Acknowledgments

To my dear wife, Alka, for insulating me from life's daily demands throughout this project and for maintaining insanely good cheer in all the time I have known her.

To our parents, for everything we have, and are.

To my editors, Andy Oram and Steve Talbott, who patiently endured my writing style through endless revisions and gently taught me how to write a book. To O'Reilly and Associates, for allowing both authors and readers to have fun doing their bit.

To Larry Wall, for Perl, and for maintaining such a gracious and accessible Net presence. To the regular contributors on the Perl 5 Porters list (and to Tom Christiansen in particular), for enhancing, documenting, and tirelessly evangelizing Perl, all in their "spare" time. I envy their energy and dedication.

To this book's reviewers, who combed through this book with almost terrifying thoroughness. Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant, Mike Stok, and James Lee reviewed the entire book and offered great insight and encouragement. I am also deeply indebted to Graham Barr, David Beazley, Peter Buckner, Tim Bunce, Wayne Caplinger, Rajappa Iyer, Jeff Okamoto, Gurusamy Sarathy, Peter Seibel, and Nathan Torkington for reading sections of the book and making numerous invaluable suggestions. Any errors and omissions remain my own. A heartfelt thanks to Rao Akella, the amazing quotemeister, for finding suitable quotes for this book.

To my colleagues at WebLogic and TCSI, for providing such a terrific work environment. I'm amazed I'm actually paid to have fun. (There goes my raise....)

To all my friends, for the endless cappuccino walks, pool games, and encouraging words and for their patience while I was obsessing with this book. I am truly blessed.

To the crew at O'Reilly who worked on this book, including Jane Ellin, the production editor, Mike Sierra for Tools support, Robert Romano for the figures, Seth Maislin for the index, Nicole Gipson Arigo, David Futato, and Sheryl Avruch for quality control, Nancy Priest and Edie Freedman for design, and Madeleine Newell for production support.