Web Programming Certificate Series Special -- Go from newbie to know-how in six 40-hour courses spanning the client-server spectrum. Upon completion of the series, receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. Keep your free O'Reilly books for reference and your Learning Lab account as an online portfolio. Pre-enroll in all six courses and receive a $300 instant rebate. Offer expires December 31st.

Open Source Programming Certificate Series Special -- With beginning to intermediate courses in Perl, Java, PHP, mySQL, and the Linux/Unix file system, our Open Source Programming Certificate Series is designed to give you a breath of real-world experience. Upon completion of the series, you'll receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education, a plus for any resume. Enroll in all five courses and receive a $300 instant rebate. Offer expires November 30th.

Jump Start Your Career in Programming with the O'Reilly Learning Lab -- Learn programming, systems, and networking skills through the O'Reilly Learning Lab. All Learning Lab courses are online, self-paced, and provide the technology environments needed to develop and practice new skills. In addition, every student is assigned a personal O'Reilly instructor for coaching and feedback throughout each course. Completion of selected course sequences earns students a Certificate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Enroll and start today!

Web Programming Certificate Series Special Extended -- The Web Programming Certificate Series can take you from web newbie to well-rounded web engineer in six courses, which span everything from JavaScript to XML, Perl to Linux/Unix, HTML to mySQL. Upon completion of the series, students receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. Enroll in all six courses and receive a $200 instant rebate. Extended by request to September 30th--enroll today!

EuroOSCON Early Registration Extended -- Join us for the first annual O'Reilly European Open Source Convention, October 17-20 in Amsterdam. EuroOSCON targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, strategists, entrepreneurs, and technologists, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology to their companies and organizations. Sign up now and save before early registration prices end on September 21st.

Web Programming Certificate Series Special -- The O'Reilly Learning Lab Web Programming Certificate Series can take you from web newbie to well-rounded web engineer in six courses, which span everything from JavaScript to XML, Perl to Linux/Unix, HTML to mySQL. Upon completion of the series, students receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. From now until September 21st, enroll in all six courses and receive a $200 instant rebate.

Porting Test::Builder to Perl 6 -- With Pugs and Parrot playing nicely and bringing Perl 6 to the rest of us, enterprising early adopters are experimenting with porting their popular Perl 5 modules to Perl 6. O'Reilly editor chromatic recently pushed the limits of Pugs by porting Test::Builder to Perl 6. Here's what he learned about Perl 6, Pugs, and his design along the way. chromatic is the coauthor of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook.

ETech 2006 CFP Now Open -- O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference 2006 is scheduled for March 6-9 in San Diego. We invite technologists, strategists, CTOs, chief scientists, researchers, programmers, hackers, standards workers, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead sessions and tutorials at ETech. This year's challenge focuses on the amazing amount of digital data in our worlds: how do we visualize the data, filter it, remix it, and access it in meaningful ways? Proposals are due by September 19th.

Learning Lab August Special -- In our practice-based, self-paced courses, you can build your online portfolio with plenty of instructor feedback and a free O'Reilly book for reference. For a limited time, use the discount passcode "tigercub" to save an extra 15% off any of our courses--including all University of Illinois Certificate Series. Take advantage of this great deal and register today!

Ten Essential Development Practices -- Perl lets you be productive in everything from quick-and-dirty throwaway programs to big, business-critical applications. Building the latter requires some discipline, though. Damian Conway shares ten essential development practices to make your Perl programming easier, more reliable, and even more enjoyable. Damian is the author of Perl Best Practices.

Is Perl Still Relevant? -- With the emergence of .NET, J2EE, Python, PHP, et al., one reader asks whether Perl has lost its niche as a scripting glue language? Tim O'Reilly comments in this Ask Tim.

History of Programming Languages -- For 50 years, computer programmers have been writing code, and now, there are more than 2,500 documented programming languages. O'Reilly has produced a poster called History of Programming Languages, which plots over 50 programming languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline. The poster is available online in PDF format, but while supplies last, U.S. residents can also get a hard copy of the poster free when purchasing two books through oreilly.com.

Save $200 on a Learning Lab Certificate -- Learning programming languages and development techniques has never been easier. Using your web browser and Useractive's Learning Sandbox technology, the Learning Lab gives you hands-on, online training in a creative environment. And now, when you enroll in any of our four certificate series, you'll receive a $200 instant rebate (and a certificate from the University of Illinois upon course completion). Offer extended through May 31st.

