Rating: 
Summary: "Perl for Dummies" is definitely not for dummies
Review: .I gave this book only 3 stars. That's not because it's not an excellent book from which to learn Perl, but because it's misleading in what it's trying to be. "Perl for Dummies" is most certainly not for dummies. Had I not already had a background in programming I beleive I would have found it very hard to grasp the concepts being explained in this book. What's more, I didn't like the layout of the book. They have the reader picking apart Perl programs before you learn what any of the programming terms even mean. I found that slightly confusing. Another disappointment was the lack of attention given to CGI applications using Perl. There was just one breif chapter dedicated to this. On the upside, though, the book does take you through many of the Perl functions and methods that make it such a powerful programming language. If you already have a little programming experience and you'd like to experiment with Perl, go ahead and give this book a try. But if your sole purpose for using Perl is to create CGI scripts I may recommend shopping around a little more.
Rating: 
Summary: I bought it a week ago...
Review: After reading the good reader reviews, I bought it last week. I have very little programming experience (does hypertalk count?) and I am on chapter six. Already I can recommend this book, and the user comments were dead on! This book makes Perl easy to learn, and is presented the way I had wished for, in a concise and comprehensible way for a complete beginner like myself.
Rating: 
Summary: Good beginners guide, but missing Sendmail and cgi security
Review: Although the book contains several typos (including a couple in the program code), and does not include examples using the popular "Sendmail" program, it is generally good for someone who already has an understanding of how to program but has no knowledge about Perl. I had originally written all my cgi programs in C. After reading this book, I rewrote all of them in Perl, and was astounded at the simplicity of the results. I will never again program cgi's in C. I easily located instructions and examples of programs not covered in this book (like "Sendmail") on the web. One note of advice: read the suggested web reference for cgi security!
Rating:
Summary: A great place to start in Perl.
Review: As always, you have to be very careful with the 'Dummies' line of programming books, as most of them turn out to be terrible. This one however, is terrific. It did a great job of simplifying the sometimes arcane syntax of Perl, and explaining (at least at a beginner level) how some of the Perl features differ on Unix systems and Win32 systems, and even on Mac systems. No, the book won't teach you everything; a Dummies book shouldn't be held up to that. When I was done with this one, I moved into the O'Reilly books to go further with Perl. This book will get you going in Perl much better than the O'Reilly Perl books of fame ('Learning Perl' and 'Programming Perl'), though. Popular opinion says everyone should be able to learn Perl from scratch from the O'Reilly books and that's just not true. They are colder, more rigid texts that will do fine when one is more advanced with Perl. I've only come across a couple of great 'Dummies' programming books, and this is one of them ('Active Server Pages for Dummies' was the other). Get over yourself - you're not too cool for a Dummies book. Buy this one.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, easy to read and worth its price.
Review: Dummies books usually are not in depth. This one is not an exception, but in my opinion this is the best Dummies book out there. I started reading this book knowing absolutely nothing about Perl. Now I feel ready to answer any question about the language.
Rating:
Summary: The Absolute BEST Perl Book for Beginners
Review: For the non-programmer wanting to learn Perl, this is THE Book to read. The author is knowledgable and able to transfer that knowledge in a concise and entertaining way.Several other supposed "entry-level" Perl programming books left me frustrated, but this one brought it all home for me.If you need one book to get you started learning to read and write Perl, buy this one.
Rating:
Summary: A very good place to start
Review: For those who frown upon Dummies books, you should ease up a bit and give this one some serious thought. Perl for Dummies is strictly for beginners. When I say beginners, I mean people with absolutely no programming experience in any language. I compared this book to Learning Perl and found that Learning Perl is written primarily for seasoned non-Perl programmers who are trying to learn Perl for the first time. If you are like me, with no programming know how, this is a more appropriate beginning. It explains such simplicities as scalars, arrays, adding and removing list elements, conditionals, etc. It even goes (lightly) into CGI and regular expressions. It does so in a language which understands that the reader is a "dummy" when it comes to programming and most importantly, it keeps it simple. Simplicity is the primary teaching strategy when dealing with a topic at the novice level, and Perl for Dummies does this well. The weakness of this book is that it does not do a good job of teaching you how to install Perl from the CD provided. In fact, the instructions provided were downright wrong. I had to ask a Perl programmer how to install and run Perl programs on my Windows 98 system. Another weakness, if you can call it that with a book at this level, is that it lacks program examples which would allow me to see what exactly can Perl do in the real world, such as system administration in a UNIX environment. I recommend this book as the starting point, with Learning Perl and Elements of Programming Perl as your next logical step. After you have mastered these books should you go on the Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook.
Rating:
Summary: A very good place to start
Review: For those who frown upon Dummies books, you should ease up a bit and give this one some serious thought. Perl for Dummies is strictly for beginners. When I say beginners, I mean people with absolutely no programming experience in any language. I compared this book to Learning Perl and found that Learning Perl is written primarily for seasoned non-Perl programmers who are trying to learn Perl for the first time. If you are like me, with no programming know how, this is a more appropriate beginning. It explains such simplicities as scalars, arrays, adding and removing list elements, conditionals, etc. It even goes (lightly) into CGI and regular expressions. It does so in a language which understands that the reader is a "dummy" when it comes to programming and most importantly, it keeps it simple. Simplicity is the primary teaching strategy when dealing with a topic at the novice level, and Perl for Dummies does this well. The weakness of this book is that it does not do a good job of teaching you how to install Perl from the CD provided. In fact, the instructions provided were downright wrong. I had to ask a Perl programmer how to install and run Perl programs on my Windows 98 system. Another weakness, if you can call it that with a book at this level, is that it lacks program examples which would allow me to see what exactly can Perl do in the real world, such as system administration in a UNIX environment. I recommend this book as the starting point, with Learning Perl and Elements of Programming Perl as your next logical step. After you have mastered these books should you go on the Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful
Review: Having been almost completely stumped by trying to learn Perl using the camel, I was desperate to find something that would make it a bit easier to get started. This book was just what the doctor ordered. True, there were no excercises, but I could dream up my own without much difficulty. I would have given this book the full five stars as a starter for Perl (at least for someone like me who has programming experience; non-Perl, non-C, but still) if it hadn't been for one thing: Doesn't anyone proofread these things? It's bad enough when there are irritating t7pos in the text describing things, but when the little sample code snippets have errors in them, that's really bad. That said, the book made me realize at the first glance when the code was bad, so it definitely taught me something. And now I feel ready to go back to the camel again.
Rating:
Summary: In the "Dummies" tradition, a great book.
Review: I am a professional webmaster for a large Aerospace company, and I depend on Perl for a great many of my CGI scripts. I have many Perl references, but my most dog eared and well used book is this one. The "dummies" series are great references, and this is the book I would keep if forced to get rid of all my other Perl references.
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