This book assumes a basic understanding of Perl syntax and functions, but not necessarily any background in computer science. The authors explain in a readable fashion the reasons for using various classic programming techniques, the kind of applications that use them, and - most important - how to code these algorithms in Perl. If you are an amateur programmer, this book will fill you in on the essential algorithms you need to solve problems in the manner of an expert. If you have already learned algorithms in other languages, you will be surprised at how different (and often much easier) it is to implement them in Perl. And yes, the book even has the obligatory fractal program. There have been dozens of books on programming algorithms, some of them excellent, but never before has there been one that uses Perl. The authors include the editor of The Perl Journal and the master librarian of CPAN; all are contributors to CPAN and have archived much of the code in...