Whether your knowledge of Perl is casual or deep, this book will make you a more accomplished programmer. It covers complex techniques for managing production-ready Perl programs and explains methods for manipulating data and objects that may have looked like magic before. Furthermore, it sets Perl in the context of a larger environment, giving you the background you need for dealing with networks, databases, and GUIs. It also includes a discussion of internals to help you program more efficiently and embed Perl within C or C within Perl. Major topics include the practical use of packages and classes (object-oriented programming), complex data structures, persistence (e.g., using a database), networking, graphical interfaces using the Tk toolkit, interaction with C language functions, embedding and extending the Perl interpreter, and selected internals.