Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but could've been better
Review: "Advanced Perl Programming" says in the Preface that it has two goals: 1) "To make you a perl expert" and 2) "to supplement your current arsenal of techniques and tools for crafting applications". If you want to buy this book because of the first goal mentioned above, you'll be decieved. Because the book doesn't cover all the issues in details to be able to make one a "Perl expert". To achieve that goal, I recommend you to go for "Programming Perl", "Perl Cookbook", "Object Oriented Perl" and "Mastering Regular expression". Those four all together will make a "perl expert" out of you. The book only meets its second goal, but only partially. Chapter 1 covers some basic data structure and introduces to references/pointers as they are implemented in Perl. The chapter is 22 pages only. Chapter 2, "Implementing Complex Data Structures" does show the implementation of some complex tasks using Perl's multi-dimensional data structures. It lasts about 14 pages You might find chapter 3, "Typeglobs and Symbol Tables" a bit usefull and more informative. Chapter 4, "Subroutine References and Closures" was the one i Just skipped over :) Chapter 5, "Eval" gives in depth explanation and the logick behind "eval()" and "eval { }". Lasts about 17 pages In Chapter 6, "Modules", i believe there's nothing much to discover. "Progamming Perl" gives all the information and even much more that Sriram covers his book. Lasts 13 pages. Chapter 7 and 8 cover Perl5's Object Oriented style and I found it pretty informative. I found it much better then that of "Progamming Perl". But when it comes to this subject, nothing can win "Object Oriented Perl" by Damian Convey Chapter 9, "Tie" is about perl's built-in "tie()" function and its implementation. The chapter may serve as a decent reference. But couldn't do the job better than "Progamming Perl 3rd editon", Chapter 14. I enjoyed Chapter 10 "Persistence" and Chapter 11 "Implementing Object Persistence". They deal with Storable, FreeThaw, Data::Dumper, Adaptor modules. I don't know any of the books out there that cover these topics in details. Chapter 11 and 12 are about Networking. They implement IO::Socket module for developping network clients, and write a Msg module for implementing "Messaging Tooklkit" Some good Tk examples are available in Chapters 14, 15 and 16. The rest of the book is dedicated to Perl's Internals and extending Perl. They use SWIG and XS toolkits. So if the above sounds like what you need from the book, you can buy it, I guess. If you're just starting Perl, and not good at Perl's some advanced data structures, you won't gain anything from buying this book. Go with "Learning Perl" for getting started and/or "CGI Programming 101" if your goal is to implement Perl in Web progamming. Good luck
Rating:
Summary: This is an okay book.
Review: For having "Advanced" in the title, it sure could be a let down. If you have Learning Perl, Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook, you can only get a little bit of knowledge from this book. Not horrible, but not really needed to expand your knowledge.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange, strange book...
Review: I am unable to categorize this book. As the title says, this is about advanced Perl programming, but chapter 1-9 really belongs in "Programming Perl" (but are totally missing from it), and should really not be considered advanced (on the other hand, quite elementary, but since they appear nowhere else, you should probably consider this book a must read, if you are serious about Perl). The rest of the book is pretty random, covering various topics the author thought was neat, and wanted to write about. This is ranging from trivial use of CPAN libraries (Tk), to trivial Perl but involving knowledge from other disciplines (networking), to actual useful advanced Perl programming (persistence, template-driven code-generation, and the C programming interface). This part of the book is also highly recommended (and in fact the reason I bought it), but should have been much longer.
Rating:
Summary: review from acgnj lunics (linux user group)
Review: I am unable to categorize this book. As the title says, this is about advanced Perl programming, but chapter 1-9 really belongs in "Programming Perl" (but are totally missing from it), and should really not be considered advanced (on the other hand, quite elementary, but since they appear nowhere else, you should probably consider this book a must read, if you are serious about Perl). The rest of the book is pretty random, covering various topics the author thought was neat, and wanted to write about. This is ranging from trivial use of CPAN libraries (Tk), to trivial Perl but involving knowledge from other disciplines (networking), to actual useful advanced Perl programming (persistence, template-driven code-generation, and the C programming interface). This part of the book is also highly recommended (and in fact the reason I bought it), but should have been much longer.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent transition from 'Llama' Book
Review: If you have read the famous "Llama Book" (Learning Perl by O'Reilly) and need a book to show you more advanced features, I highly recommend reading this book next. This book provides a introduction many advanced topics in Perl Programming, such as referencing, eval, Object-Oriented Programming and so on. The topics are quite varied and the chapters are brief and not too verbose. I really think this format is helpful for new Perl Programmers, especially those without a strong programming background, who aren't familiar with these concepts. I really like the author's easy-going, no-nonsense style. He will tell you how something works without too much technical terminology, and also will admit when another language is better suited for something. Readers who find Larry Wall's "Programming Perl" book difficult to understand will find this book refreshing. It provides a good introduction to advanced topics, and if the reader is interested they can read more detailed books such as the afore-mentioned "Programming Perl". This book is a definitely must-read for intermediate Perl Programmers.
Rating:
Summary: Best Perl book ever written!
Review: Perl is my favorite language and has been for many years. Iagree with the author that Perl and C/C++ makes for the most powerfulcombination of languages for developing incredible tools, and have used this combo many times. Add OpenGL (or Mesa) and Tk (not Tcl! ) to these two languages and I feel you can't go wrong. Perl by itself is the most powerful prototyping language ever invented. Before this book, I had a great deal of experience with Perl and considered myself an advanced Perl Hacker. I had probably bought 6 other Perl books previously. Yet this book has managed to teach me a great deal! The insights into the internals of the language are a tremendous help toward understanding Perl. No other book provides a clearer explanation of Perl that I have found. Excellent work, Sriram! (And many thanks to Larry Wall for the language, O'Reilly for supporting the language with excellent documentation, and especially Tom Christiansen for all his help over the years with learning Perl! END
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: Reading this book will definitely increase your knowledge of Perl. Definitely not content-free. It may not have every topic everyone would hope to see, but it covers some useful stuff like template-driven code generation fairly well. You should read Programming Perl first. Also, read Object Oriented Perl for more elaboration on that topic.
Rating: 
Summary: nice breadth of topics
Review: The book does a nice job of explaining some of the obscure areas of Perl. Each chapter is summarized by showcasing the strengths and weaknesses of Perl with Java,Python,C++,TCL. This is a good refresher book for intermediate level Perl programmers. It was definitely a fun read. I think O'Reilly is readying a second edition.
Rating:
Summary: one of the better ones
Review: This book has a lot of content that isn't well represented in other perl books. Although many of the code examples have errors (especially the ptk section), the author is good about helping the reader understand what's going on. I had little trouble working out the broken bits. I felt at times the "perl" actually got lost in the examples, as they tended to focus on the abstract problem more than the perl code being written to solve it, but this is a minor issue. There is a lot of content covered and the author does a reasonable job of explaning the topics in an efficient manner. Warning to the reader looking for advanced perl/Tk -- there isn't any in this book. The perl/Tk part was the reason I bought this, but was a bit disappointing. Compared to the swarm of perl books on the market, this is one of the top titles. Worth its price many times over.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: This is a great book. If you want to excel in PERL programming, this is a great text. It is written in a clear, detailed manner.
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