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Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code View Larger Image | Peter Scott
Addison-Wesley, Paperback, Published March 2004, 311 pages, ISBN 0201795264 | List Price: $39.99
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Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating:  Write a Review and tell the world about this title! People who purchase this book frequently purchase: Books on similar topics, in best-seller order:Books from the same publisher, in best-seller order:
- Cure whatever ails your Perl code!
- Maintain, optimize, and scale any Perl software... whether you wrote it
or not
- Perl software engineering best practices for enterprise environments
- Includes case studies and code in a fun-to-read format
If you code in Perl, you need to read this book. —Adam Turoff,
Technical Editor, The Perl Review.
Perl Medic is more than a book. It is a well-crafted strategy for approaching,
updating, and furthering the cause of inherited Perl programs. —Allen
Wyke, co-author of several computer books including JavaScript Unleashed
and Pure JavaScript.
Scott's explanations of complex material are smooth and deceptively simple.
He knows his subject matter and his craft-he makes it look easy. Scott remains
relentless practical-even the 'Analysis' chapter is filled with code and tests
to run. —Dan Livingston, author of several computer books including
Advanced Flash 5: Actionscript in Action
Bring new power, performance, and scalability to your existing Perl code!
Today's Perl developers spend 60-80% of their time working with existing Perl
code. Now, there's a start-to-finish guide to understanding that code, maintaining
it, updating it, and refactoring it for maximum performance and reliability.
Peter J. Scott, lead author of Perl Debugged, has written the first systematic
guide to Perl software engineering. Through extensive examples, he shows how
to bring powerful discipline, consistency, and structure to any Perl program-new
or old. You'll discover how to:
- Scale existing Perl code to serve larger network, Web, enterprise, or e-commerce
applications
- Rewrite, restructure, and upgrade any Perl program for improved performance
- Bring standards and best practices to your entire library of Perl software
- Organize Perl code into modules and components that are easier to reuse
- Upgrade code written for earlier versions of Perl
- Write and execute better tests for your software...or anyone else's
- Use Perl in team-based, methodology-driven environments
- Document your Perl code more effectively and efficiently
If you've ever inherited Perl code that's hard to maintain, if you write Perl
code others will read, if you want to write code that'll be easier for you to
maintain, the book that comes to your rescue is Perl Medic.
Table of Contents
Preface.
Perl or perl? Obtaining Perl. Historical Perl.
Who This Book Is For. Typographical Conventions. For Further Reference. Perl
Versions. Perl 6. Acknowledgments.
1. Introduction (First Response).
First Things First. Reasons for Inheritance.
What Next? Observe the Program in Its Natural Habitat. Get Personal. Strictness.
Warnings.
2. Surveying the Scene.
Versions. Part or Whole? Find the Dependencies.
3. Test Now, Test Forever (Diagnosis).
Testing Your Patience. Extreme Testing. An Example
Using Test: Modules. Testing Legacy Code. A Final Encouragement.
4. Rewriting (Transplants).
Strategizing. Why Are You Doing This? Style.
Comments. Restyling. Variable Renaming. Editing. Line Editing. Antipatterns.
Evolution.
5. The Disciplined Perl Program.
Package Variables vs Lexical Variables. Warnings
and Strictness. use strict in Detail. use warnings in Detail. Selective Disabling.
Caveat Programmer. Perl Poetry.
6. Restructuring (The Operating Table).
Keep It Brief. Cargo Cult Perl. Escaping the
Global Variable Trap. Debugging Strategies.
7. Upgrading (Plastic Surgery).
Strategies. Perl 4. Perl 5.000. Perl 5.001. Perl
5.002. Perl 5.003. Perl 5.004. Perl 5.005. Perl 5.6.0. Perl 5.6.1. Perl 5.8.0.
Perl 5.8.1. Perl 5.8.2. Perl 5.8.3.
8. Using Modules (Genetic Enhancement).
The Case for CPAN. Using CPAN. Improving Code
with Modules. Custom Perls.
9. Analysis (Forensic Pathology).
Static Analysis. Eliminating Superfluous Code.
Finding Inefficient Code. Debugging.
10. Increasing Maintainability (Prophylaxis).
Making It Robust. Advanced Brevity. Documentation.
Custom Warnings. Version Control System Integration.
11. A Case Study.
The Setup. Triage. Desperately Seeking Sanity.
Coming into the 21st Century. Incorporating Modules Effectively, Part 1. Incorporating
Modules Effectively, Part 2. Making It Mature, Part 1. Making It Mature, Part
2. Making It Mature, Part 3. Advanced Modification.
12. Conclusion (Prognosis).
In Conclusion. Perl People. A Final Thought.
Appendix: Source Code.
Tie::Array::Bounded. Benchmark::TimeTick. smallprofpp.
Bibliography.
Index.
About the Author
PETER J. SCOTT runs Pacific Systems Design Technologies, providing Perl training,
application development, and enterprise systems analysis. He was a speaker on
the 2002 Perl Whirl cruise and at YAPC::Canada, and he founded his local Perl
Monger group. A software developer since 1981 and a Perl developer since 1992,
he has also created programs for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Scott graduated
from Cambridge University, England, with a Master's of Arts Degree in Computer
Science and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife Grace, a cat, and
a parrot, at least one of which also uses Perl. He is the lead author of Perl
Debugged.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating: May 18, 2004 Kenneth Graves from Boston, MA USA
A good book with a (slightly) misleading title
While the "medic" metaphor recurs throughout the book, most of the material isn't directly related to repairing old code. Instead, this is a collection of best practices for new code. (The author recommends rewriting existing code if at all possible.) It ends up resembling another excellent Perl title, Joseph Hall's Effective Perl Programming. Good company to keep. Perl Medic has the advantage of being newer, and of covering a bit more material. The writing style is very easy to read, and the order of presentation works well. An excellent title for any intermediate-level Perl programmer.
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