Acknowledgments
Thanks to our reviewers David H. Adler, Dave Cross, Chris Devers, Paul Fenwick, Stephen Jenkins, Matthew Musgrove, and Wil Wheaton for providing comments on the draft of this book.
Thanks to our many students who have let us know what parts of the course material have needed improvement over the years. It's because of you that we're all so proud of it today.
Thanks to the many Perl Mongers who have made us feel at home as we've visited your cities. Let's do it again sometime.
And finally, our sincerest thanks to our friend Larry Wall, for having the wisdom to share his cool and powerful toys with the rest of the world so that we can all get our work done just a little bit faster, easier, and with more fun.
From Randal
I want to thank the Stonehenge trainers past and present (Joseph Hall, Tom Phoenix, Chip Salzenberg, brian d foy, and Tad McClellan) for their willingness to go out and teach in front of classrooms week after week and to come back with their notes about what's working so we could fine-tune the material for this book. I especially want to single out my coauthor and business associate, Tom Phoenix, for having spent many hours working to improve Stonehenge's Llama course and to provide the wonderful core text for most of this book. And brian d foy for being the lead writer of the fourth edition, including taking that eternal to-do item out of my inbox so that it would finally happen.
I want to thank everyone at O'Reilly, especially our very patient editor and overseer, Allison Randal (no relation, but she has a nicely spelled last name), and Tim O'Reilly for taking a chance on me in the first place with the Camel and Llama books.
I am also indebted to the thousands of people who have purchased the past editions of the Llama so that I could use the money to stay "off the streets and out of jail," and to those students in my classrooms who have trained me to be a better trainer, and to the stunning array of Fortune 1000 clients who have purchased our classes in the past and will continue to do so into the future.
As always, a special thanks to Lyle and Jack, for teaching me nearly everything I know about writing. I won't ever forget you guys.
From Tom
I've got to echo Randal's thanks to everyone at O'Reilly. For the third edition of this book Linda Mui was our editor, and I still thank her for her patience in pointing out which jokes and footnotes were most excessive while pointing out that she is in no way to blame for the ones that remain. She and Randal have guided me through the process of writing, and I am grateful. In the present edition, Allison Randal has stepped in as editor, and my thanks go to her as well.
And another echo with regard to Randal and the other Stonehenge trainers, who hardly ever complained when I unexpectedly updated the course materials to try a new teaching technique. You folks have contributed many different viewpoints on teaching methods that I would never have seen.
For many years, I worked at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), and I'd like to thank the folks there for letting me hone my teaching skills as I learned to build a joke or two into every activity, explosion, or dissection.
To the many folks on Usenet who have given me your appreciation and encouragement for my contributions there, thanks. As always, I hope this helps.
To my many students, who have shown me with their questions (and befuddled looks) when I needed to try a new way of expressing a concept. I hope that the present edition helps to relieve any remaining puzzlement.
Of course, deep thanks are due especially to my coauthor, Randal, for giving me the freedom to try various ways of presenting the material in the classroom and here in the book, as well as for the push to make this material into a book in the first place. And without fail, I must say that I am indeed inspired by your ongoing work to ensure no one else becomes ensnared by the legal troubles that have stolen so much of your time and energy; you're a fine example.
To my wife, Jenna, thanks for being a cat person, and everything thereafter.
From brian
I have to thank Randal first since I learned Perl from the first edition of this book and then had to learn it again when he asked me to start teaching for Stonehenge in 1998. Teaching is often the best way to learn. Since then, Randal has mentored me in Perl and several other things he thought I needed to learn, like the time he decided that we could use Smalltalk instead of Perl for a demonstration at a web conference. I'm always amazed at the breadth of his knowledge. He's the one who told me to start writing about Perl. Now I'm helping out on the book where I started. I'm honored, Randal.
I'd probably only seen Tom Phoenix for fewer than two weeks in the entire time I've worked for Stonehenge, but I'd been teaching his version of our Learning Perl course for years. That version turned into the third edition of this book. By teaching Tom's new version, I found new ways to explain almost everything and learned even more corners of Perl.
When I convinced Randal that I should help out on the Llama update, I was anointed as the maker of the proposal to the publisher, the keeper of the outline, and the version control wrangler. Our editor, Allison Randal, helped me get all of those set up and endured my frequent emails without complaining.
Special non-Perl thanks to Stacey, Buster, Mimi, Roscoe, Amelia, Lila, and everyone else who tried to distract me while I was busy but still talked to me even though I couldn't come out to play.
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