O'Reilly Learning Lab: $200 Instant Rebate -- Learning programming languages and development techniques has never been easier. Using your web browser and Useractive's Learning Sandbox technology, the Learning Lab gives you hands-on, online training in a creative environment (and a Certificate from the University of Illinois College of Extended Education upon course completion). Until May 20th, receive a $200 instant rebate when you enroll in any Certificate Series.

Open Source Programming Certificate Special -- Acquire the skills necessary for a complete understanding of programming using open source operating systems, languages, libraries, and databases. This five-course series covers CGI programming with Perl, SQL database programming, PHP programming, object-oriented programming with Java, and basic Linux/Unix system administration. Upon completion of the series, students receive a Certificate from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. Enroll now and save 40%. Offer extended until April 30.

Batch-Running Word Macros from the DOS Command Line -- Looking for an easy way to run any Word macro, on any number of files, right from the DOS command line? Andrew Savikas shows how to do just that, using Perl, Python, and Ruby, with code samples for each scripting language. Andrew is the author of Word Hacks.

Save $200 on a Learning Lab Certificate -- Learning programming languages and development techniques has never been easier. Using your web browser and Useractive's Learning Sandbox technology, the Learning Lab gives you hands-on, online training in a creative environment. And for a limited time, when you enroll in any of our four certificate series, you'll receive a $200 instant rebate (and a certificate from the University of Illinois College of Extended Learning upon course completion). Offer expires March 31.

O'Reilly Learning Lab: $200 Instant Rebate -- Learning programming languages and development techniques has never been easier. Using your web browser and Useractive's Learning Sandbox technology, the Learning Lab gives you hands-on, online training in a creative environment. This month, receive a $200 instant rebate (and a Certificate from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education upon course completion) when you enroll in any Certificate Series.

Perl Tackles HIPAA Compliancy -- Dietrich Schmitz of the SUNY Upstate Medical University writes, "It is so true that Perl 'makes the simple things easy and the hard things possible'." Dietrich describes how he used Perl in writing an in-house application to make the Claims and Patient Billing system HIPAA-compliant, in this latest Perl Success Story.

O'Reilly Learning Lab: $200 Instant Rebate -- Learning programming languages and development techniques has never been easier. Using your web browser and Useractive's Learning Sandbox technology, the Learning Lab gives you hands-on, online training in a Unix environment. This month, receive a $200 instant rebate (and a Certificate from the University of Illinois upon course completion) when you enroll in any Certificate Series.

Easy Healthcare Billing with Perl -- Billing applications usually contain complex rules that transform raw activity into billable activity. This is especially true in healthcare where fixed prices are applied for repeated medical services. Marc-Henri Poget, software project manager at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland, shares his experiences creating a billing application with Perl. You'll find many examples of Perl in action in O'Reilly's Perl Success Stories.

Larry Wall's State of the Onion -- At this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Larry Wall delivered his eighth annual State of the Onion address, in which he publicly psychoanalyzed himself while relating screensavers ("my mind is like a screensaver that no one can ever look at") to surgery, Perl, and the Perl community. Larry's speech, including links to his screensavers that you can view with xscreensaver-demo, is online at perl.com.

When Will Perl 6 Ever Get Done? It's difficult to make predictions about when Perl 6 will be released. For one thing, Perl is still and always under development; for another, there's no rush. perl.com editor Simon Cozens shares what he heard from Perl 6 designers and implementers in this month's Ask Tim.

SafariU: Create, Customize, and Share Teaching Material -- Looking for a way to truly customize your course textbook and offer students exactly the material you choose to teach, while saving them a good bit of money? Become a SafariU beta tester and check out the new web-based publishing platform from O'Reilly that allows you to create custom textbooks and online syllabi.

Cultured Perl: Three Essential Perl Books -- In a recent Cultured Perl column on IBM DeveloperWorks comes a review of what the reviewer calls three "essential Perl books": O'Reilly Media's Perl 6 Essentials, Perl Cookbook, and Perl Template Toolkit. To read more about these and all of O'Reilly's Perl books, visit perl.oreilly.com.

An Interview with Allison Randal -- In this Perl.com interview, Simon Cozens talks to Allison Randal, the president of the Perl Foundation and the project manager for Perl 6, about the goals of the Foundation, YAPC, and the Perl 6 effort. Allison is a coauthor of O'Reilly's upcoming Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, 2nd Edition.

