Rating: 
Summary: The definitive PERL Programming Book
Review: Programming Perl, an O'Reilly Nutshell series book, is by far one of the best Perl programming books available. This book has almost everything anyone could possibly want to know about how to do things in the Perl language, commonly used on the World Wide Web. Each chapter is clear and concise and the latter part of the book includes several programs and examples on how to do the most common tasks.
The Second Release, available in October, 1996 should be even better with updates to cover the current Perl 5.0 version. This book should be in every Perl programmer's library
Rating:
Summary: The Only PERL Book You'll Ever Need
Review: This is by far the finest book I've seen on PERL
programming, for the beginner and advanced programmer
alike. Loaded with references, helpful hints, and code
tid-bits, entertaining yet informative, and never too
verbose, this is certainly well worth the price.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful perl reference for programmers
Review: This book DOES assume you already know how to program.
If you're starting completely from scratch, this probably
isn't the book for you. But if you know C or some other
language and want to pick up perl with just the fundamentals,
read the first couple chapters of general info and then just
start playing. The function references in this book are
great.
Rating:
Summary: One of two must-have books for Perl programming
Review: The Quick Reference Guide alone justifies the price.
Note that in Q3 1996 (or so) the 5.0 version should be
out -- many additions.
Rating: 
Summary: A "don't have to" read
Review: The official reference for the Perl language did not improve in its second generation. The original "purple Camel" is, in my opinion, a true classic where books about programming and programming languages are concerned--I rank it right there with The C Programming Language, Anatomy of Lisp, Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs, and so forth. It was a classic because it was filled with lucid expressions of the thoughts of Perl's quintessentially pragmatic creator, Larry Wall. It was a classic because it provided a literate and thoroughly reasoned counterpoint to arguments in favor of more formally based languages and programming styles.But ... somewhere in the extensive revisions, additions, extensions, and deletions that transformed the first Camel book into this, the second Camel book, the magic went away. And some very suspicious stuff went in. The book lost its digressive, essayic feel and became more of a perfunctory reference work. Additionally, some of the completely new material turned out to be just a little ... strange. The discussion of object-oriented programming based around the term "thingy" just doesn't do it for me. (Ignore all that and read Damian Conway's book instead.) Preferences of style and tone aside, an unavoidable flaw of an infrequently-updated book like this one is that it inevitably refers to an obsolescent version of Perl. If you want current Perl documentation, you need to read the man(ual) pages that came with that version of Perl. What's in this book is generally but not completely accurate for newer versions of Perl. And because it's intended to be a more or less complete reference covering even small details, it can't help but be dead wrong on some points as the language continues to evolve. Bear in mind, also, that much of the material in this book comes STRAIGHT from the man pages. (Just not the up-to-date versions.) A third edition is in the works, which will no doubt be at least a temporary improvement. If the newer version restores the insight and charm of the original, it will certainly deserve a place on your programming bookshelf. But as a reference work intended to cover a constantly-evolving language, Programming Perl will always suffer by being out of date. If you are the type who dislikes reading electronic documentation, by all means, buy a copy of this book. But you'll find that you have to use the online documentation anyway.
Rating: 
Summary: The author talks too much
Review: I had read only 5 chapters and didn't tolerate it anymore. The author talks too much.. each 10 lines he wrote anything about his life. I had gotten nervous. Buy it by a humour book, dont a programming book.
Rating:
Summary: Best Perl Book around...
Review: I learned Perl from man pages a while ago... Then got this book about five or so years ago when I started teaching a class on Perl. Let me tell you, this is the best Perl book out there...
You do need to be able to program to understand this book---and to appreciate many of the insights/jokes it makes. This book is funny! It spends -some- time explaining the syntax, etc., but the true value of this book comes from explaining the motivation for various language features. The philosophy behind Perl. Once you get the philosophy behind Perl, the entire language starts to make a lot of sense---it becomes beautiful, easy to read, understand, etc. The book also answers questions like ``why should I learn Perl?'', and ``what makes it better than other languages?''
The way that I use the book is (in class): You read the first 5 chapters to learn the language (actually, the first 2 chapters are enough to give you a good grasp of how to do pretty much anything), then the rest of the book becomes a pretty good reference on how to do specific things (like networking, threads, OOP, etc.).
Oh, and I use Perl every day for pretty much everything. My rule: if it needs speed, use C, if it needs a GUI, use Java or C#, if it's web-based, use PHP, and for everything else (no particular need; 99% of the stuff that I do) use Perl.
Rating:
Summary: Daunting, but so is life
Review: For those reviewers complaining about the complexity of this book, you should bear in mind that this is aimed at people with some Perl experience and does in fact provide extremely useful information.
It is not intended to be read from cover to cover, rather it servers as an encylopedia or verbose dictionary of Perl. The occasional funny bits break up what is otherwise a fairly dry book.
If you want examples etc then get Learning Perl or the Perl Cookbook from the same publisher. In fact if you are serious about Perl you should have all three books.
Rating:
Summary: the quintessential perl source
Review: It is nearly impossible to deprecate the book written by the author of a language. Just as there will be no way to replace Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language", there will also never be a book that can replace Larry Wall's "Programming Perl".
"Programming Perl" is more then just a tutorial: it's a reference to the Perl language, the perl interpreter, and the Perl mindset. the first several chapters explain--in depth--the features of the Perl language. The middle section offers an explanation of some of the concepts, technologies and hurdles of modern Perl, including Unicode, IPC, threading, and even mixed programming with C. The final section explains all the little "extras" that make Perl so versatile: CPAN, the standard modules, and hints on portability and documentation.
nearly 300 pages of reference tables and charts at the end, round out this magnificent book. This is invaluable for an Perl programmer.
Rating:
Summary: Rambles on, Perl itself is tricky to use
Review: This book is extremeley disorganized and confusing, much like the Perl language itself. The books is filled with clever puns which add nothing to the book except more pages. The internet owes much to Perl, but the language itself is very ad-hoc, filled with confusing and unnecessary symbols ($, $_, @, ->), has a terrible object model, and scales very poorly to larger programs. If you have any choice in the matter, choose Python instead, which is a far more elegant language (Books: Learning Python for beginners or Python in a Nutshell for more advanced user). If you must use Perl, there must be better books than this.
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