, and associative array variables Work with flow control statements such as if, unless, while, until, for, and foreach Read and write directly to files with file handles  Use conditional expressions such as numeric and string comparison, regular expressions, file testing, and Perl statements Format output with format statements  Search for and replace sub-strings within a string using regular expressions Master Perl utilities such as split, join, index and more Control the file system and processes from within a Perl script Build functions for tasks including handling the scope of variables Import existing modules into your Perl script Who This Book Is For Those who are new to Perl.