Chapter Roadmap | XML and Perl

Over the last few years , eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and related technologies have grown enormously large and complex. The number of tools available to work with XML is also growing. Luckily, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are available that hide some of the complexities of the technology and provide a clean and simple interface for the developer. I'm going to discuss the Practical Extraction and Reporting Language (Perl) module APIs that support XML processing, and as you'll soon see, an API exists to perform just about any XML- related task.You'll also learn how to customize your XML processing facilities to accomplish unique tasks .

This first chapter lays the foundation for the book's approach to XML and Perl processing. I'm going to discuss how XML and Perl create portable, powerful, and easily extensible applications when they're used together.You will be convinced that Perl is a wonderful tool for XML because this book demonstrates how these two technologies are perfectly suited for each other.