12. Finale

I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, "What is that, swearing?"

(Larry Wall (the father of Perl) in <199806181642.JAA10629@wall.org>)

But luckily the next back-end for Perl 5 - Parrot will support multiple syntax front-ends, so one will be able to write Perl in an alternate syntax that does not have all those pesky sigils. The question is: why would anyone ever want to do that? :-)

No, seriously. We hoped you enjoyed the lecture series, but remember that it does not teach you everything that is to know about perl, much less how to understand other people's code.

By now, you can probably understand the perl core documents, so it is recommended that you read them in case you are looking for more information. You can also refer to the Perl Beginners' Site for more sources of information as well as ways to get help online.

We hope to continue this lecture with more presentations covering Perl's modules, objects and references to functions. Until then, stay cool and may the dollar sign be with you!