Mastering Regular Expressions Live on Safari -- Due to popular demand, O'Reilly's indispensable guide to regular expressions is available online through Safari. Whether you're programming in Perl, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl, MySQL, awk, Emacs, or any language using the .NET Framework, you should know how to use regular expressions to manipulate text and data. Powerful solutions to real-world problems are now at your fingertips. If you haven't been on Safari yet, read this book and up to nine others with a free trial subscription.

Apocalypse 12 -- Larry Wall writes, "Some people will be surprised to hear it, but Perl is a minimalist language at heart." Here he explains how objects and classes are supposed to work in Perl 6. Join Larry and Damian Conway this July in Portland for their OSCON session on Perl 6.

SafariU: Create, Customize, and Share Teaching Material -- Looking for a way to truly customize your course textbook and offer students exactly the material you choose to teach, while saving them a good bit of money? Become a SafariU beta tester and check out the new web-based publishing platform from O'Reilly that allows you to create custom textbooks and online syllabi.

Building a Parrot Compiler -- The virtual machine for Perl 6 is not just for Perl 6 anymore. Parrot is a high-level, high-performance target for all sorts of languages. Dan Sugalski, coauthor of Perl 6 Essentials, demonstrates by building a compiler for a vintage 4GL. Dan and his coauthor, Allison Randal, are both speaking at July's Open Source Convention.

Exegesis 7 for Perl 6 -- At first glance, Perl 6 may seem like something of a backwards step--it has extra quotation marks and commas that Perl 5 didn't require. But the new formatting interface does have several distinct advantages. Damian Conway explains. Get all of O'Reilly's Perl books and articles at perl.oreilly.com.

A Horse Is a Horse, of Course, of Course­-Or Is It? Perl classes and subroutines can get your horses to neigh, but you'll need to establish an instance and instance variables to distinguish between the Palomino and the Clydesdale. Find out how in Chapter 9 of Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules, the book that picks up where Learning Perl leaves off. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

How We Wrote the Template Toolkit Book -- There are a number of tools available for writing books. Authors Dave Cross, Darren Chamberlain, and Andy Wardley are all Perl hackers, so when they got together to write a book, it didn't take them long to agree to use POD (Plain Old Documentation). Here's how they practiced what they preached with Perl Template Toolkit.

O'Reilly Partners with No Starch, Paraglyph, and Syngress -- We're pleased to announce a collaboration between like-minded companies: As of January 1, 2004, O'Reilly is the North American distributor for three innovative small presses: No Starch Press, Paraglyph Press, and Syngress Publishing. O'Reilly will handle retail and direct sales, warehousing, and shipping, as well as provide direct marketing and PR support for these publishers with whom our philosophies are aligned. We invite you to give them a close look.

Spidering Hacks -- Want to save time as well as extra trips to your favorite web sites? Here are two hacks--the first on using Template::Extract, a Perl module that allows you to scrape a web page to generate RSS feeds; and the second on using a program called dailystrips to grab all your favorite online comic strips in one HTML file--excerpted from the recently released Spidering Hacks.

One Hump or Two? If Perl is your cup of tea, O'Reilly's T-shirt featuring the Perl camel can be your sugar cube. Add some O'Reilly coasters and mugs, and you've got the ingredients for a whole tea party. Find the makings at ThinkGeek.

A Chromosome at a Time with Perl, Part 2 -- In the conclusion to his two-part series on using Perl in the bioinformatics realm, James Tisdall shows how references can speed up a subroutine call, how to bypass the overhead of subroutine calls entirely, and how to quantify the behavior of your code. James is the author of Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics.

More Than One Way -- Any Perl programmer will tell you, "There's more than one way to do it." Get the shirt that says it plain and simple, and find more O'Reilly gear at ThinkGeek.

A Chromosome at a Time with Perl -- James Tisdall offers a handful of tricks that will enable Perl programmers to write performance-efficient code for dealing with large amounts of biological sequence data. James is the author of the upcoming Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics.

Cooking with Perl -- Learn how to use SQL without a database server and how to send attachments in mail, in the latest sample recipes from O'Reilly's recently released Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition.

