Learning Perl is designed for those who seek a rapid working knowledge of Perl. A public domain language, Perl has established itself as the premier UNIX scripting language--replacing facilities such as the shell, sed and awk. It is currently taking root in non- UNIX markets as well. Perl is a high-level, multi-purpose language. It is used in diverse system administration tasks, while also playing an endless variety of roles in other areas. These range from data reduction and report generation to distributed computing and assorted auxiliary roles in software development. Perl has even encroached upon the territory of C and other programming languages.