Rating: 
Summary: For Twice the Price Go Buy The CD With All 6 Books
Review: If you want a quick reference, try the CD on for size, speed, and thoroughness.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for the basics, not as good for the advanced feature
Review: Like all of the "Nutshell" series, this book is a detailed language reference with little or no "how to" value. Even so, I learned more about Perl from this book than any other I've read. The basics of the language are well documented and easy to apply when you need to. The second portion of the book deals with the various modules available for Perl. It is in this section that the book begins to gloss over things and becomes far less useful. Even the examples in these areas become more confusing. If you need a reference for the language basics, the book is wonderful. For the modules, it is little more than an overview, leaving you with an understanding of what they are used for, but not always how to use them.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for the basics, not as good for the advanced feature
Review: Like all of the "Nutshell" series, this book is a detailed language reference with little or no "how to" value. Even so, I learned more about Perl from this book than any other I've read. The basics of the language are well documented and easy to apply when you need to. The second portion of the book deals with the various modules available for Perl. It is in this section that the book begins to gloss over things and becomes far less useful. Even the examples in these areas become more confusing. If you need a reference for the language basics, the book is wonderful. For the modules, it is little more than an overview, leaving you with an understanding of what they are used for, but not always how to use them.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for the basics, not as good for the advanced feature
Review: Like all of the "Nutshell" series, this book is a detailed language reference with little or no "how to" value. Even so, I learned more about Perl from this book than any other I've read. The basics of the language are well documented and easy to apply when you need to. The second portion of the book deals with the various modules available for Perl. It is in this section that the book begins to gloss over things and becomes far less useful. Even the examples in these areas become more confusing. If you need a reference for the language basics, the book is wonderful. For the modules, it is little more than an overview, leaving you with an understanding of what they are used for, but not always how to use them.
Rating:
Summary: A generally good desktop reference
Review: Like the other books in the O'Reilly Nutshell series, this is a very good desktop reference to have around. However, I have some small gripes with the book. In some cases the module reference doesn't talk about the caveats for a particular module/method that you might want to know about when you are quickly looking it up. The book could be better designed to answer what a user might be looking to know (and anticipate what would be helpful to tell them).While I do like having this book around, as I have become more familiar with Perl I have found myself increasingly using the Perl Cookbook as my reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, must have.
Review: Many people are familiar with the UNIX in a Nutshell book that O'Reilly has published. These books cover the complete base UNIX Operating System (the commands with their parameters). UNIX administrators, like myself, went nuts over this book. This book was what we wanted, a good reference book that covered the commands with their appropriate switches without being a tutorial. UNIX in a Nutshell is the best reference book for UNIX on the market, hands down. Not only was the book a good reference based on how it was laid out, but for also being totally technically correct. O'Reilly has done it again, but this time with Perl. Perl in a Nutshell is not exactly what I expected from the book but instead it has a lot more to the book. The book was logically laid out by being broken down into eight sections and twenty chapters. The sections are Getting Started, Language Basics, Modules, CGI, Databases, Networking Perl/TK, Win32, & PerlScript. Going from the basics of the language to more advanced topics is a great design so the book will useful to many different people at different levels of knowledge and skill. As a previous college professor, I know that this book is perfect for the student and professional programmer. The modules section covers the standard modules that come with Perl. Not only does it list the standard modules but gives descriptions with a list of the functions. Not to mention that it lists all the parameters/switches for each function also. For example, the module File::Find has two functions within, find & finddepth. The Perl/TK section lists all the standard switches and options for all the function in the TK.pm module. This section is also a great companion to the Perl/TK book. If you ever do any web programming, then the section on CGI is invaluable. Mod_perl and CGI.pm are both covered in the book, along with LWP. This book will be very useful while developing all my new web based applications. The section on Win32 Perl was one of the more complete listing of modules/functions for the 32bit Windows platform. Network programming will be a breeze with the quick reference of all the network functions, including things like telnet, ftp, and IPC. The whole book has plenty of sample code explaining the different aspects of Perl. While reading the book, you can tell that the authors spent a great deal of time making sure that the book was easily readable. Perl in a Nutshell has all the relevant material in one easy to use reference book. What the book is not is a tutorial or a training guide. If you do not know Perl already, then you are better off with the Camel book (Programming Perl) or the llama book (Learning Perl), both from O'Reilly also. For someone like myself that needs reminding of the parameters/switches for various commands, the Nutshell book is perfect. This book is a must have for your zoo collection. I do have one negative thing to say about the book, and that is it should have been out sooner.
