Customer Reviews

Instant Perl Modules

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

 

 

This book is just a rehash of the POD (plain ol' documentation) provided with all the modules included on the CD. Thats about all that needs to be said. I'll elaborate however. As a professional perl programmer, it is my business to know what modules are out there, and thus I know many of them from CPAN. The last place I am going to look is in a big old printed book when I could do this instead: $ perl -MCPAN -e 'i /irc/' if i were looking, for, say, and IRC module (which the book of course doesnt cover). The copy of postgres included with the book is quite old and full of bugs. Newer versions are faster and more stable. There is a chapter provided on creating your own modules, but it is literally less than 2 pages long, and quite laughable on its face. If you want a book on Object Oriented Programming, get Damian Conway's _Object Oriented Programming with Perl_. It's far better. I gave this book 2 stars instead of one because the CD is useful if I am stuck somewhere on dialup and need a CPAN mirror (incomplete that it is).

This book was a real disapointment. Like many programmers, I learn best by example. So I was hoping the code discussed in the book (and on the cd rom) would contain examples of working perl modules. However, it contains exactly three! And even those are so short, they hardly showcase the various aspects of coding a perl module. The rest of the scripts on the cdrom (the non-modules) are incredibly simple little jobs showcasing the abilities of >other< perl modules! Bummer.

I found this book to be very enlightening to expand the world of Perl modules to me. I was somewhat disappointed , however in the lack of detail in the GD graphics library area. The DBI documentation is right on and very useful.
Part of the beauty of the book is to describe processes you would have to wade thru many readmes. The GD Library part is deceptive as the GD library install has a lot of prerequitites, not listed in the book. The book shows some cool examples on the GD library ...a little more content in this area around the mysterious subject(maybe if they simplified this too) of how to create the shared library libgd. This appears to be a mystery on the web in general. I am not a novice PERL programmer and it was sad to see how convoluted it was to get the GD library to work vs, as described in the book. Bottom Line in this review....this is a book worth buying, however, be careful not to assume that getting thr GD module...one of the more glamourous modules discussed, is as easy as stated.
Doug and Frank...keep up the good work.your book helps to start fill a gap in the Perl module area....well written, easy to follow.

Minutes after opening this book I was installing the Perl/Tk module in a private directory (explained on page 6). There are well written examples on how to use the various modules. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning to use Perl modules to their advantage.

This is a great book, I recommend it highly. It has many practical examples and covers some concepts that are not so easy to find in a lot of the common documentation. Buy this book!