Programming Perl (3rd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Who said ....
Review: The book is definetely written for those who at least have some (or maybe a little more than just "some") programming background, and willing to learn Perl from the author of the language.

I read the first edition of the book, which was about 200 pages, or something in that range, which filled my mind with nothing but questions. Current edition, however, could answer to all of those questions (well, almost). Of course, to make it answer them I had to re-read the book four times. But none of the books I currently own (and I own quite a few) could've taken me to the innards of the language so deep no matter how many times I had read them. So the book is of value.

The Camel book, especially, does a great job on Regular Expressions and pattern matching. If you want to learn RegEx of perl in very details, you definitely need listen to the author of Perl. "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl is also a good choise, but doesn't include the latest updates.

Formats aren't covered very well though. So you might consider "The Lama book" for that ("Learning Perl"). Still, none of the books can tell you about the innards of the Perl in so much detail overall than "Programming Perl".

OOP is also toched upon in the book. Since purpose of the author is not to preach you OO lingo (but plain Perl), you'll treat that part just as an intorduction to OOP and consider "Object Oriented perl" by Damian Convey as the next text book.

I found chpater 14, "Tied variables" very helpfull though. It might remind you of DBM/Berkley DB, through the syntax

tie my %db, 'AnyDBM_File', 'my_file', O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0664;

but unfortunately it's not about DBM at all. It is about how the "tie" function works, and teaches you how to create your own classes for implementing with "tie". After that chapter, I even had to update some of my classes and saved lots of time for their updates.

"Compiling", chapter 18 ,is a must read chapter for those who "live & breath" with Perl (like me, may be ?).

I don't want you to buy the book unless you have a good understanding of Programming or/and have knowledge of some programming languages. Otherwise, it won't help at all.

If your purpose is just to get started with Web applications, go for "CGI progamming 101" by Jacqueline Hamilton. It is a good start. But if you want to go even deeper, "Learning Perl" and "Perl Coookbook" is the next choise. Keep the "The Camel" book as the next (but definitely, not the last).

Rating:
Summary: A real Perl bible
Review: It has been a long time ago when I started to experiment with Perl scripts and my highest handicap was that I had had no good book to learn Perl. Then I discovered Programming Perl in my local bookstore, bought it and learnt all main Perl features and tricks within a week!

Believe it or not, it is true story. If you want to start writing well-programmed and robust Perl scripts or applications, this book is the greatest option to start with. It slowely and understandably introduces you into Perl itself, each feature and method is closely described and everything is explained by lots of examples which highlight how it is easy to write any routine in Perl by several lines instead of long and hard-to-understand code in some other languages. Your programs will be no longer amateur and suffering low performance when you learn, for example, how to effectively use $_ variable or file handler tricks. I could write several pages describing a huge amount of Perl programming technologies covered in this book.

Although I am an experienced Perl programmer now, I still open Programming Perl from time to time, just to recall how to handle some script features which are hard to remember.

Rating:
Summary: The Perl bible, plain and simple
Review: I regard this book as the Perl equivalent of Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language. Simply put, it is the bible for the language: long, thorough, authoratative, and indulging in a fair amount of proselytizing. (The preaching becomes almost amusing when it tries to portray Perl's implementation of OOP as anything but ugly.) If nothing else, the authors' enthusiasm for the language shines through. Along with a somewhat witty writing style, it makes for good reading.

I have to disagree with those warning Perl newbies away from this book. I must admit that I did read Learning Perl first, as a result of all these cautionary tales. However, I felt that I learning nothing useful from the Llama, and I didn't even write my first Perl program until I began the Camel. Reading Programming Perl was very satisfying in that it portrayed the language in a no-nonsense manner that allowed me at last to see all that Learning Perl tried so hard to hide. Certainly, I don't recommend Programming Perl to those who are programming for the first time. However, experienced C programmers and computer scientists will probably pick up Perl pretty readily from this book. If nothing else, at least try Programming Perl first. You'll certainly need it eventually, since Learning Perl is not sufficient for anything but the most surface understanding of how to use the language. (The authors at least address the reader as somebody who knows nothing about Perl.)

The bottom line: if you're a programmer, you should have this book. Perl is just too useful a language not to know.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but could be better
Review: The book definitely is EVERYTHING you need to know about Perl. But that's as much of a weakness as it is a strength. Don't get me wrong, I think being comprehensive is a good thing. However, by being comprehensive, sometimes the "basics" get lost in the shuffle.

