Customer Reviews

Beginning Perl

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There is a second edition by the same title coming out, but without Simon Cozen listed as an author. Cannot say whether the 2nd edition is any good, but the out-of-print 1st edition is excellent. The first edition can be found online. I believe Simon is going to take a break from writing for a while. I hope he finds his way back to writing about Perl eventually.

Update 02-26-2010: I threw this book out a few months ago even though it had all my notes written on the pages. I wish I had it back. I would downloaded and would like to learn the new est version. There aren't many books on the shelf for computers anymore - especially for programming. I still feel perl is a great language for digging data our of log files etc.

Update 04-24-08: I will likely be dusting this book off and bring it in to work. The notes I wrote in it make it invaluable to me. There is a new version too. UltraEdit is a great text editor and only costs $50 for the latest and greatest text version of the program.

I spent a year with the book and went through almost every chapter in detail. I typed in nearly every chapter, wrote notes in the book, etc.

It's not perfect and falls a little short occasionally in the area of being pro-active. By this I mean there are some areas where the author could have emphasized things a bit more.

Also, he makes it seem like learning PERL is a breeze. I found it a lot of work after spending 2000 hrs with the book. I can can code pretty well and consider myself an intermediate non-professional. This language is an outstanding way to learning advanced programming techniques common to all languages. It is also something I will use as I move from windows 2k/xp to Mac OS X Tiger - which has perl built in and is accessible through the Terminal.app window.

Bottom line: if you have a need to manipulate text based data files or even excel - since there are many plugins for Perl or want to do Web cgi scripts this is a great book although it does not focus on web applications but primarily on the building blocks of text manipulation and general programming fundamentals, loops, statements, troubleshooting, etc you cannot go wrong with this book. Also, don't be fooled by its size. It is the right size instead of a giant telephone book that you will never read like most programming books. Also, much more helpful for learning than the Perl in a nutshell classic O'reilly book.

I have been a part-time Perl coder over the last ten years and have around 15 Perl and Perl related manuals. I purchased this book back in 2000 and still use it today. When I compare my other manuals with this one, there is really no comparison. The book has a way of explaining and using examples to direct the user to create basic yet effective working perl scripts. Far too many Perl manuals jump from the very basic examples to more advanced topics leaving many stones unturned. When I compare other Perl manuals covering the same topics Cozen's covers, I ask myself,
"how could the other writers not include this essential information?" This an essential Perl reference for the beginner or experienced user. I just wish this had been my first Perl rather than my fifteenth.

A very, very good introduction to Perl, with plenty of exercises with solution! (critical for learning a new language. It is such a shame that it's out of print.
Unfortunately, it doesn't cover the Perl debugger in any depth. Despite the fact that coverage is a bit old, it is quite adequate to get started and be very comfortable with the language. I wish it was available on Kindle.

I'm an amateur programmer hoping to upgrade my skills and coming back to Perl after years of doing other stuff. Cozens has written a comprehensive introduction to the topic. Sometimes, in fact, he glories in trivia that would better be left to an advanced section. His writing is clear and engaging. I think the book would be better with more exercises as the topics progress. By the time one gets to the end of a chapter, the handful of exercises require one to reread the whole chapter to find solutions. Some exercises require knowledge not in the text so far, and there are several errors in the solutions. Cozens admitted to me in an e-mail that he had not written the exercises himself, but he takes responsibility for the errors. Unfortunately, since WROX has discontinued support for this book, there's nowhere I know of to find a list of errata or discuss the exercises. One of the best things about this book is that you can download it free from [...]

This is a good book which is a unique mix of intro and intermediate material. It is now also available as electronic edition including Kindle Edition from Amazon.

It is suitable for one semester course in Perl. Version covered is Perl 5.8 not 5.10. Some issues covered such as dereferencing of arguments in subroutines are rarely covered even in intermediate books. This is definitely much better and cheaper book then Learning Perl (ignore the lemmings effect in Amazon reviews of this pretty weak book).

The strong point of the book is the set of examples (you can download them) which illustrates basic material of each chapter. Running them is a must for studying Perl with this book.

Examples are often overcomplicated (like most Perl books authors Simon Cozen tries to impress reader with his knowledge of intricacies of Perl and often loses the sense of proportion; but he is not as bad as Randal Schwartz who is a pathological "overcomplicator" ;-). Still they are very helpful in understanding the language. A very useful exercise that I successfully tried with my students is the simplification of examples provided.

The book is the best for programmers moving from other languages then to "plain vanilla" beginners. It might be also useful for Unix system administrators who know Unix shell reasonably well.

The range of topics covered is really impressive:

Introduction
Chapter 1: First Steps In Perl
Chapter 2: Working with Simple Values
Chapter 3: Lists and Hashes
Chapter 4: Loops and Decisions
Chapter 5: Regular Expressions
Chapter 6: Files and Data
Chapter 7: References
Chapter 8: Subroutines
Chapter 9: Running and Debugging Perl
Chapter 10: Modules
Chapter 11: Object-Oriented Perl
Chapter 12: Introduction to CGI
Chapter 13: Perl and Databases
Chapter 14: The World of Perl
Appendix A: Regular Expressions
Appendix B: Special Variables
Appendix C: Function Reference
Appendix D: The Perl Standard Modules
Appendix E: Command Line Reference
Appendix F: The ASCII Character Set
Appendix G: Licenses
Appendix H: Solutions to Exercises
Appendix J: Support, Errata and P2P.Wrox.Com

Simon Cozens definitely knows the language well and it shows.

The book coveres a lot of intermediate topics like references, databases, OO concepts, CGI, etc.

Lists and hashes are explained well although the author often abuses lists and uses them where they do not belong. Both lists and hashes are introduced early in the book.

