There are people who use Perl for tasks in system administration or in configuration management.
Others build web sites or web application using Perl.

Yet others only need it for small scripts. Or so they were told.

Some people use Perl for Bioinformatics or for some other form of scientific calculations.

There are a lot of people using Perl for test automation. That's one of my favorite fields.

The Perl Maven web site was created for all of these people. It's aim is to help you get your job done.

Learning Perl is a funny thing. On one hand, after a few hours of reading you can already create small scripts and be productive. On the other hand, even after years if using Perl daily you will find new things. Either in the language or on CPAN. The learning curve is flat but long.

According to Wikipedia:

A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.

My hope is that if you follow the articles of this site, read the books an watch the video lectures you will constantly improve your Perl expertise. Soon you can become a Perl Maven.

The site will contain articles available to all free of charge. We will have several Perl books and video courses for sale.

Versions of Perl

I am sure you are wondering what version if Perl I am going to cover. For now I'll stick to Perl 5 and publish the Perl 6 related articles on my personal site. After all Perl 5 is what is used in production. Within Perl 5 I'll try to be pragmatic. While I would really like to see more people move forward and use the newest releases of perl I have to be realistic. In many companies that's impossible. I'll try to make sure the solutions I show can work on the perl 5.8 family but I'll point out when it is necessary to use a newer version of Perl.

You will see how using a newer version of Perl can improve your code and you will also see how to reach the point that you can use that Perl.

About the author/editor

I am Gabor Szabo, long time Perl developer and Perl trainer.

Gabor Szabo

The original creator of Padre, the Perl IDE, the curator of the Perl Weekly newsletter and recipient of the White Camel award of the Perl community.

People helping

There are a number of people who help with the content of the Perl Maven site. In no particular order and without listing all the people:

Translations

Thanks to several enthusiastic volunteers, the site is being translated into several other languages. If you'd like to help with any of the these languages, or if you'd like to translate the pages to other languages, please contact Gabor.

Translators

See on the meta site.

Contact information

E-mail: gabor@szabgab.com

Mobile phone: +972-54-4624648

If you are interested in the solutions that are published here, please sign up to our newsletter. You'll be notified when a new article is published and you will also get a copy of the Perl Maven Cookbook.