Customer Reviews

Effective Perl Programming: Ways to Write Better, More Idiomatic Perl (2nd Edition) (Effective Software Development Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Effective Perl Programming packs a lot of useful information into a slim and manageable volume. There is no "filler" material in the book, which assumes you are already familiar with Perl. I have developed Perl software for more than fifteen years, and here are the aspects of Effective Perl Programming which struck me particularly:

The book doesn't cover what has already been covered elsewhere, so the material is all fresh and the space is used to investigate topics in reasonable detail.

The focus on idiomatic Perl - the authors say: "Although Perl's motto may be "There's More Than One Way To Do It," the corollary is, "But Most of Them Are Wrong," or "Some Ways Are Better Than Others."" The book illustrates how to write idiomatic Perl from the choice of language construct through to testing code and using CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive) effectively.

The authors demonstrate a deep understanding of Perl, and have clearly honed their examples and explanations. Well explained areas include: list vs. array, context, local vs. my, Unicode and utf8 handling, and which language constructs are appropriate where. Their experience with Perl in the real world shows in the explanations.

The writing and examples are clear and concise. The book's web site has an errata section which is kept up to date so I could mark up the known errors.

Effective Perl Programming revealed some of the features of recent Perl and new modules which I hadn't noticed or had time to internalize. Sometimes it is time to unlearn old habits and get up to date!

The authors have clearly carefully selected which material to cover, and covered it well. Part of writing idiomatic Perl is to improve the way I think of writing in Perl, and the topics selected by the authors cover about 90% of the things I need to do in my software development using Perl.

The book uses colour in the code examples to highlight the important bits. The quality of the book as a physical artifact seemed better than most "mass market" technical books I buy these days.

The time I spent reading the book has already been handsomely rewarded. All in all the book is well written, accurate, and a delight to read. The authors know their stuff and provide pointers to resources which cover other aspects of Perl well.

Having purchased the first edition many years ago, I've found it probably the most useful Perl book I ever had - one of those that Internet somehow couldn't manage to replace. It showed how to think in Perl, often tackling problems in ways not possible in other languages. This book is an excellent sequel that I'd consider a must-have for any Perl developer. I routinely check almost every Perl book that comes out, and this is probably one in a dozen I've seen lately that could teach me something about the language itself. There couldn't be a better indication that Perl is alive and kicking.

I don't own the first edition, so I can't compare the two editions. I did read a review of the 1st edition that talked about how densely populated it was for a small book, well that certainly is the case for the 2nd edition. With 12 years of Perl growth since the 1st edition, there is a lot more density added to the book. It is not, as the authors state, the definitive guide on Perl, but it is well worth owning and covers a lot of topics (including Perl 5.12) in small concise sections or "Items" that end with a "Things To Remember" section which is a list of key points that the reader should "remember". I highly recommend this book for any perl programmer, even though it is geared towards the intermediate to advanced Perl programmer. I also recommend checking out the book's website (effectiveperlprogramming dot com), which states "The Effective Perler is the online extension of the Effective Perl Programming, 2nd Edition." I try to visit the website every couple of days, it has more informative "Items" that did not make it into the book. It's worth a visit and there are fairly consistent posts.

This book essentially a cookbook for Perl 5.10 with a lot of interesting material. Many recipes will be familiar to experienced Perl programmers, but I think everybody can find interesting bits to learn in this book. It reveals some features of Perl 5.10 that few people know about like the ability to assign names to variables that contain matching elements of regular expressions (traditionally $1, $2,...).

The authors love affair with idioms is a little bit unfortunate, because that is a dangerous path, but most recipes are solid and do not abuse Perl just in order to look clever. Still, what I hate about Perl and Perl book authors is that it looks like Perl attracts special type of people who love complexity for the sake of complexity: complexity junkers. And some pages of the book raised red flags for me.

You need clearly understand that there is a danger with some of those idioms, and shorter is not always better. You better be clear then idiomatic ;-). Again, most of the book contains excellent recipes, but sometimes the authors lose the sense of reality as happened when they try to disprove valid recommendations by David Tiler: "Many Perl programmers write programs that have references to $_ running like an invisible thread through their programs. Programs that overuse $_ are hard to read and are easier to break than programs that explicitly reference scalar variables you have named yourself.")

All-in-all this is a good collection of Perl recipes with some that clarify some obscure Perl features and provide (mostly ;-) useful advice.

I didn't read before i brought this book. The content in this book is excellent but IT NOT A BEGINNER'S GUIDE! So if your a newcomer to Perl look elsewhere. If you are an intermediate or pro Perl coder looking to update/upgrade your knowledge, buy this.

I've got just about every Perl book there is, including "Mastering Perl" and "Perl Best Practices", but this book has quite a few things I haven't seen before. Definitely recommended if you really want to be at the top of your game.

I have the first edition and have referenced it often in my journey working with Perl. This new edition is totally awesome! It really rocks! The comments that it has new material is true and it is great. But what really impresses me and makes this, in my opinion, a "must have" in your Perl library is that the original material has been so well recrafted...subtly and not with a lot of glitz...but ever so wonderfully. I've now read iti from cover to cover twice...it was a delight. And I've trully learned an unbelievable amount of things that never made sense to me in the past. Thumbs up...TWO thumbs up!

There are few programming books that will actually teach you to think in the language. This is one of them. After reading this book of 120 "items" related to perl programming you will begin to intuitively understand how to solve problems with perl. Instead of simply teaching you the syntax, the authors go through a lot of troubles to expose the innards of the perl so that you become intimately familiar with what cane done and how to efficiently do it. A singular achievement!

Every time I grab this book to consult when I need help with a perl programming problem, I end up re-reading a significant portion of it as it has such good advice. Hard to take all in at once, but worth the effort.

The second updated edition of Effective Perl Programming: Ways to Write Better, More Idiomatic Perl joins offers in the 'Effective Software Development' series, updating a classic Perl programmer's guide to nearly twice the size of the first edition. New coverage here includes expanded material spanning over a decade of Perl development, and eight now chapters on databases, distributions, files, and more.