Perl is a very feature-rich language, which clearly cannot be discussed in full detail here. Instead, our
goals here are to (a) enable the reader to quickly become proficient at writing simple Perl programs and (b)
prepare the reader to consult full Perl books (or Perl tutorials on the Web) for further details of whatever
Perl constructs he/she needs for a particular application.
Our approach here is different from that of most Perl books, or even most Perl Web tutorials. The usual
approach is to painfully go over all details from the beginning. For example, the usual approach would be
to state all possible forms that a Perl literal can take on.
We avoid this here. Again, the aim is to enable the reader to quickly acquire a Perl foundation. He/she should
then be able to delve directly into some special topic, with little or not further learning of foundations.