Five Habits for Successful Regular Expressions -- Tony Stubblebine shows how to avoid a lot of trial and error in your regular expression development by adopting these five habits, applicable to nearly any regex implementation. Tony is the author of Regular Expression Pocket Reference.

Cooking with Perl -- The second edition of Perl Cookbook is about to hit the streets. Get a taste of what we've cooked up with these sample recipes on "Matching Nested Patterns" and "Pretending a String Is a File." And reserve a copy of Perl Cookbook today.

Exegesis 6 -- Damian Conway explains how the new syntax and semantics of subroutines in Perl 6 make for cleaner, simpler, and more powerful code. For a list of O'Reilly's Perl books and articles, see perl.oreilly.com.

State of the Onion 2003 -- In this full-length transcript of Larry Wall's annual report on the state of Perl, Larry talks about being unreasonable, unwilling, and impossible. For the state of O'Reilly's Perl books, check out perl.oreilly.com.

An Interview with the Author of Practical mod_perl -- In this ONLamp.com interview with chromatic, Stas Bekman talks about his work, mod_perl 2, and what it's like to be sponsored to work on free software full-time. Stas is the author of O'Reilly's recently released Practical mod_perl.

Perl 6 Design Philosophy -- Many Perl 6 design decisions have been influenced by the principles of natural language. For an in-depth discussion of some of the most important principles and their impact on Perl 6, check out this excerpt from Chapter 3 of Perl 6 Essentials.

Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules Book Review -- Russell Dyer's book review for UnixReview.com looks at O'Reilly's newest Perl offering, saying it "fills a vacancy for Perl programmers who are looking to improve their skills or to grow in their careers." For a thorough introduction to advanced programming in Perl, be sure to check out Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules.

Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules -- This June release gives a gentle introduction to the world of references, object-oriented programming, and the use of Perl modules that form the backbone of any effective Perl program. Get a glimpse of what the book has to offer from Beta Chapter 3, Introduction to References.

Perl: Where Do I Start? Are you new to Perl? Confused about which book to start with, or what to read next? Get oriented with our Perl Where Do I Start? page. And find a complete list of O'Reilly's Perl titles at perl.oreilly.com.

Flippant Comments in Perl Book -- In response to a reader's frustration over apparent flippancy in O'Reilly's Programming Perl, editors Paula Ferguson and Bruce Epstein talk about the importance of humor and an author's voice in O'Reilly books, as long as technical accuracy is not sacrificed as a result. Read about it in the latest Ask Tim.

Apache::VMonitor -- In the final article of Stas Bekman's mod_perl series, we learn how to monitor the performance and stability of our fully tuned mod_perl server using Apache::VMonitor. Stas is a coauthor of the upcoming Practical mod_perl.

Five Tips for .NET Programming in Perl -- Don't get tripped up making your Perl SOAP applications work with .NET services. Here are some of the most common traps for Perl developers, enumerated by Randy J. Ray, coauthor of Programming Web Services with Perl.

Apocalypse 6 -- Larry Wall continues unfolding the design of Perl 6 with his latest Apocalypse on how subroutines are defined and called in Perl 6. For a complete listing of O'Reilly's Perl titles, visit perl.oreilly.com.

Module::Build -- Traditionally, modules have been put together with ExtUtils::MakeMaker. Dave Rolsky describes a more modern solution in this first of a two-part series. Dave is a coauthor of Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason .

Understanding Overloading in WSDL -- Randy Ray explains how to express overloaded interfaces in the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), thereby enabling proper support of overload methods written in Java, C++, and Perl. Randy is a coauthor of Programming Web Services with Perl.

Programming with Mason -- From putting a session ID in all URLs to managing DBI connections, Dave Rolsky offers recipes for solving typical Web application problems, adapted from his book, Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason.

Get into Gear -- O'Reilly gear, that is. Now you can wear the Perl camel, the python, the Linux bucking bronco, and more. Check it all out at our new online store at ThinkGeek.

Controlling iTunes with Perl -- Learn how to use AppleScript and the Perl module Mac::iTunes to create multiple iTunes interfaces that can be controlled from any computer on the same network. To help you ease into the Unix inside Mac OS X, get a copy of Mac OS X for Unix Geeks.

Perl's True Success Is in the Telling -- How did O'Reilly's "Perl Success Stories" begin? Betsy Waliszewski, who launched the initiative, gives some background and calls on you to send in your stories. Find all of O'Reilly's Perl books at perl.oreilly.com.