Also, I believe one of the authors must have a PHD in Linguistics. They go into painstaking detail to compare the perl programming language to the english language, which takes away from learning the programming language (the intent of the book). They also use very uncommon (large) words that aren't known to the majority of the target audience which also complicates learning.

Another criticism is they don't explore the windows piece of programming perl enough. I believe windows probably has 90% of the desktop OS market share so I would think they should include a little more info for that segment of the population.

One last criticism is that they introduce topics without explaining them. For instance, they use code for some "sample" programs and in that code is reserved words that haven't been explained yet which makes understanding the sample code very difficult.

I'm not saying it's a bad book, I'm just saying it has some areas it could definitely improve.

Have I found a better book? Not yet, but I'm still looking.

Rating:
Summary: Who said ....
Review: The book is definetely written for those who at least have some (or maybe a little more than just "some") programming background, and willing to learn Perl from the author of the language.

I read the first edition of the book, which was about 200 pages, or something in that range, which filled my mind with nothing but questions. Current edition, however, could answer to all of those questions (well, almost). Of course, to make it answer them I had to re-read the book four times. But none of the books I currently own (and I own quite a few) could've taken me to the innards of the language so deep no matter how many times I had read them. So the book is of value.

The Camel book, especially, does a great job on Regular Expressions and pattern matching. If you want to learn RegEx of perl in very details, you definitely need listen to the author of Perl. "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl is also a good choise, but doesn't include the latest updates.

Formats aren't covered very well though. So you might consider "The Lama book" for that ("Learning Perl"). Still, none of the books can tell you about the innards of the Perl in so much detail overall than "Programming Perl".

OOP is also toched upon in the book. Since purpose of the author is not to preach you OO lingo (but plain Perl), you'll treat that part just as an intorduction to OOP and consider "Object Oriented perl" by Damian Convey as the next text book.

I found chpater 14, "Tied variables" very helpfull though. It might remind you of DBM/Berkley DB, through the syntax

tie my %db, 'AnyDBM_File', 'my_file', O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0664;

but unfortunately it's not about DBM at all. It is about how the "tie" function works, and teaches you how to create your own classes for implementing with "tie". After that chapter, I even had to update some of my classes and saved lots of time for their updates.

"Compiling", chapter 18 ,is a must read chapter for those who "live & breath" with Perl (like me, may be ?).

I don't want you to buy the book unless you have a good understanding of Programming or/and have knowledge of some programming languages. Otherwise, it won't help at all.

If your purpose is just to get started with Web applications, go for "CGI progamming 101" by Jacqueline Hamilton. It is a good start. But if you want to go even deeper, "Learning Perl" and "Perl Coookbook" is the next choise. Keep the "The Camel" book as the next (but definitely, not the last).

Rating:
Summary: From a Perl novice
Review: I grew up teething on the trusty C=64, then went on to Q-Basic,Fortran-77 (I'm a mechanical engineer by schooling), and eventuallydabbled quite a bit with ANSI C. Except for a quarter of Fortran incollege, I've always been self-taught for computers and programming.I thought that this book would be the place to start my 'career' inPerl. Since it is the 'hot new thing' (although not that new) and Iam interested in Linux and the Apache web server, learning Perl seemedto be the natural extension. And on almost every FAQ, web site, etcetera about Perl, all speak of 'THE CAMEL' as being the bible.

BOYWAS I WRONG! I am not NEARLY smart enough to learn Perl straightfrom the Camel's mouth. But that doesn't mean that this is a terriblebook by any means, not at all. But I quickly jumped back on line hereat Amazon and picked up 'the Llama', aka Learning Perl, 2d Edition.Here's my path to success, being that I wasn't smart enough to learnfrom this book by itself! hahaha...

(1) Read 'Learning Perl'straight through at a leisurely pace. Just get a feel for thelanguage and syntax. (2) Download and install Perl... (3) Read'Learning Perl' a second time, this time not continuing until yousuccessfully complete the exercises at the end of each chapter. (4)Read 'Programming Perl', and when you get to a part that you havetrouble with, refer back to the lessons and examples in theLlama.

This worked quite well for me, and using the Llama before ANDin conjunction with the Camel seemed to enhance the meaning for me ofboth. My newest endeavor is to work through 'CGI Programming withPerl', another O'Reilly animal book ('the Mouse'? ).

