Rating: 
Summary: I've Seen Better
Review: The author states up front that you should know the perl language. If you know perl, you might enjoy this book. If you don't know perl, don't buy this book.I found the orginization of the book to be clunky. The book didn't flow well from topic to topic. Having a basic knowledge of CGI, I was able to wade my way through it and understand what the author was trying to convey. If I was a beginner, I would have a hard time grasping the concepts. In short, buy this book if you are already familiar with perl and CGI programming. If you are a beginner with CGI programming, look for another book.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing - well below the quality O'Reilly is known for
Review: The first problem is that the book is obviously misnamed.
There are several chapters that deal with non-CGI
Web programming issues, such as JavaScript and email. There are numerous typos, distortions, omissions, and
misstatements of fact througout the book. I have seen
many of them listed on the offical errata page O'Reilly
maintains for the book, but have noticed several that
aren't listed yet. Three authors for one book in this
case clearly resulted in too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Rating: 
Summary: ugh!
Review: The rat certainly would be an appropriate image for this subject, except in this case it is an insult to rats. What an awful book.
Rating: 
Summary: Be ready to do extra research...
Review: There seems to be some good content, but I'm shocked at the number of errors in the code examples. They probably should have had an extra round of editing before they published. Check the errata page at the O'Reilly web site.
Rating:
Summary: No new information, not complete
Review: This book is excellent for any wanna-be CGI programmer with previous knowledge of Perl. It gives step by step lessons that will not only present you with information and ideas, but test you on the knowledge, forcing you to learn it, and learn it well. The three writers are some of the best in their field (I know for a fact), so you can be sure you are getting "lessons" from the best of the best. What makes it even better is that they also can write clearly and well! The only drawback to this book is that you NEED to pick up Perl programming skills before you begin. I have had many people ask me why I recommended them this book without telling them that you need to know some Perl language. To prevent that from happening, I am telling you now. :) O'Reilly's Camel book is a good Perl reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Written and Concise Book
Review: This book is excellent for any wanna-be CGI programmer with previous knowledge of Perl. It gives step by step lessons that will not only present you with information and ideas, but test you on the knowledge, forcing you to learn it, and learn it well. The three writers are some of the best in their field (I know for a fact), so you can be sure you are getting "lessons" from the best of the best. What makes it even better is that they also can write clearly and well! The only drawback to this book is that you NEED to pick up Perl programming skills before you begin. I have had many people ask me why I recommended them this book without telling them that you need to know some Perl language. To prevent that from happening, I am telling you now. :) O'Reilly's Camel book is a good Perl reference.
Rating:
Summary: Rush job and it shows
Review: This book is full of typos, which is forgivable if the code examples don't have typos, but they do. For instance, in the code for upload.cgi on pg 99, the following declaration is made: use constant UPLOAD_DIR => "/usr/local/apache/data/uploads"; Note this does NOT end with a slash. Later, though, a loop is initialized as follows: until (sysopen OUTPUT, UPLOAD_DIR . $filename, O_CREAT | O_EXCL) $filename is taken from user form input, but unless the user was omniscient and put a slash at the beginning of the name he assigned, then the expression "UPLOAD_DIR" . $filename would evaluate to something like: /usr/local/apache/data/uploadsbleedin_file_name instead of the correct: ".../uploads/bleedin_file_name". Oh, and speaking of putting a slash at the beginning of the file name....there is code that is supposed to prevent such, as evidenced by the line: error($q, "Invalid file name; files must start with a letter or number."); I don't know about slashes, but it didn't prevent me from sending a file name through that begin with a tilde. Yes the book covers some things you won't find anywhere else, but a lot of the stuff it covers is better covered elsewhere: OReilly's "Webmaster in a NutShell" has better coverage of HTTP. It (Webmaster) also discusses using the use statement to reference a library in a path where you might have had to manually install it in your virtual hosting directory if for instance you couldn't convince your ISP to upgrade to the latest version of CGI.pm. This wasn't covered in the CGI book, which is supposed to be solely about CGI, whereas the Webmaster book not only covers CGI/Perl, but also JavaScript, PHP, etc. Don't waste your money....I'm sorry I did
Rating: 
Summary: Great Introduction to Programming in CGI
Review: This book is great for people who are starting out programming in CGI. A beginner's knowledge of Perl is required to get the full benefits of the book. I found the authors to be very objective and they touch upon every aspect of CGI. Unfortunately, due to space limitations I suppose, they cannot get too deep into any one topic. That is why this book is good for new comers to CGI. It will show you everything you need to know to get started with writing CGI scripts. They make reference to other books that go deeper into a particular topic (albeit from O'Reilly) throughout the book. I found this book to be an excellent learning tool for someone who is building his or hers first web site based on CGI/Perl. It reads well, explains topics well, and is good at getting right to the point.
Rating:
Summary: No new information, not complete
Review: This book pales in comparison to Learning Perl and Programming Perl, which are both essential books to read before you can even attempt to understand the examples in CGI Programming. The essential information contained can easily be discovered on countless internet tutorials, and with more depth. CGI Programming only skims over each topic, never going in to much depth, and the topics that it covers are much to varied and vast. I own this book but rarely use it. By the time you have read Learning Perl and/or Programming Perl, you will find CGI Programming obsolete.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, but not much there.
Review: This is an okay book, but there's not much there. If you already know Perl and a little about CGI, there's not much to be had from this book. Learning Perl, Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook (The O'Reilly one) will complete everything you need to know. This doesn't do much for you.
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