Professional Perl Programming

Rating:
Summary: How did I feel about Professional Perl
Review: All the books I have read in he programmer to programmer series of Wrox press were excellent. (e.g. PHP).Professional perl is not an exception. This book covers all the aspects of Perl - the hacker language. The book explains very well the basic concepts of perl in the initial chapters, then moves over to advanced features. Chapters 7 to 9 worth special appreciation as well as chapter 11 , in which regex is dealt in a detailed and perspicacious manner. The authers strived hard to give the reader a clear picture of Object Oriented perl and Networking perl, which are the chapters I liked most. The chapter about Unicode (utf8) seems is very well written. I could not decipher what Larry intended to convey before reading this chapter. Even though I felt the book is primarily targetted at Unix and clones users, I am sure that Win32 perl programmers will also get benefitted by this book. The authers could make this more evident by concentrating a little more on the chapter Writing portable perl.Together with Programming Perl ( Larry wall , O'reilly) this book is really an asset for any perl programmer.

Omanakuttan.N.

Rating:
Summary: Sinks Like a Wrox . . .
Review: Let be begin by saying I'm a Perl evangelist. This is to say that I do my best to spread the word that the language is powerful and useful, yet still easy enough for the non-programmer to learn. I have begun to describe Perl as the "Layman's C." (I'm sure to receive some grief about this moniker.)

I am, however, not a fan of Wrox. It has become cliche with me to peruse their works and find typos, gramatical errors, and faulty code. Just because Wrox puts out a heavy, red book doesn't mean they are doing the topic a service. Here is no exception.

So, how to learn Perl? To glibly say 'code' would be too little. The O'Reilley books do a better job, and they are written by the core elite of the Perl culture. However, just because they can be called Perl elite doesn't mean they can't write resources that make sense. (However, I confess to finding a few typos and a missing parenthesis or two in their code as well . . . so nobody's perfect.)

As a developer, I lean on Perl to handle things that don't need the strength of a systems language (e.g. C, C++, Java). The O'Reilley books are an excellent resource that have gotten better with age. But, let me let you in on a secret. Little of what you'll find in the "Camel books" isn't already available to you free. Perl's own 'man' pages form the core of the books . . . if you've got the time to print, then you've got a top-rate document on your computer.

I can't give a book a one-star when it relates to Perl, unfortunately.

Rating:
Summary: very detailed but not easy to read
Review: The book is very detailed and comprehensive, but it is not easy to read and probably not suitable for beginners. Specifically, it does not provide complete examples with inputs, code, and output. There are also plenty of typos and small errors.

Still, in all fairness, this is a very comprehensive book with lots of topics not covered in other books. Also the paper is of good quality. Probably every advanced user should go through the book to pick up on things other books leave out.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended for a broad audience
Review: This is a very good Perl book! For beginners, intermediates or even advanced programmers in Perl. The book takes you from the basics to advanced applied Perl programming concepts.
The book manages what many others fail to do: It might be the only Perl book you ever need. If you worked through this book, additional information is readily available on the Internet. This book is comprehensive enough to cover everything you need to know about the Perl language to write large scale 'mission critical' applications.
Admitted, if you already own the O'Reillys 'Learning Perl', 'Perl' and 'Perl Cookbook' this book will not contain many news. However, it is written very well and it is understandable, something I cannot always say about the 'original' Perl books or documentation.
If you do web programming, a logical addition to this book is 'Professional Perl Development' which offers lots of good information on how to design sophisiticated web applications.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for advanced programmers.
Review: This is an excellent, thorough, fairly advanced book.

Until now, I was an o'reilly zealot, clinging to my camel book and my CD bookshelf as the Only True Word.

Finally, here is the first real competitor to that series of books, with a fresh approach to the language that shows that the authors really know what they are doing.

So far, the book has done a great job covering all my industrial-strength perl questions with _examples that work_ and clear, concise explanations of the methods and the context. I find that the examples are really applicable to my professional needs as a contract perl programmer.

There's a great section on object-oriented perl, as well as a good debugging section.

IMHO, This is the best perl book out in a while.