Perl 5 Complete

Rating:
Summary: Great book! Great Presentation! Fantastic Examples!
Review: I've spent a fortune on various Perl books (including the camel book). "Perl Complete" has real life examples that make the language come to life. If you are looking for something to help guide yourself to that "next level" of programming, this is the one.

Rating:
Summary: Good for learning Perl, Bad as a reference
Review: If you are wanting to learn perl, this book will help you do that. It jumps in quickly into how to code perl, so be prepared. If you have coded C++, then this perl won't be that hard with this book. However, if you've never programmed before, then this is not the book for you.

Once I had learned perl, I found this book to be a 500 page paper weight. It does little good as a reference.

Rating:
Summary: Good for learning Perl, Bad as a reference
Review: If you are wanting to learn perl, this book will help you do that. It jumps in quickly into how to code perl, so be prepared. If you have coded C++, then this perl won't be that hard with this book. However, if you've never programmed before, then this is not the book for you.

Once I had learned perl, I found this book to be a 500 page paper weight. It does little good as a reference.

Rating:
Summary: A good book to learn perl
Review: if you have the patience to finish it! this book is packed with useful information with great depth, but its a bit dry and too thick for its intended purposes. it is a good buy to strengthen your perl knowledge and introduce you to do OOP with perl, however its not so ideal for a reference and i doubt anyone can finish this book cover-to-cover. i didnt finish it but for whatever chapters i have managed to read thru, they are pretty informative

Rating:
Summary: 100% of What You Need!
Review: Of the multitude of languages available, Perl has emerged as the language of choice for Internet programmers and Web developers that wish to build dynamically interactive sites. Delivers the complete background professional programmers need to be conversant in Perl and create the best Web sites.

The "reach" of Perl is astounding. Programmers can write a one-million-line project in Perl, yet write a meaningful one-line script. PERL 5 COMPLETE includes everything programmers need to:

· Master the new Perl compiler
· Develop modules for Windows NT: Process, Mutex, Registry, and OLE ODBC
· Develop modules for Unix: ProcessMgr, SafeSig, and ReadKey
· Use Perl to run databases and CGI applications more smoothly
· Interface Perl 5 to Java, Visual Basic, and C/C++
· Explore dozens of prewritten programming modules

The enclosed CD includes the new Perl compiler, and source code for Perl including the central distribution, Windows NT/95 binary distribution, OS/2 binary distribution, and Mac binary distribution. It also contains numerous Perl modules -- Interface modules, Database modules, Net modules, Web interfaces, and Windows NT/95-specific modules.

Rating:
Summary: Very readable, but has a bit of a problem with typos.
Review: Perl 5 Complete is very readable, but has a bit of a problem with typos. I've logged dozens in the first couple hundred pages...

Here are couple of my favorites (note that the inablility to use HTML tags hampers the readablilty somewhat):

<Example 1> page 89, which has no less than 3 typos:

1) Figure 3.3 shows clearly that if

@array = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 'string1', 'string2');

then

print @array[2,3];

prints the 3rd and fourth members of @array (ie: '34'), but the text directly below states that it will print out '23'.

2) the block of code directly below reads:

@array1 = ('This', 'is', 'an', 'array'); # four-element array

@Numberarray = (1, 2, 3, 4 ,5); # array of numbers

@EmptyArry = (); # empty array

$Array2[0] = 'elem0'; # element 0 of array2 equald 'elem0'

The typo is harmless here ('equald' in the the final comment), but I'd like to note that the variation in capitalization of variable names and the odd spacing in the comments (which I have faithfully reproduced) destroy some of the parallism of these examples.

3) I reproduced all of the code above because the next line is another typo:

print "@array1\n"; # Example: printing out an array -- by default prints '1 2 3 4 5';

This is bad, @array1 is defined above to be ('This', 'is', 'an', 'array') so this should print out 'This is an array'.

What does 'by default' mean to a newbie? $" is not mentioned, so this seems a lil' bit ambiguous... maybe it means if an array is undef?!? :P

<Example 2> On page 119:

It isn't bad enough that the book consistanly refers the the 'if...elsif...else' control structure as the 'if...else...elsif' control structure, the also have this whopper:

"Formally, the if then if...else..elsif. elseelse elsif syntax looks like Figure 4.4."

(also at the top of page 143 the if..then contruct shows up again)

Honestly, I can't really recomend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Revised opinion!
Review: Review no. 25 has it wrong about the recursive function; the program on Page 151 is NOT an infinite loop. I committed an error in trying out that recursive function. Given the number of errors in the book, it was easy to assume that it was a typographical error! I have read more of the book now and the density of errors actually decreases in the latter half of the book. I am therefore increasing the number of stars to three (from two).

Rating:
Summary: Thanks for the kind comments...
Review: Thanks for the kind comments. Ed and I wrote the book with the hopes that it would expose and release the power of Perl.

In this hurry-up-grab-shelf-space world of technical publishing, we were blessed with an editor who gave us time to do the job as best we could. As for the technical errors, they are generally due to translations of code to print font. I apologize for any confusions this has caused.

Rating:
Summary: Good material, poor index, and so many errors!
Review: There is a lot of good material in this book, but...

First, the index is lousy, and I think calling it lousy is being overly kind. For example, "." in the index references regular expressions but not as the string concatenation operator. Some keywords are not in the index (i.e., sub). Overall the book is twice as long as the Camel book (Programming Perl) but the index is shorter and double spaced, compared to the Camel book's single spaced index.

The author has a tendency to use features before describing them, which can be confusing. He also often makes statements that require some back knowledge to understand.

As others have noted there are lots of typos and just plain bugs. I find myself typing his code snippets into Perl and executing them to see whether they're correct. Perhaps this is a GOOD THING - putting me in the position of fact checker.

On the plus side there is a lot of material here, especially about Perl 5 and Object Oriented stuff. The chapter on Regular Expressions has some great material.

If you want to use the CD that comes with the book you must go to the errata site because it won't install properly without fixes you find there. You should probably go there anyway to mark up your copy with corrections.

I'd give this book five stars for the breadth of material, but not being able to find things in the index makes the material less useful and costs a star in my rating. The fact that there are so many errors knocks another star off my rating.

There is a pretty good book lurking inside of this book. Perhaps the second edition will be better. Maybe people should wait for that edition, but there is a lot of useful material here, that can be used now. However I'm not keen on shelling out another $.

Rating:
Summary: Very good book
Review: This book has great examples and I liked the sequence it was written in, there are a few typos but nothing the reader can't figure out, also some of the code is not explained sufficiently, overall the best Perl book I've found.

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