Perl for Forensics

Perl is freely available, and Perl scripts are essentially open source. Perl is used by forensics products such as The Sleuthkit and ProDiscover. Perl is used in the Metasploit framework. Perl is great for automating repetitive tasks, parsing files...and it's free. Perl runs on Windows, most Unices, the Mac, and a plethora of other platforms.

O'Reilly has a ton of books on Perl...from how to program to how to use Perl for a variety of tasks.

So my question is, how useful would a book on using Perl for forensics be to you? Say, a reference tome that discusses:

• Collecting live/volatile data using Perl
• Correlating data from multiple sources using Perl
• Analyzing data, or presenting data for analysis
• Analyzing file formats (retrieving metadata, etc.)

Obviously, a book like this should include copies of all code used or mentioned in the book. As ProDiscover uses Perl as it's scripting language, a book such as this should also include a variety of "ProScripts". The book should also include not only the files analyzed in the book, but additional example files that the reader can explore and practice on...perhaps even an image of drive to examine.

Is this a book you'd be interested in? If so, what would you like to see? What topics do you think should be covered? How would you envision such a book, particularly as something that you'd pick up off of a shelf at a bookstore and decide to purchase? What do you see as the market for such a book?