Perl Core Language Little Black Book, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT reference and "refresher" book
Review: I normally don't get much from books, due to their typical lack of practical examples, or any examples at all. This book is packed with examples. The explanations are also a superb compliment to these most excellent examples.

I wouldn't NOT suggest this book to anyone who has never programmed before. This book is better suited for people with programming experience or intermediate Perl skills, but need a great reference and practical example book. This book is also great for those (like me) who, up until now, have only learned enough to get your projects done, and need to fill in those gaps. It's also great for refreshing your mind, when you haven't done something in a while.

I can't stress the amount and quality of useful, practical examples in this book. If the explanations and descriptions aren't enough, the examples certainly are.

Again, if you've never programmed before, this book is not for you. Coriolis puts out a much larger and elaborate book named "Perl Black Book" that would probably be better suited for you.

If you're serious about your Perl, you MUST get this book.

Rating:
Summary: Best Perl book I have bought so far
Review: I own both the "Camel" and "Llama" books, and SAMs learn Perl in 21 Days- but this is the best one so far. I bought this more for a refference (and they had a 25% off sale on Tech books that day :-), but have used it exclusively ever since. This book is VERY informative and I would recommend it for beginners as well as people familier with perl. Perhaps the best quality of this book is that it does not assume you are programmer already. So the beginner can pick it up at chapter one and go from there. The experienced perl programmer will also find this book very handy and it mill most likely not leave his side.

Rating:
Summary: A huge and (almost) definitive resource for perl programming
Review: I write a lot of code in perl. My primary workstation is a linux box. So while I also develop code in perl, I administer my system in perl. I have O'Reilly's entire bookshelf on Perl (except the Gecko [win32] book). This book is a welcome companion to them. It's written a little differently than youre used to if you have a steady diet of oreilly (as i do). I dont think its meant to be read straight-through as the oreilly books are. Rather this book provides a good reference. Sort of a phone book -- you wouldnt use it to find out how the phone works, but rather to look up a number. I bought this book in a larger set of perl books, and definitely recommend it.

a final note to this: the description on how to program in CGI, while a little sparse, is easy to read, and made my first forays into CGI programming a breeze (reading perldoc CGI was an absolute bear!).

Rating:
Summary: So handy and terse! How rare in most computer books
Review: In a line, buy this book if you want to start programming in perl

I started reading this book 5 days ago, and I already consider myself a perl programmer. I am a computer engineering student at Stevens Institute of Tech and my main focus of study is network security from a programmer standpoint. After a couple of days reading this book, I could already create simple client/server applications. In addition, I learned how to handle files in numerous ways, and how to work with their content "you will be amazed how easy this is done in Perl" and even formating text, creating DBM Database files etc. Object oriented programming is very well explained and finally CGI scrips are also very well presented "with lots of security warnings." I would give this book six stars if I could since it does its job VERY well! My extensive programming experienced really helped me in the reading process, but the language and examples are so clear that even newbies in programming could assimilate the content easily!!! You can contact me at [e-mail] if you have further questions.

Rating:
Summary: An indispensible resource for Perl programmers
Review: Now in its second edition, Perl Core Language Little Black Book is a practical guide especially for Perl programmers of beginning to advanced skill, which focuses on presenting useful solutions to common problems. From an overview of basic Perl syntax, to built-in resources and functions, data structures, CGI programming, how to write a cookie, and much more, Perl Core Language Little Black Book lends itself to quick use and ease of reference with problem-by-problem arrangement, sample code, and thumb-sized chapter reference marks. An indispensible resource for Perl programmers unparalleled for its ease of use.


Rating:
Summary: One of the best books on a programming language
Review: Perl is a kitchen sink kind of language---it is huge. It is also a superb language for certain purposes. Some programmers will want to learn the "entire" language, but perl is so flexible that it is worth learning even a little of the language for occasional use. I need to use perl as a CGI interface between a database and some web pages and for little else. As such I use it occasionally. When I do, this book is at my elbow. The core language is covered thoroughly, logically and with practicality. I know of no other book that makes it so easy to work with a "difficult" language.

