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Summary: TMTOWTDI
Review: TMTOWTDI-There's more than one way to do it, Perl's famous moto.
This book is a lean mean learning machine. It's not for perl beginners though, like I was when I bought it. I found I had to research every other new concept while reading until I came across another fantastic book by OReilly called 'Learning Perl' which answered all of my questions, and paved my way to understanding the perl bible (aka, Programming Perl).It won't have you sitting at the edge of your seat waiting to turn the next page, but it will have your customers sitting in suspense on how you wrote such a [kicking] program that does so many things, all while being so fast. The best thing about this book combined with Learning Perl, is if you don't like (or in my case don't understand) how they did an example it's a cakewalk to program it entirley different with no adverse effects. Obviously I'd have to try pretty hard to program something differently than Larry Wall and make it faster or just as fast, but that's not the point.
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Summary: Excellent introduction and reference
Review: I just started programming in Perl only 4 months or so ago. I had previously picked up some very CGI-oriented Perl books and these turned me off to the language. But _Programming Perl_ is wonderfully different, for a number of reasons: First, it is about the language in general, not just about CGI programming. It has an excellent little introduction to the CGI:: module, but of course it also introduces you to hundreds of other useful CPAN modules. Second, it isn't a "for dummies" book. You have to understand programs and files and loops. That said, it doesn't fall into the trap of teaching you how to translate C to Perl - it shows you the "easy" way of doing things (via hashes, OO, grep and map, etc.) without getting too caught up in the things that make other programming languages such an amazing sink of time. Third, it teaches the idioms of Perl programming. Follow the idioms, and you'll generate readable and maintainable code. It's not the only Perl book I own - I can also recommend Christiansen's _Perl Cookbook_ and Conway's _Object-Oriented Perl_ - but it is far and away the one I refer to the most.
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Summary: Too Much Garbage, Not Enough Perl
Review: Here's a quick summary of my opinion: I think the third edition is a TERRIBLE book for people who already know how to program, and want to come up to speed on Perl. And if your not familiar with unix systems, you SURE should look elsewhere, cuz you'll get no help from this book. In the intro to the third edition, the authors note that they've added "more tutorial information for non-programmers." Well, let me tell you: Between all this new tutorial information (comparing Perl to English) and the author's "funny" comments in parentheses, it's hard to follow the substance of this book. I've been programming for years. I can apprecaite a funny programming book - as long as it's well written. Humor in a such a book can help to keep the reader engaged in a dry topic. But THIS book!? Man! Every other paragraph has three "funny" interjections. It gets tiring. MUCH worse is the "tutorial information" for those who might be new to programming. The book reads like somebody went through the text, interjecting explanations anywhere they thought a programming neophyte might not understand something. It's really hard for an experienced developer to read past this stuff. Taken all together, you get good material interspersed with too many pseudo-jokes and too much useless quasi-turtorial information. It's hard to follow. It's hard to dig out anything useful. Another really enormous failing of this book is its near total assumption that readers have unix backgrounds. Oh, there are some condescending references to non-unix platforms ("welcome to OUR world" is one). But many things are explained as being "similar to shell scripting". So, while the authors assumes that the reader might not know what an array is (arrgh) they assume you know what DBM is, or what name globbing is, or whatever. This book is VERY unhelpful to Windows programmers. To hear other people talk about this book, you'd think it was handed down to the development community on Mt. Sinai etched on stone tablets. Well, that MAY have been true of the second edition. But this edition... Yuck! Absolutely HIDEOUS.
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Summary: Impress everyone with regular expressions
Review: I have to admit that before using this book I used "Learning Perl." However everything that I learned in the first book was in the first chapter of this book. I'm very impressed with the layout of this book. Every time I turned a new page I found something else I had to try. One paragraph in chapter six prime outlines the whole reason for really wanting to use pearl. "Perl doesn't just glue together other computer languages. It also glues together command line interpreters, operating systems, processes, machines, devices, networks, databases, institutions, cultures, web pages, GUIs, peers, servers, and clients, not to mention people like system administrators, users, and of course, hackers, both not be in nice. In fact pearl is rather competitive about cooperative." This book is well designed to get you off the Ground and hit the deck running. You wont be left standing line a sitting duck. I doubt that I can give it enough stars.
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Summary: learn perl easily
Review: perl seems to be a very hard program at first, but you can learn it easily by reading this book... perl is a powerful program which is supported by all operating systems and can be also used for web developement and web programming
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Summary: If you only buy one Perl book, buy this one.
