Perl! I Didn't Know You Could Do That...

Rating:
Summary: It's nice to know someone has been there before!
Review: I'm familiar with Perl, but I'm no Perl guru. For me, the book had a lot of new material in it, including two items (XML::Parser and Archive::Tar) that I really wanted but didn't even know I should be looking for.

It is full of twists and tricks for UNIX/Linux and Microsoft versions of Perl (can't comment on Macs as I'm not a Mac user), although it does not always make it clear whether a utility will or will not go under a particular operating system. The bits which are clearly platform specific are found at the back of the book in their own section, and the URLs are given for important sites.

I kept typing modified examples in - just to see if things really were that easy - and I wasn't disappointed. I should really have got the CD out earlier and saved myself some typing :) This one is living on the bookshelf over my PC, and its CD is going in a proper jewel case.

Rating:
Summary: The CD-ROM is very useful, worth of spending $$$!!
Review: The ultimate programmer stocking stuffer, this book takes readers beyond what is found in other beginning-intermediate Perl books by providing more than 50 Perl scripts to do useful things, such as tricks with CGI, handling Palm data and using XML. CD-ROM is filled with more than 50 Perl scripts readers can download and use right away to do useful work.