Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl [Paperback]

Joseph N. Hall (Author), Randal Schwartz (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201419750 | ISBN-13: 978-0201419757 | Publication Date: January 9, 1998 | Edition: 1

Perl experts Joseph Hall and Randal Schwartz share sixty concise lessons, focusing on programming techniques, pointers, rules of thumb, and the pitfalls to avoid, enabling students to make the most of Perl's power and capabilities. Through their advice, they help students develop a knack for the right ways to do things. They show how to solve problems with Perl, and how to debug and improve Perl programs. Through examples, they help you learn good Perl style. Geared for students who have already acquired Perl basics, the book will extend students' skill range, giving them the tactics and deeper understanding they need to create Perl programs that are more elegant, effective, and succinct. The book also speaks to those who want to become more fluent, expressive, and individualistic Perl programmers. The author maintains a substantial companion website at http://www.effectiveperl.com.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Effective Perl Programming is a gem of a Perl book. Its author, Joseph Hall, is a well-known Perl instructor and frequent poster on the seminal comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup. The book's technical editor is none other than Randal Schwartz, noted Net personality, enigmatic author of Learning Perl, and contributor to Programming Perl.

Hall has distilled his years of Perl experience into a book for Perl programmers that is both fluid and fun to read. It's somewhat like reading the Perl FAQ; even when you think you know everything, there's so much you don't know.

Effective Perl Programming has a clear layout: the text is easy on the eyes and the monospaced font makes a clear distinction between backticks and single quotes. Hall uses his PEGS (PErl Graphical Structures) notation to show the difference between Perl's different types of data structures and how everything ties together.

Packed with great examples and code snippets, this book is an excellent source of tips and tricks to make your Perl programs faster and easier to read. You'll also find a strong section on using the Perl debugger to improve your Perl programming skills. In yet another section, Hall walks the reader through the creation of a complete XS module that can boost the performance of array shuffling eight-fold. All in all, this is a great book for programmers who want to move beyond plain, verbose Perl toward a more succinct and powerful coding style.

From Library Journal

Perl is an amazingly powerful language that is especially useful for web work with Common Gateway Interfaces. This is not a book for beginners but for people who have some experience being confused by Perl. Hall discusses namespace, regular expressions, references, packages, and object-oriented programming. The goal of this book is not to write clear, legible, slightly verbose Perl code but "toward something more succinct and individualistic."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201419750
• ISBN-13: 978-0201419757
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #823,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you program Perl, this book belongs on your desk., February 16, 2000

By 

Eric J. Lind "ericthelind" (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl (Paperback)

It's slim, but packed with incredibly useful knowledge. The book is organized as a number of "Issues" each of which has numerous examples and related sub-issues. This book is in the same vein as "The Perl Cookbook", but addresses problems from a more general approach, instead of "How do I do X?". This is not a book for Perl newbies, but after going through "Learning Perl" and hacking a few scripts, a beginner should have encountered some of the issues that this book addresses. The book is readable and the examples are useful. Some of the more useful, but less-understood features of Perl (map, grep are the ones I've encountered so far) are explained quite well. All in all, reading this book should take you from Perl baby-talk to Perl adulthood.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pearls of wisdom for the Perl progammer, November 5, 2000

By 

Barry Brown (Roseville, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl (Paperback)

The day I got this book, I turned to page 1 and started reading. Two hours later, I had made it only to page 80. Why? Because this book is DENSE and FULL of tips and tricks that will expand the horizons of the intermediate programmer. I spent a lot of time studying the numerous examples in order to soak up all the information that was being presented.

I've been programming with Perl since 1992 and teach it at a community college. And yet with every turn of the page, I learned something new. Examples:

Making regular expressions more efficient

Using map() and grep()

How to call a subroutine from inside a string

Great stuff! The techniques I've learned from this book have been incorporated into my new Perl scripts and they are shorter and faster than ever before.

I can't lavish enough praise on this book. Authors Joseph Hall and Randal Schwartz should be commended. If you have been using Perl for some time and want to hone your skills, get this book now.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Write more perl-ish perl, April 23, 2003

By 

Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl (Paperback)

I started writing perl around ten years ago, and at the time my perl looked a lot like the c code I wrote in 1990.. or the FORTRAN code I wrote in 1975! And so it was for many years.

But this book, more than any other, helped turn me into an actual perl programmer. It covers the basics- things like 'use "$_" implcitly whenever possible, but don't refer to it explicitly if you don't have to'. There's a good description of slurp mode. And it covers those neat little tricks, like using:

($a,$b)[$a<$b]

to return the greater of two scalars.

It's not a book for the absolute beginner. But once you've written a few programs and start wondering why your perl doesn't look like that written by the perl gurus, this is the book to get.