Customer Reviews

Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is an excellent book. It runs through 60 items, through regular expressions, "map", and "grep". Each item describes a concepts and best usage of one of the core concepts of Perl. This may be one of the first technical books I read from start to finish (the very *best* way to read this book of progressive concept development). Reading this book changed my understanding of Perl programming, improved my code (by the first 50 pages), and reduced my programming mistakes.

This was also the single most fun technical book I have read. Not comedy, but true delight at finding new ways to use Perl. I can readily believe that Joseph Hall is a successful and popular instructor, if this is an example of his class design.

I've been using Perl casually for a few years now, but when I first got this book six months ago, I sort of skimmed through it and didn't find anything too interesting. But when I started doing a few Perl projects, I kept thinking, "Hey, didn't that book say something about a better way to do this?" So I'd look it up, and an elegant solution to my problem would be there. It's not that I couldn't have done it without the tip, because as all Perl programers know, "There's More Than One Way To Do It", but it taught me a cleaner way than I would have done otherwise.

Most tips are no longer than a few pages, and they are neatly organized by topic ("Regular Expressions", "Subroutines", etc.) in the index. Highly recommended for the semi-experienced Perl programmer who is looking to polish their programming skills.

Effective Perl Programming is a concise, well written guide that is packed with useful Perl tips. The book is a series of "Items" (in the same style as Effective C++) that are each a tip about how to use Perl. Each tip is accompanied by a detailed description that discusses the pros and cons or each tip and several examples. The tips are then arranged into sections such as "Regular Expressions" and "Object Oriented Programming". In a relatively small book the authors manage to present an enormous amount of helpful information.

This book is a worthwhile purchase if you are a new or intermediate Perl developer. The tips presented here will really help improve your code. However, if you have been working with Perl for a while then this book isn't worth the money. There might be a tip or two that you don't know, but chances are you know most of what is presented.

Well written, succinct, no fat. Material is too simple for CS or Perl experts or for advanced readers who want a deeper look under the covers. Covers a broad swath of perl issues in a very shallow manner. Pricy for the skinny size of the book -- I read it over 4 days before going to bed. Not much of a reference. Good starting point for many ideas and other more specialized books and online docs.

I wanted to give it 3*. But I am not the intended audience since I have nearly 10 years of professional experience in Perl. I wish I borrowed a copy or read it in the book store. For someone with 6 months to 2 years of Perl experience it could be a good book to kick you up to the next level of Perl.

Another in the "Effective [insert language] Programming" series, this is probably the best Perl book in my library. It goes beyond the typical refrence book, in that it will show you the best constructs to use in given situations. It differs from the "Cookbooks" in that the examples are generalized, so it is geared more for those who are knee deep in perl code already, rather than the beginner.

The sections on loops and sorts are worth the price of the book alone.

Precise and concise. Well written. Useful itemized table of content. Packed with excellent examples of do's and dont's. Indispensable. Recommended for all serious Perl programmers.

Perl starts out as a world unto its own, full of strange symbols, it is shrouded in a world of mystery and obfusaction (or not :) ).

Admit it, part of the charm of perl is writing some obscure JAPH one-liner, being able to get 'shebang' jokes, and knowing what the heck $$->a->razzle()->dazzle might actually accomplish.

But how to get there? You've probably read the Llama and the Camel. You've probably got some bigh honkin scripts out there doing some heavy lifting. Heck, you may have cobbled a RegEx together that unravels the Necronmicon. All this and yet....

Odds are you came from a C-ish or similar background and you realize that you're still writing C or Java, but in Perl.

This book is the Emerillian kick to the next level. Realizing that languages, Perl especially, have idioms, best practices, standards, Hall acquanints you with them.

Just as children are baffled by "a fork in the road" you may find handy idioms like my ($b) = ($a=~m,(^\w+?),) something you have to look up, or memorize -- but later you'll realize that you *needed that* phrase in order to round out your vocabulary (just like a 'fork in tho road').

Hall also makes good suggestions that will help make your code tighter, helping your banish overuse of globals (impossible for someone else to maintain). He teaches you to document and follow standards.

this book was critical in my development form perl-plateaud and stymied, to perl-proficient.

Thanks Hall!