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Title: Programming Perl (2nd Edition) by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Randal L. Schwartz ISBN: 1-56592-149-6 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 August, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (212 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Who said ....
Comment: The book is definetely written for those who at least have some (or maybe a little more than just "some") programming background, and willing to learn Perl from the author of the language.
I read the first edition of the book, which was about 200 pages, or something in that range, which filled my mind with nothing but questions. Current edition, however, could answer to all of those questions (well, almost). Of course, to make it answer them I had to re-read the book four times. But none of the books I currently own (and I own quite a few) could've taken me to the innards of the language so deep no matter how many times I had read them. So the book is of value.
The Camel book, especially, does a great job on Regular Expressions and pattern matching. If you want to learn RegEx of perl in very details, you definitely need listen to the author of Perl. "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl is also a good choise, but doesn't include the latest updates.
Formats aren't covered very well though. So you might consider "The Lama book" for that ("Learning Perl"). Still, none of the books can tell you about the innards of the Perl in so much detail overall than "Programming Perl".
OOP is also toched upon in the book. Since purpose of the author is not to preach you OO lingo (but plain Perl), you'll treat that part just as an intorduction to OOP and consider "Object Oriented perl" by Damian Convey as the next text book.
I found chpater 14, "Tied variables" very helpfull though. It might remind you of DBM/Berkley DB, through the syntax
tie my %db, 'AnyDBM_File', 'my_file', O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0664;
but unfortunately it's not about DBM at all. It is about how the "tie" function works, and teaches you how to create your own classes for implementing with "tie". After that chapter, I even had to update some of my classes and saved lots of time for their updates.
"Compiling", chapter 18 ,is a must read chapter for those who "live & breath" with Perl (like me, may be ?).
I don't want you to buy the book unless you have a good understanding of Programming or/and have knowledge of some programming languages. Otherwise, it won't help at all.
If your purpose is just to get started with Web applications, go for "CGI progamming 101" by Jacqueline Hamilton. It is a good start. But if you want to go even deeper, "Learning Perl" and "Perl Coookbook" is the next choise. Keep the "The Camel" book as the next (but definitely, not the last).
Rating: 4
Summary: Good, but could be better
Comment: The book definitely is EVERYTHING you need to know about Perl. But that's as much of a weakness as it is a strength. Don't get me wrong, I think being comprehensive is a good thing. However, by being comprehensive, sometimes the "basics" get lost in the shuffle.
Also, I believe one of the authors must have a PHD in Linguistics. They go into painstaking detail to compare the perl programming language to the english language, which takes away from learning the programming language (the intent of the book). They also use very uncommon (large) words that aren't known to the majority of the target audience which also complicates learning.
Another criticism is they don't explore the windows piece of programming perl enough. I believe windows probably has 90% of the desktop OS market share so I would think they should include a little more info for that segment of the population.
One last criticism is that they introduce topics without explaining them. For instance, they use code for some "sample" programs and in that code is reserved words that haven't been explained yet which makes understanding the sample code very difficult.
I'm not saying it's a bad book, I'm just saying it has some areas it could definitely improve.
Have I found a better book? Not yet, but I'm still looking.
Rating: 3
Summary: I sold my book back
Comment: The humor was too much for me. I tried to be calm and focus on learning Perl. But I gave up after three chapters. The authors take it too casually like a walk in the park, and try strange attempts too seriously to compare Perl with english language. I sold my book back on Amazon and lost nearly 20 dollars in the bargain. But still give it 3 stars because there are sure people who like to do things the light way. As for me, I like books who talk sense, I dont have time to waste reading jokes and silly footnotes.
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Title: Learning Perl, Third Edition by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix ISBN: 0596001320 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Perl Cookbook, Second Edition by Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington ISBN: 0596003137 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 21 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl ISBN: 0596002890 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Advanced Perl Programming by Sriram Srinivasan ISBN: 1565922204 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: CGI Programming with Perl by Gunther Birznieks, Scott Guelich, Shishir Gundavaram ISBN: 1565924193 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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