Rating: 
Summary: finally!!
Review: This is the fourth, and probably last, general-purpose Perl book I'll own. Learning Perl makes a fine tutorial, but it misses the advanced topics and extensive libraries. The pocket reference is too concise for anything but the very basic standard functions. And Programming Perl is too sprawling for a good quick reference yet still too small to delve into the complex topics well.Perl in a Nutshell does for Perl what the excellent Java in a Nutshell did for Java. It lets me find what I'm looking for right away so I spend less time with my nose in a book and more time getting my programs working. What more could one hope for in a reference book?
Rating: 
Summary: A well thought out reference for Perl programmers.
Review: THIS is the reference I have been looking for. A little light on some subjects, and missing some common features, but a worthy desktop reference nonetheless. And it has a fine index as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Annoyingly Inconsistent and Incomplete
Review: This was one of my first books after Learning Perl, and I have to say after using it for about a month that I'm having to go and buy other books. Nutshell does not equal incomplete in my mind, and something that purports to be a reference should be at least as complete as the documentation. A short list of what I've been ticked of by so far: 1) Less than 2 pages devoted to object oriented perl. I realize that probably less than 20% of all perl people will ever write anything object oriented, but I'm find OO essential for breaking down complicated problems. 2) Missing library calls; for example, in the DBI library: prepare_cached, connect_on_init really do exist. 3) Incomplete documentation of each and every library call; what are the possible values of an attribute hash? You better RTM, because usually you won't find it here. 4) Inconsistent documentation of library calls: sometimes they tell you what type the function wants, and sometimes they don't. 5) Lack of example usage in the libraries. This is not nitpicky stuff. A comprehensive reference book should answer the purpose at least 60% of the time, or it becomes a waste of time. But, if you use this book first, you will *still* have to look at the documentation or another book, guaranteed. This book bears all the hallmarks of having been hurriedly compiled from information available online, without expert review, and poorly edited. I realize documentation is a boring thankless task (better than Sominex for me), but nevertheless this book does not hit the mark.
Rating:
Summary: Annoyingly Inconsistent and Incomplete
Review: This was one of my first books after Learning Perl, and I have to say after using it for about a month that I'm having to go and buy other books. Nutshell does not equal incomplete in my mind, and something that purports to be a reference should be at least as complete as the documentation. A short list of what I've been ticked of by so far: 1) Less than 2 pages devoted to object oriented perl. I realize that probably less than 20% of all perl people will ever write anything object oriented, but I'm find OO essential for breaking down complicated problems. 2) Missing library calls; for example, in the DBI library: prepare_cached, connect_on_init really do exist. 3) Incomplete documentation of each and every library call; what are the possible values of an attribute hash? You better RTM, because usually you won't find it here. 4) Inconsistent documentation of library calls: sometimes they tell you what type the function wants, and sometimes they don't. 5) Lack of example usage in the libraries. This is not nitpicky stuff. A comprehensive reference book should answer the purpose at least 60% of the time, or it becomes a waste of time. But, if you use this book first, you will *still* have to look at the documentation or another book, guaranteed. This book bears all the hallmarks of having been hurriedly compiled from information available online, without expert review, and poorly edited. I realize documentation is a boring thankless task (better than Sominex for me), but nevertheless this book does not hit the mark.
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