Be warned that perl is much more than its core language. There is a huge library of modules that help with many different types of applications. This book covers very few of these modules, but it coveres the basics of modular use. Books twice the size of this one will still only cover a fraction of the modules out there, so I don't see that it is worth looking for a "more complete" book. My own use of perl has me using this book and the O'Reilly book on the perl DBI interface.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books on a programming language
Review: Perl is a kitchen sink kind of language---it is huge. It is also a superb language for certain purposes. Some programmers will want to learn the "entire" language, but perl is so flexible that it is worth learning even a little of the language for occasional use. I need to use perl as a CGI interface between a database and some web pages and for little else. As such I use it occasionally. When I do, this book is at my elbow. The core language is covered thoroughly, logically and with practicality. I know of no other book that makes it so easy to work with a "difficult" language.

Be warned that perl is much more than its core language. There is a huge library of modules that help with many different types of applications. This book covers very few of these modules, but it coveres the basics of modular use. Books twice the size of this one will still only cover a fraction of the modules out there, so I don't see that it is worth looking for a "more complete" book. My own use of perl has me using this book and the O'Reilly book on the perl DBI interface.

Rating:
Summary: Required resource for Perl programmers
Review: This book could have saved me hours on the net getting answers to specific problems dealing with Perl scripts I was writing for a client. If you know the basics of Perl and have programmed much with it then you know the frustration of knowing what you want it to do but needing to resolve one minor issue to get it to work. This book contains a lot of the most common problems and solutions. It is not meant to teach you Perl, but to resolve those sticky problems that stop your progress until you figure them out. After starting with some best practices advice it moves into scalar variables and lists, arrays and hashes, operators and precedence, conditionals and loops, regular expressions, subroutines, references, built-in variables, built-in functions, file handling, built-in modules, data structures, creating packages and modules, creating classes and objects, debugging and style guide, CGI programming, Perl and XML, and secure scripts.

Each solution states the function to be used, how it operates, an example of its use, an explanation of what occurs in the example, and a list of related solutions with the page number. A fast and easy quick reference for when you get stumped, Perl Core Language: Little Black Book, Second Edition is highly recommended and a book you will want to keep close at hand.

Rating:
Summary: Truly Amazing book
Review: This book helped me successfully complete my Job assignments and help me get started with perl.

I am a vlsi design guy and I need to convert files to various formats, automate processes and develop scripts in linux/Unix OS's.

This book helped me finish my job successfully.

No matter what you are trying to do, you will always find an asnwer to the same in this book.

What you would need to have is some programming ingenuity. If you have it, this book will light the way for you and show you how to do amazing stuff using PERL

Thanks once again to Mr. Holzner..I'm on my way to becoming an expert perl programmer :)

Rating:
Summary: PERL for programmers only
Review: This is a combination of reference and learning. I would not advise this for a person trying to learn PERL as their first language, but if you already have a grasp of C++, Java, VB, Python or some other complex scripting language then this is ideal. So we do not have the first three chapters explaining what a program is. There is a useful rip-out card with most of the syntax. PERL is full of obscure symbols and patterns such as $_[0] or $] or even /^((\((\d{3}\))? ?\d{3}-\d{4},? *)+$/ (which locates a telephone number). The book explains them concisely and provides reference tables which are useful after you have mastered the fundamentals. If you want a more gentle entry then something like "PERL and CGI for the World Wide Web" by Castro will lead you in a more 'human' way. It's excellent, but after you have been through it it will be placed on the shelf - it's not a reference document. If you want lots of complex examples so you can play round with pre-existing code then look at "Mastering PERL 5".

PCLLBB (plus the rip-out card) is the book I keep within arm's length. The blank pages at the back I have written in as a secondary index to the tables. Incidentally the index is good. The only problem (as with all indexes) is if you do not know what you are looking for. For example, to remove a line feed you use chomp() and you can look up truncate, line feed, substring etc and not find it. This is where you need your own index!