Regular expressions are explained OK. I like the approach the author takes in writing a small program which demonstrates various concepts.

The book covers both DBM databases and SQL databases. MySQL is used to demonstrate how PERL interacts with an SQL database. Most Linux distributions have MySQL installed by default, the book also contains useful information about installation and basic configuration, that helps to make MySQL up and running.

DBM, which are simple key-value pair databases are covered in more detail. The author demonstrates complex data storage using DBM files. Normally DBM can only store a single value for any key.

As for SQL only fairly simple SQL commands are covered, but then it is an introductory books and it's naive to expect full SQL coverage.

In CGI chapter the author introduces CGI environment variables and HTTP commands such as GET and POST first. Then he switches to the CGI.pm module which is standard module in Perl but unfortunately introduces a lot of overcomplexity in the topic. CGI security issues are also mentioned.

Basic networking is covered in chapter 14. The Net::FTP module is covered in chapter 11 ( Object-Oriented Perl ) which makes this chapter simultaneously an extension of networking chapter.

The set of examples from the book greatly enhances the value of the book. It is mostly error free and immediately usable. Also each chapter has exercises with the answers. That makes the book more suitable for the classroom.

All-in-all this is a solid introduction to Perl which is attractive not only due to the price.

This is a good book which is a unique mix of intro and intermediate material. It is now also available as electronic edition including Kindle Edition from Amazon.

It is suitable for one semester course in Perl. Version covered is Perl 5.8 not 5.10. Some issues covered such as dereferencing of arguments in subroutines are rarely covered even in intermediate books. This is definitely much better and cheaper book then Learning Perl (ignore the lemmings effect in Amazon reviews of this pretty weak book).

The strong point of the book is the set of examples (you can download them) which illustrates basic material of each chapter. Running them is a must for studying Perl with this book.

Examples are often sometimes overcomplicated (like most Perl books authors Simon Cozen tries to impress reader with his knowledge of intricacies of Perl and often loses the sense of proportion; but he is not as bad as Randal Schwartz who is a pathological "overcomplicator" ;-). Still they are very helpful in understanding the language. A very useful exercise that I successfully tried with my students is the simplification of examples provided.

Due to this the book is the best for programmers moving from other languages then to "plain vanilla" beginners. It might be also useful for Unix system administrators who know Unix shell reasonably well.

The range of topics covered is really impressive:

Introduction
Chapter 1: First Steps In Perl
Chapter 2: Working with Simple Values
Chapter 3: Lists and Hashes
Chapter 4: Loops and Decisions
Chapter 5: Regular Expressions
Chapter 6: Files and Data
Chapter 7: References
Chapter 8: Subroutines
Chapter 9: Running and Debugging Perl
Chapter 10: Modules
Chapter 11: Object-Oriented Perl
Chapter 12: Introduction to CGI
Chapter 13: Perl and Databases
Chapter 14: The World of Perl
Appendix A: Regular Expressions
Appendix B: Special Variables
Appendix C: Function Reference
Appendix D: The Perl Standard Modules
Appendix E: Command Line Reference
Appendix F: The ASCII Character Set
Appendix G: Licenses
Appendix H: Solutions to Exercises
Appendix J: Support, Errata and P2P.Wrox.Com

Simon Cozens definitely knows the language well and it shows.

The book covered a lot of intermediate topics like references, databases, OO concepts, CGI, etc.

Lists and hashes are explained well although the author often abuses lists and uses them where they do not belong. Both are introduced early in the book.

Regular expressions are explained OK. I like the approach the author takes in writing a small program which demonstrates various concepts.
The book covers both DBM databases and SQL databases. MySQL is used to demonstrate how PERL interacts with an SQL database. Most Linux distributions have MySQL installed by default, the book also contains useful information about installation and basic configuration, that helps to make MySQL up and running.

DBM, which are simple key-value pair databases are covered in more detail. The author demonstrates complex data storage using DBM files. Normally DBM can only store a single value for any key.

As for SQL only fairly simple SQL commands are covered, but then is an introductory books and it's naive to expect full SQL coverage.
In CGI chapter the author introduces CGI environment variables and HTTP commands such as GET and POST first. Then he switches to the CGI.pm module which is standard module in Perl but unfortunately introduces a lot of overcomplexity in the topic. CGI security issues are also mentioned.

Basic networking is covered in chapter 14. The Net::FTP module is covered in chapter 11, Object-Oriented Perl which makes this chapter simultaneously an extension of networking chapter.

The set of examples from the book greatly enhances the value of the book. It is mostly error free and immediately usable. Also each chapter has exercises with the answers. That makes the book perfectly suitable for the classroom.

All-in-all this is a solid introduction to Perl which is attractive not only due to the price.

I am searching for a good PERL reference for my Kindle which I just received, and the "Programming Perl" is not out, nor are any of the other good books that I would normally consider, and the other ones are enormously expensive ... way past the $9.99 or whatever that Amazon says that most books will sell for.

So ... I thought I would download this item, "Beginning Perl", just to see what it is, since it is only $0.99.

I am rating this as 1 star since I just downloaded it and the first thing I noticed is that it has no table of contents or apparently an index. This does not even look like it is a book. This may be the best book in the universe on Perl when I can click past all the beginning stuff to get to something useful, but without a TOC, index and linking, it is useless.

If this does turn out to be something useful, I will come back and amend this review, but it is very unlikely with no linking, and I am irked that this is even being charged for - Amazon customers ought to be paid for even looking at something so undeveloped and primitive, or pull it off the Kindle shelf until it is a real useful item.

In fact the next thing I am going to do is to complain about this to Amazon.Com since it is not, in fact, a book, and is useless.