Rating: 
Summary: Perl in a Nutshell : A Desktop Quick Reference
Review: Simaply the best reference book for Perl, I highly recommend this book to new users. Over all this is a nice book to read and I recommend this to all of my collegues and friends.
Rating:
Summary: Perl in a Nutshell : A Desktop Quick Reference
Review: Simaply the best reference book for Perl, I highly recommend this book to new users. Over all this is a nice book to read and I recommend this to all of my collegues and friends.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Material But No Examples
Review: This book consists of a 150-page Perl manpage, plus a big, fat catalog of Perl packages. It's great for finding out what's available, but once you've spotted your prey and want to make use of it, you may have to mess around with it for a while to get it to work -- which is where the examples would have been useful.(Of course, if it actually had examples, it would be called "Ultimate Perl Encyclopedia Unleashed", be 1300 pages, and would put all the other Perl authors out of business. This way, we programmers get to enjoy our hobby of book collecting.) Is it worth buying? Yes. But you'll need other books (e.g., Hall: Effective Perl Programming, which is FILLED with nice examples) to show you how to use Perl. And be sure to download or buy the Programming Perl Quick Reference Guide.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Material But No Examples
Review: This book consists of a 150-page Perl manpage, plus a big, fat catalog of Perl packages. It's great for finding out what's available, but once you've spotted your prey and want to make use of it, you may have to mess around with it for a while to get it to work -- which is where the examples would have been useful. (Of course, if it actually had examples, it would be called "Ultimate Perl Encyclopedia Unleashed", be 1300 pages, and would put all the other Perl authors out of business. This way, we programmers get to enjoy our hobby of book collecting.) Is it worth buying? Yes. But you'll need other books (e.g., Hall: Effective Perl Programming, which is FILLED with nice examples) to show you how to use Perl. And be sure to download or buy the Programming Perl Quick Reference Guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a Stand alone Perl Reference
Review: This book falls short as a one-stop reference. Other "In a Nutshell" handbooks (VB & VBA in a Nutshell) go to the length of including not only syntax, but many useful examples. This book does little of that. It is a good reference as far as syntax goes and does dabble in the more advanced topics. However, it is best used with one of the other Perl reference books, like 'Perl Cookbook' or 'Learning Perl', very nearby.
Rating:
Summary: Great Reference
Review: This book is a good reference to programm PErl using Modules.
Rating: 
Summary: High Level Descriptions with Few Samples
Review: This book is full of alphabetical high level descriptions (which are always ambiguous) of Perl language statements with few or no illustrative examples (which always help clear up ambiguity).
It is a waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant book.
Review: This is a book whose brilliance is not in its authors' mastery of English. It is just the most eloquent book I've found on any programming language. After a certain point, you just want a book to lay out the language's syntax clearly; if you desire to 'grok' the philosophy of perl, you look at other books or read the preface. This book doesn't tell you how feature x is strong, or make jokes about how deprecated feature y is weak. It lets you decide for yourself, and gives pointers to other books that contain these comments. I of course don't recommend this as a starting text if you're a little new to programming, or don't quite understand what Perl is useful for. I don't know if this book needs more examples, but if it does, I hope they're placed at the back of the book. As it stands, this book is very clear and useful.
Rating:
Summary: A handy reference, but...
Review: This is a handy reference, but if you have a limited budget you should probably go with Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook before this one. This is a fine reference but it doesn't have the depth that the other books have and the information on the modules is available online through CPAN. I have the entire Perl library on my bookshelf and I hardly ever pick this one up.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: This is an excellent reference on Perl. If you already know Perl and you need a quick reference book, this is the one to get.
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