Inside LWP: Perl's Secret Weapons for Data Sharing -- Open Enterprise Trends talks with Sean Burke about how LWP can help developers get the most out of Perl, especially for Web services and integration projects. Sean is the author of Perl & LWP.

New Safari Titles--Search, annotate, and read your favorite O'Reilly books on Safari Tech Books Online. New Safari titles include: Java NIO, Perl for Oracle DBAs, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition, and Essential Blogging.

Inside Perl for Oracle DBAs--Open Enterprise Trends talks with Andy Duncan about his book's Perl DBA Toolkit, the Perl DBI, and using Perl for Oracle-based Web services. Andy is a coauthor of Perl for Oracle DBAs.

Networked Qualitative Data Analysis with Perl and XML--Read how a technology instructor used Perl and XML to create a networked CAQDAS application that allows researchers to distribute data and analysis, in the latest Perl Success Story.

Larry Wall on Perl, Religion, and More--In a Slashdot interview with Larry Wall, Larry talks about Perl 6, the role of Perl as a scripting language, how his relationship with Jesus has shaped Perl, and much more. All of O'Reilly's Perl books and articles are listed at perl.oreilly.com.

The Fusion of Perl and Oracle--Andy Duncan explains that Perl's symbiosis with the Oracle database helped in constructing the Perl DBA Toolkit, and he ponders what Ayn Rand might have thought of these two strange bedfellows. Andy is a coauthor of Perl for Oracle DBAs.

Web Basics with LWP--This Perl.com article by Sean M. Burke offers sample recipes for performing common tasks with LWP (Library for WWW in Perl). Sean is the author of O'Reilly's Perl & LWP.

Exegesis 5--Are Perl 6's regular expressions messing with your head? Damian Conway describes what real programs using Perl 6 grammars look like. For a list of O'Reilly's Perl books and articles, see perl.oreilly.com.

Open Source Growth and Community Remain Strong--In this OSCON 2002 wrap-up, Andy Oram reports that the major open source and free software projects are continuing to develop and meet the challenges of the current computing industry. To be notified about next year's OSCON, join the Conferences mailing list.

XSH, An XML Editing Shell-- Kip Hampton introduces XSH, a Perl and XML command-line utility that you're sure to want in your XML toolkit. For a complete, comprehensive tour of these two technologies, pick up a copy of Perl & XML.

Using XML Modules in Perl--Nate Patwardhan writes about two XML-related Perl modules that you can use in your daily job. Nate is a coauthor of Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition.

Marshall McLuhan vs. Marshalling Regular Expressions--Andy Oram explains w hy the success of Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd Edition should help assuage the panic Marshall McLuhan envisioned.

The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open Source Vendors--Tim O'Reilly explains why open source is good for businesses even if it isn't always good for software vendors. "Customer lock-in is the real enemy of business, not the GPL," Tim says. For the latest on open source, don't miss O'Reilly's upcoming Open Source Convention.

Getting Loopy with Python and Perl--How do Python's loop constructs stack up to Perl's? Find out in this article by Aahz, one of the featured speakers at this month's Open Source Convention.

New Safari Titles--Search, annotate, and read your favorite O'Reilly books on Safari Tech Books Online. New titles include Java and XML Data Binding, Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition, Windows XP in a Nutshell, Perl & LWP, Network Security with OpenSSL, Java Management Extensions, and Ant: The Definitive Guide.

Skimpy Forum: An Application of Perl and XML--Erik Ray shows how a little Perl and XML can be used to create a working Web application. Erik is the coauthor of Perl & XML.

Tim O'Reilly: Alpha Geeks, Open Source, and More--Tim O'Reilly talks about why we watch the alpha geeks and the role open source will play in the Internet era, in this Rational Edge interview. To keep on top of the latest happenings in open source, don't miss the upcoming O'Reilly Open Source Convention.

Perl 6 Uncovered at OSCON--What better place to hear from Larry Wall, Damian Conway, Dan Sugalski, and others about the current state and future plans of Perl 6?

Perl Success Story: TERMIUMplus--Betsy Waliszewski relays information about TERMIUMplus, a trilingual Perl application that allows translators and terminologists to search a collection of 1.5 million entries, that showed up recently on the mod_perl mailing list. For a list of all of O'Reilly's Perl books, visit perl.oreilly.com.