Perl!!!

Perl is a wonderful little language written (or at least glued together) by Larry Wall, patron saint of Lazy People. It's absolutely positively free. There is a wonderful community of people writing and sharing programs in it. If you'd like to learn more about Perl, buy the very good book by O'Reilly Publishing, called Learning Perl, also known as the Llama book. It's a good introduction.

Once you are feeling adventurous, go out to the CPAN site on the web. I'd provide you with a link to that wonderful collection of Perl related stuff, but I'm too lazy to type CPAN into Altavista at the moment, so go do it yourself.

If you still haven't gotten enough, pick up the new edition of Programming Perl, also by O'Reilly. It's recognizable by it's blue cover with a handsome looking Camel on it. If anyone is still selling the one with the pink binding, it's out of date, although I still worth it's weight in visual basic books.

If you'd like a copy of my quotereader, or any other script I end up putting out here, drop me an email (matt at rulesthe dot net).

Just another Perl hacker