How to Use This Book

You can read the book from cover to cover if you like, but you might be better served by picking an interesting item from the table of contents and just diving in.

If you're relatively new to Perl or spidering, you should consider starting with a few hacks from each progressive chapter. The principles in Chapter 1 give you a firm grounding on what we'll be doing, while Chapter 2 acquaints you with the various network and parsing modules of Perl. Chapter 3 starts off nice and easy by simply downloading files, and Chapter 4, the bulk of the book, moves you into the more complicated realm of repurposing information.