Review: This is an excellent book for those who already know another programming language and want to learn Perl. It assumes a certain familiarity with basic programming concepts and data structures, but doesn't assume you know anything at all about Perl itself.
The bulk of the book (and this is quite a bulky book indeed) is a detailed tour of the language that doesn't shy away from digging into the nitty-gritty of how things work at a low level. Don't let that intimidate you, though; after the first couple of chapters I was already writing successful Perl programs, making heavy use of the well-organized reference material in the back of the book.
The reference material is no-nonsense, but the other chapters have a lighthearted, irreverent tone that reminds me a lot of the old AppleSoft BASIC manuals. Some people may not like this, but I found it helpful because it made the material less dry and more enjoyable to read. The chapter on pattern matching is especially good; I never felt I really *understood* regular expressions until I read it.
I do have a few complaints; while the index is good, the somewhat wordy style of the non-reference chapters can make information a bit hard to find. There are some things that just aren't covered in the reference section, like the pattern matching character classes, that you can end up hunting for in other chapters.
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Summary: The Bible
Review: I wouldn't say this is simple the Perl bible, but the Bible itself! I mean, it only covers Perl, but it should be used as an example for all books.
It covers every nook and cranny of perl, from regular expressions, to object-oriented perl, to obscure overloading procedures. It even has a (brief) section on Perl Poetry.
Not to mention, Larry Wall's writing style is that of a true genius. It's flowing and easy to read, and f**king hilarious! If you're a programmer but not interested in perl, look at a friend's copy of this book just for the wonderfully funny footnotes.
I recommend this for a programmer with at least one language of background. That or experience with BASIC (seeing as how I said 'language'). Even if you don't have interest in Perl, start reading, and I assure you, you will.
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Summary: ! Concise && ( not very good with the examples)
Review: If you want to look through murky waters to find a pearl then look no further.
Like other reviewers I don't understand the concept of dilluding the content with wordless verbiage. A great book for me contains the following: tell me the important parts about the subject matter, give me concrete examples, show me some cool stuff, and please do it as quick as possible. I somehow think that the author had his mind on something else when he put this book together, longer/thicker doesn't make a better book.
Don't get me wrong there is plenty of usefull information hidden within the passages.
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Summary: Don't Believe the (Sp|C)urious Negative Reviews
Review: If you're like me, and you're shopping for a book, you immediately start reading the negative reviews and work upwards. So I started reading the reviews and read through them all, bought the book despite the many negative, and frankly, snippish comments made by many reviewers and decided that I need to respond. Many say that the examples are convoluted, or that he focuses on obscure language references. One says the book starts quickly with a discussion of the splice function. The first mention of splice is on page 355, which I certainly don't define as 'quickly'.... Others say that there are no examples, or they are not explained clearly, but there's a short sample program right on page 18, and then 4 pages are devoted to analyzing the program and how it works. Further review through the book shows many small examples, especially in the sections that outline the core functions of Perl, and the core modules of Perl. Others come here and criticize Perl the language, and use this as a platform for their own advocacy of other languages. This is just silly. If you're interested in Perl, or you've been using Perl and you want to know more, buy this book. In the universe of computer programming, every language choice you make is controversial, and subject to debate, and just because some reviewers do not like Perl the language, it does not mitigate the quality of this book. That all being said, and debunking the frankly lousy reviews, I'll caution that this is NOT for beginning programmers, or people with limited technical knowledge. O'Reilly knows this, and anyone who has read this book should know this too. There is a book called 'Beginning Perl', also from O'Reilly, and written by one of the other top minds in Perl. It is easy to follow, provides many concrete examples and is where a beginning programer should begin. If you have a technical background, you will probably be able to start with this book, though Learning Perl is still worth reading. What this book provides is not only an exhaustive guide to the language of Perl, and it's abilities, but also insight into it's design, the decisions of the creator of the language (Larry Wall, the main author of the book created Perl), and the major philosophy behind Perl. This is a valuable reference and worth having. This is the book that I turn to when I have Perl questions. And this book is worth every penny I spent to get it.
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Summary: This book will be your guide
Review: I purchased this book last year. I started reading it and quickly realized it's not a tutorial, but a reference. If you do not know anything about perl, don't start here. Buy Learning Perl instead. Once you finish Learning Perl, and are getting better at perl, even using what Larry Wall call's "baby talk", then I would recommend getting Programming Perl. This book is very in-depth regarding everything perl has to offer, and then some. So if you are new to perl, or to programming, get a tutorial first, then dive into programming perl.
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