San Francisco, CA, December 3, 2013—Some programs are powerful because of their thousands of lines of code, and some are powerful because of what they get done with so little. Perl is a language that harnesses the power of minimal code, letting users automate otherwise mind-numbing tasks with a single line of code.

Perl One-Liners (No Starch Press, November 2013, 168 pp., $24.95, ISBN 9781593275204) contains 130 simple Perl programs that give readers the power to get through the tedious stuff quickly. Originally released as a self-published ebook, Perl One-Liners has been updated and expanded to show readers more ways to solve problems with short, elegant bits of code.

The programs in Perl One-Liners are designed to do one thing, and to do that thing well, such as:

• Encode, decode, replace, or convert strings
• Generate random passwords
• Perform cool math tricks, like using a regular expression to check if a number is prime
• Number lines in a file
• Selectively print lines that match a pattern
• Convert IP addresses to decimal form

It all goes back to one of Perl's slogans: Easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible. "This book illustrates just how easy things can be—and how much can be done with so little code," said PerlDancer contributor David Precious.

Readers who already know Perl will find new ways to hone their skills as author Peteris Krumins dissects the code to give them a deeper understanding of the language. Perl One-Liners is the coder's guide that readers will wonder how they ever did without.

Perl One-Liners is available in bookstores everywhere now.