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Title: Learning Perl on Win32 Systems by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Christiansen, Erik Olsen ISBN: 1-56592-324-3 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.48 (29 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A hard book to rate
Comment:
This book is extremely difficult to rate because it has some major strengths and also some major weaknesses. I could pretty much give this book a rating anywhere between 1 and 5 stars and justify it. That being said, I have learned a lot of perl through reading the book & doing the excellent exercises that are provided (with answers), therefore it deserves a decent rating despite its faults.
The book is an overview of the language, not a reference. It's a tutorial that takes you through the major language features. Some of the chapters are regular expressions, filehandles, formats, hashes, functions, etc. The writing is generally clear and accessible and the examples are very well done. Most people should feel comfortable using perl after working through this book.
The real failing of the book is that it is pitched as a Win32 book but it is full of UNIX-centric examples and idioms. The chapter on DBM is likely to go unused by almost every Windows programmer and there is not much coverage of OLE automation/COM/ActiveX, which is key to Windows. The book would also have benefitted from a look at Windows system administration tasks and how to automate these with perl.
Another minor frustration is the "Topics We Didn't Mention" appendix. This book is only 220 pages + appendices, index, forewords and there could easily have been room for discussing those topics (like basic networking, security, the compiler).
In short, it's a good book to learn perl with if you're stuck using NT at work like me. That being said, the book is rough around the edges and could be polished significantly in a future edition.
Rating: 3
Summary: Shallow, but a Helpful Intro to Perl for Win32 People
Comment: I concur with the bulk of the reviews here: This is a shallow book, especially given Perl's scope. But it WILL help Windows folks understand many of the key Perl concepts that otherwise go unmentioned.
And that's the major point here. The book may be a trivial intro to Perl, but at least it doesn't assume you're a *NIX weenie. After getting annoyed reading the 3rd edition of the camel book, I bought this book. It was helpful in clearing up all those references to the weird stuff that *NIX dudes apparently are born knowning, and got me quickly into writing simple Perl scripts.
You want heavy details of the Win32 or NT-specific functions? Go read the POD embedded in those modules. Or get a different book.
This is "LEARNING Perl on Win32 Systems"... I read it in about 6 hours, total, cover to cover. And in that time it provided just about as good an intro as I could hope for.
Rating: 3
Summary: Ok language intro, but missing context
Comment: This book provided a reasonable introduction to the language elements. As a complete novice, I learned enough to read CGI scripts. It was helpful to work on the well-done examples and then to look at the answers. I would have preferred a "log cracking" example rather than "secret words". Although I got the syntax of the hashes, I missed their glory in solving problems. The regular expression examples were good, but I could have used a full-blown example here also. This book sent me searching for CGI/web packages, such as the database package DBI (which may have been more useful than the DBM), the graphics package (GD), and more on writing HTML code from Perl scripts.
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Title: Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions (2nd Edition) by Dave Roth ISBN: 157870216X Publisher: SAMS Pub. Date: 10 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Win32 Perl Scripting: The Administrator's Handbook by Dave Roth ISBN: 1578702151 Publisher: SAMS Pub. Date: 31 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Perl Resource Kit Win32 Edition by Dick Hardt, Erik Olson, David Futato, Brian Jepson ISBN: B0000667GI Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $149.95 |
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Title: Programming Perl (3rd Edition) by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant ISBN: 0596000278 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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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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