Randal L. Schwartz
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Randal L. Schwartz (born November 22, 1961) is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant.
He gained international fame when the state of Oregon, at the behest of Intel, arrested him on felony grounds for computer security crimes. Schwartz has stated that his actions, as a consultant of Intel, were to show that management employees of Intel were selecting passwords that could be easily guessed by individuals who then could compromise computer security. He was convicted of three felonies in July, 1995, and sentenced on September 11, 1995, to several years probation, a fine of $68,000, and left with about $170,000 in legal bills.
He coauthored several important books on Perl -- Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Learning Perl for Win32 Systems, and Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules -- as well as writing regular columns about Perl for several computer magazines. He is a founding board member of the Perl Mongers (perl.org), the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization. Since 1985, Randal has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc.
Randal is also a talented karaoke singer; one of his favorites is his cover of Kermit the Frog's song Rainbow Connection. He is also known for his offbeat sense of humor, exemplified with the Just another Perl hacker signature programs he popularized. His name is also associated with the so called Schwartzian Transform, a trick to efficiently sort a list according to a computation, without repeating the computation many times for each element of the list.
Bibliography
- Programming Perl, ISBN 0937175641; ISBN 1565921496 (2ed)
- Learning Perl, ISBN 1565920422; ISBN 1565922840 (2ed); ISBN 0596001320 (3ed) [1] (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/) (2001)
- Learning Perl on Win32 Systems, ISBN 1565923243
- Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules [2] (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/) (2003), ISBN 0596004788
- Effective Perl Programming, ISBN 0201419750
- Preface for Object Oriented Perl, ISBN 1884777791
- Collected columns in Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom, ISBN 1590593235
External links
- Original text from his bio at one of his many columns (http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/columns.html)
- O'Reilly's author page with bio (http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/335)
- Randal's web page (http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/)
- State of Oregon vs. Randal Schwartz (http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors/)
- perlfaq(4) (http://faq.perl.org/perlfaq4.html#How_do_I_sort_an_arr) How do I sort an array by (anything)?, the Perl FAQ entry on the Schwartzian Transform
- The Perl Monastery (http://www.perlmonks.com) where Schwartz regularly answers questions under his handle merlyn (http://www.perlmonks.com/?node=merlyn).de:Randal L. Schwartz