Rating: 
Summary: A quick and painless way to learn the fundamentals of PERL
Review: TEACH YOURSELF PERL IN 21 DAYS was the first book I bought on the Perl scripting language. While it has no claims above being an introduction to the material, it has got quite a lot of information packed into its 720 pages. I had no background in Perl at all (though I already knew several other CS languages and scripts), but with this book I had no trouble picking it up. I was able to learn a fair amount of knowledge in a short amount of time. The layout of the book is quite helpful and organized; people with no background in Computer Science can start from the beginning with no trouble, while those readers who already know most of the fundamentals can skip ahead to the later chapters.This book will teach you almost everything you will need to know as a beginning Perl programmer. It starts with the basics (the ever-present "Hello World" example, operators, variables) and slowly moves to more in-depth topics (such as hashing, lists, strings, loops and subroutines) until finally getting to the harder stuff (file I/O, CGI scripting and references). TEACH YOURSELF PERL IN 21 DAYS won't give you everything that you will ever need to know, but it will definitely fill in almost all of the blanks that you need to know most of the time. As a book for beginners, this book should have everything you're looking for. It also makes a fairly good reference guide once you've managed to establish yourself as a Perl programmer. I'd advise buying a second, more advanced book, once you're ready to move onto more sophisticated topics. But as an introduction, this book will cover practically everything you will need to know. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A good book for learning Perl
Review: This is a good book as an introduction to Perl progamming. I have used it as the textbook for my Perl class for two semesters and have found it to be effective. There is no particular emphasis on CGI; rather, this is a book about Perl as a general programming language. It is also not, by any means, a reference book. Complimented with "Programming Perl," you'll have all you need to get started. Good points: * Chapters are just the right size for learning. * Laura Lemay is a good writer. Her style is easy to read and she takes the time to explain new topics. * Quizzes and exercises test your skill and suggest programming assignments. Bad points: * There are a few typos in the examples that need to be fixed, particularly in the regular expressions section. The vast majory of examples are OK, though. * Doesn't get into object-oriented Perl much.
Rating: 
Summary: It just didn't work for me
Review: This book is not helpful for the newbies. Not only do some of the scripts not work, but the way Perl is explained in this book, it just doesn't make enough sense. I learned more from online tutorials that were perhaps 3 pages long than I learned in 15 pages of one chapter of this book. I usually pick things up quite easily, so it must be the book that is confusing. At least two of the script examples given in Chapters 1-8 had typos in them, and not enough explanation for someone that doesn't know much to figure out what. I am unfortunately going to have to give up on this book to learn Perl and turn to the internet... too bad I spent $35 for the book. I don't recommend this book to anyone except perhaps someone that already knows Perl.
Rating:
Summary: good beginner's book, too many typos
Review: I knew nothing about Perl and bought this book because other Amazon reviewers said it was good for newbies, and I found that to be true as well. In contrast, Randal Schwartz's "Learning Perl" book, which I flipped through in the bookstore, is just too hard for a complete newbie. However, the book falls a little short when addressing Perl's more advanced functions and features. The "Going Deeper" section found in each chapter is easily the most annoying aspect of the book. In each "Going Deeper" section, the author touches on some interesting and advanced features of Perl without going into any depth or providing code examples. Get this book to learn Perl but get something more advanced so that you can actually use Perl for something useful. Also, there were way too many typos in this book. It's difficult to get rid of typos, but a programming book must be free of typos in its code examples otherwise the reader does not know whether his programs are crashing because of his own mistakes or the book's typos. Some reviewers state that some typos are inevitable in any book with lots of code examples. I disagree. Anyone providing code examples should test and debug it before publishing it. I wouldn't want my name on a book which had buggy code because of typos, so I don't see why any professional author would do the same. I went to the book's website to list some of the typos but aside from the home page, the rest of the website has not been constructed. Hopefully, the author will get around to finishing the website so that readers can post where typos can be found and the author can provide errata pages as well as correcting mistakes for the second edition.
Rating: 
Summary: Great beginners book!
Review: This is the book that I used to teach myself Perl. I was able to breeze through it in 3 days, not 21 days and I would recommend the Teach Yourself series by SAMS to anyone who wants to learn a computer language. Later when you need a big reference book, I would recommend "Programming Perl" by O'Reilly.
Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to the language
Review: I was able to quickly learn the basics of the language from this book. It is well laid out, gives many clear examples, shows a lot of useful things you can do with the language. I have grown beyond this, but still use it as my first reference when I forget basic stuff.
The O'Reilly books are wonderful too, but I would recommend getting them after you have worked through this book. They do a better job explaining why, but this book is great for jumping into the how.
Also has a very good introduction to CGI, cookies and Perl philosophy.
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Summary: Great companion for a Perl/CGI course
Review: I am currently using this book as a companion for my Perl/CGI course. It is an excellant book. When I have problems understanding what the professor talks about in class, I just come home and go over the similar topics in the book. If you are a student planning on taking a Perl/CGI course, you should purchase this book.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for learning perl.
Review: This book is a very useful book for learning perl. It is a beginning book for people willing to learn a new language. Obviously, if you read the title it will be for people who want to learn perl. This book is a great way to jump start learning perl. After reading this book, I would recommend getting other perl books from O'Reilly, but this is the best beginner perl book I have seen.
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Summary: do not buy this book
Review: While I am not personally familiar with David Till, the author of Sams Teach Yourself Perl5 in 21 Days, I've drawn many conclusions about the man, few of them complimentary. I borrowed the book from one of our web designers and decided to teach myself Perl. I have no previous programming experience per se, but I have six years experience working on the networking/maintenance side of computers, and have a decent knowledge of batch writing and OS's. At first it seemed like a great book. My only original complaint was Till's writing, which is at best clumsy and at worst confusing. Still, I plowed through into the fifth day. There, the programming examples given begin to resemble the writing: clumsy, confusing, and -- what is poison for a coding manual -- illogical. One of his examples takes 100 calculations to generate 10 numbers, and fails to meet his own criteria. This broke my faith in the book, but I continued until I found two other programs given as answers that simply don't work. That's unacceptable for a programming tutorial. I've switched to O'Reilly's Learning Perl, which is much better written and provides sound code. If you're just a beginner, learning how to program is hard enough without your tutorial working against you. Do not buy this book.
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Summary: The best Perl book I have found !
Review: This is definitely the best Perl book ! Definitely for beginner as well as those who already know some Perl language. I started with "Learning Perl" by Schwartz but I think this one is even better. I particularly like the quiz , Q&A sections as well as the exercises. THERE IS NO WAY to learn Perl without EXERCISES! Out of 5 Perl books that I bought, I found this one and the Learning Perl camel book to be the two books that everyone should own.
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