Overall, thisis what I would term a 'readable reference'. While it doesn't havethe tutorial structure of the Llama or other learner's books, it isn'tquite as sticky as reading a pure reference guide. It's a wellthought out book for those with a half-way solid grasp of Perl and areready to start tackling some intermediate to higher level programminggoals. END

Rating:
Summary: I sold my book back
Review: The humor was too much for me. I tried to be calm and focus on learning Perl. But I gave up after three chapters. The authors take it too casually like a walk in the park, and try strange attempts too seriously to compare Perl with english language. I sold my book back on Amazon and lost nearly 20 dollars in the bargain. But still give it 3 stars because there are sure people who like to do things the light way. As for me, I like books who talk sense, I dont have time to waste reading jokes and silly footnotes.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible Information
Review: This book I bought after reading Elizebeth Castros's book "Perl And CGI for the Worl Wide Web". Personally I thought this book would be an intruiging dive into the world of Perl. I was dissapointed at the authors lack of coverage. He goes into this dumb speech about all the nooks and crannies; but fails at giving the reader a simple or otherwise not-so-simple example about a certain perl concept to make the subject more real to the reader. Of course I was able to apply out of curiousity the short examples. But that was because I read Elizebeth Castros's book "Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web"! I could not even apply the data in this book without my head getting spinny!And then running into a wall. Larry Wall's wall har har har! Well the humor is funny. But the book is not worth my time. Im sad that I wasted my precious time reading this junk!
If your interested in progressing to a higher learning level read the book "Core Perl" there are some good O'Reilly books out there, this one sucks! And you may prefer to read the other O'Reilly book about Perl. Of course other readers gave it high praise but they of course probably read other books and used this one as an idiosyncracy! Bypass this one fellas!

Rating:
Summary: Mandatory for Perl programming, but maddening all the same
Review: This book is like the Perl tax: everyone involved with Perl needs to pay out and get it, whether they want to or not. There is no other place where all the innards and tricky bits of Perl are laid bare. In that regard it's a bit like sendmail admins having to buy the bat book (the o'reilly sendmail book).

But unlike the bat book, and much as I respect this book and its authors, I find using it absolutely infuriating, not least because the index is a mess. Remember that perl is full of obscure little atoms like ., ^, $* and so on. You need an index that lists every darn one and their combinations. Unfortunately, the indexers of this book did not complete the job, which means that if you quickly want to refresh your memory about something small but important (like: whats the regular expression for whitespace, or is it .= or =. for string appends), you have to go trawling through the whole book.

Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners, but an absolute necessity!
Review: I read the first edition of this book.

After reading some of the reviews here, I am reminded of when I first picked up this book and didn't have the background to fully appreciate it.

After using Perl for several years doing Internet programming, and being exposed to all the languages it's possible to use, I still remain devoted to the work of this man, Larry Wall for what I believe to be the greatest contribution of all to humanity and to computer science.

I stopped here to reaffirm that the third edition will cover Object Oriented programming. Although nobody mentions this, I'm sure he will, and another book I have said it would.

Before brushing up on Object Oriented programming for Perl, I decided to re-read Learning Perl and Programming Perl (though I only had the first editions). Unlike the first times I attempted to read these two books, this time I was dumbfounded at how much info they (Larry and Randal) could cram into such a short place. One thing builds upon another. Everything written, the examples and all, took on new meaning. This was exciting reading because all the problems that it took me years to even identify were spelled out before me with examples I could immediately understand. There are many ways to do things in Perl, and my way, the obvious way, usually turns out to be the long way. Reading these books and adopting some new techniques they mention could literally save me years of time!

It's a lot like learning music. Unless someone tells you why you have to learn scales, you won't enjoy doing it and unless you stick with it long enough, you'll never learn why you need to know them.

I guess I'd have to say that sooner or later you will need these two books to be truly effective as a Perl programmer, but if you are a beginner, you won't know enough about Perl to realize why these are really great books. If you have several years of Perl experience, then these books will show you how to be incredibly effective, incredibly organized, and best of all, incredibly lazy!

One thing that makes Perl so strong, is that anything that has ever been done with Unix can be done with Perl. If you're operating equipment with Microsoft software, you're missing half the fun.

This book really shines if you already love Perl and worship those who spent enormous amounts of time making their priceless contributions.

This is probably not a good book if you're new to Perl, in a hurry, and are trying to debug some broken code.

I found "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days" by Sams Publishing to be all I needed in my early days. I only wish I had the ability to appreciate the information in these other two books then.

I am convinced that Perl is the highest level programming language there is and there is absolutely nothing that can't be done with it in less time and with less code than any other language.

Now I'm going to buy a brand new Programming Perl 3rd edition and I think I'll even have it shipped overnight!