Rating: 
Summary: Missing basic syntax rules. I wonder if the authors use Perl
Review: My 2-star review is from the perspective of an intermediate Perl user. From my exp. with 'Unix in a Nutshell', I expected this book to be all I needed in my briefcase at work. As it turns out, I'll take the "Camel" (Programming Perl) and leave this uninspiring book at home. Let me give you an example: I was poring over a (slightly) complicated regular expression, trying to figure out what was going on...there seemed no rhyme or reason to it.....there were way too many spaces and yet the pattern was matching!! I then noticed the "x" option on the end of it: /reg-ex/x Thinking this could be the culprit, I broke out Perl:NUTSHELL...I found the appropriate table and it said: this option used to Enable Extended regular expressions. Ah-ha! But wait, what are Extended regular Epressions, and what is the deal with all these extra spaces in my reg-ex? I forwarded a bit and found the section about Extended Regular Expressions. And I found.........nothing. As it turns out (after looking in the Camel), the "x" means that all whitespace in the pattern is ignored, hence all the darn spaces. I made a point to look (again) for this bit of syntactic info in Perl:NUTSHELL, and it is not there. So what is the use of this book then, considering it is missing such a BASIC SYNTAX rule? Good question.
Another gripe: where's the freakin examples? While I don't expect NUTSHELL books to EXPLAIN the examples tutorial style, I do expect some basic usage examples to help me with commands I havn't used (again, see Unix in a Nutshell)!! Another quick example for you Perl non-gurus (like myself): I came upon the Perl "filetest" operator "-t"....but the test had no following argument (e.g. the file's name), so I was confused. Off to the Nutshell. Oops. Nothing there except the shortest little description possible. Sigh. Back to the Camel, where I found that this particular file test operator defaults to a filehandle, , and not the usual variable which is $_ (perl's typical default). Hello? This isn't important!? Totally ridiculous for a supposed "reference" book.In conclusion, this book seems to have zero "learning" value, being so terse (not to mention boring) and having so few examples, and only mediocre reference usefulness. Don't buy this one, buy the other O'Reilly books on Perl (Learning Perl and Programming Perl are high quality, as is Perl Cookbook). You might have to lug the Camel around (dromedaries are heavy), but it is superior to this inconcise man-page in every way (has a big reference section + a big 'learning' section). PS. this is the 1st ed. Maybe the 2nd will be worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book if you use modules, so-so otherwise
Review: Over 2/3 of this book is devoted to discussion of various Perl packages, modules, and other addons. If you need a one-book solution for hints on all of this, then you may benefit from this book. I don't use any of that stuff so I'm no better off with this than I was with the camel book. If you are looking for a general Perl reference I would not purchase this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference for Perl modules
Review: People that have complained about this book misunderstand its intention. If you want to learn the language, go to the Camel book. If you want examples, go to the cookbook. I am delighted that there is finally one book that captures the programming interface for most common modules. From what I have read and used so far, this is a good book. No one can learn Perl from it, but once you __use__ Perl on a regular basis, you will find it indispensable. So dear friends, look elsewhere for examples or tutorials. This is for the ones that know Perl already and use it everyday.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful reference
Review: Perl in a Nutshell is an excellent working programmer's handbook (like my most-opened programming book, Java in a Nutshell). It is a concise and time-saving reference for anyone who knows what she is doing, but needs to look up the details. For an introduction to Perl, go immediately to Learning Perl and some of the Web tutorials. For comprehensive coverage, there are a raft of good books. If you have a program to write, some knowledge of Perl, and need one book to help you do it - this may be the one you need.
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