Customer Reviews

Learning Perl, 5th Edition

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There could not ever be a better book for learning the Perl programming language than this one. The clarity of thought is unbelievable - the authors manage to provide a huge amount of detail while never going off on a tangent about exceptions to rules (something Perl, like English, is abundant with). If you want to get the basics of Perl under your fingertips in a *very* short amount of time, this is the book for you.

Let's face it - Perl can be a mess sometimes, and if you don't learn it from just the right angle, you'll find yourself knee-deep in a swamp. By choosing this book to learn from I effectively avoided all those pitfalls, and more importantly, adopted a clear way of using the language that has enabled me to write sophisticated, readable, even beautiful Perl code.

After some experience with the language I find it incredibly enjoyable to use, and when Perl is written well, it's easy to read someone else's code (to all you naysayers - yeah, Perl LETS you write bad code, but you don't have to!). This book was key to getting off on the right foot. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest whatsoever in the language. Even if you only plan to write Perl for your own purposes, recreational or otherwise, this is the perfect beginner's tool. Buy it.

I have already programmed Perl for years, but decided to spend a few days' free time re-reading the latest (5th) edition. I had previously learned Perl by reading the 1st or 2nd edition. This time around, I learned a few things that I neglected before. That is the good part.

I enjoy the humor of the authors (in the same vein as Larry's Programming Perl). Humor makes the learning more pleasant. However, the incessant reference of the Flintstone is unbearable for a non-fan.

I wish that the book were less wordy so that it can cover more in 300 pages, and that it would cover such fundamental concept as Unicode (good support since 5.8, while this book covers 5.10) in this day and age of globalized software/Internet environment.

I also wish the book would give Win32 a bit more weight and be less Unix-centric.

My opinion of the book may not reflect that of a total beginner, but if I put myself in the shoe of someone new to Perl but with a little bit of programming experience, I'd rate the Llama book to be a rather good one. At least, the writing and the English is good, which cannot be said of most technical programming books of today. Overall, I would definitely recommend it to anybody new to Perl (but not to programming) as the first book.

An oft-repeated allegation against Perl is that it is write-only. In my opinion, this allegation is usually made by programmers proficient in other languages that have trouble understanding or following Perl idioms (one trivial example: the use of for loops instead of the Perl-native foreach loop).

The value of this book is that it teaches a beginner how to use idiomatic Perl. Someone learning Perl from this book will, in course of time, distinguish between line noise and well-written Perl.

A small subset of Perl is covered, not quite sufficient for much other than basic text processing; however the learning provides a firm base for exploration of other Perl books in O'Reilly's Perl menagerie. Specifically, the "Camel" book (Programming Perl) becomes a lot easier to read once the reader has completed this book and work through its exercises.

In sum, this is the best book for a gentle introduction to a very useful language.

This is my first book that I have read to learn Perl. It is very well written. Concise and easy to understand. I would recommend it to others looking to learn Perl as well.

Learning Perl, by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, brian d foy is an entertaining and well-written book that will take you from knowing at least a little bit about programming, to knowing a lot about Perl.

Learning Perl starts off with a basic introduction to Perl, with basic data types, subroutines, and input/output (including files). Then you are introduced to more advanced topics such as hashes, regexes, Perl modules, file tests, and directory operations. In this book you will find fairly in-depth discussions on each chapter, with a set of exercises at the end that should take the novice programmer about 45 minutes to complete. The exercises are well written and help the reader retain the information that was presented in the chapter.

I picked up Learning Perl for the obvious reason - I wanted to learn Perl! And this book was a marvelous introduction to the language that says TMTOWTDI (pronounced Tom Towdy). Rather than a horribly dry book full of obfuscated examples, I was surprised at how entertaining the read was. The examples were somewhat contrived (using Flintstones characters, for example), but they were perfect for teaching the principles in each chapter. If you make an honest effort to go through this book and finish the exercises, you can easily learn a lot of Perl in a week. You may not be a Perl whiz, but when you see something like

while (<>){ chomp($_); print $_; }


rather than being utterly confused at the cryptic symbols, you'll have a fairly good (if not great) idea about what's going on.

This book is a must-have for anyone who wants to learn Perl.

LEARNING PERL is a programming library's foundation title and a highly recommended pick: it covers all the basics of what most programmers use and need to get started with Perl, and offers up a fifth edition of a classic first published in 1993. The latest changes to the software including Perl 5.10 are covered in chapters that discuss file operations, expressions, matching, and more. It also covers all kinds of platforms, from web applications to finance, and goes beyond the usual 'how to program in Perl' book to enhance the methods and approaches of the Perl programmer.

I'm not sure there is anything I can say that hasn't already been said. The book has been around for a long time so it has definitely stood the test of time. I don't think O'Reilly would continue publishing newer editions just to keep up with the language if there wasn't demand for it.

It is a very well written introduction to modern perl and in fact the book was designed to be used in a classroom setting so it's very learner friendly, classroom or not. Having some programming knowledge I went through the book faster than usual but it's actually quite enjoyable because there is enough new material in it to keep experienced programmers engaged. There is extensive information on pretty much every aspect of perl that a beginner is likely to encounter and I've already ordered "Intermediate Perl" because after reading "Learning Perl" I'm convinced that I want to continue learning the more advanced aspects of perl more in depth.

Learning Perl is one of the rare books in computing that nearly everyone agrees is great. It takes you through the process of learning the Perl programming language with example code and exercises.

Any time that someone says that they plan to learn Perl, it's pretty much just assumed that this book will be their first choice as a resource and that reputation is well deserved. It starts out by giving you a sense of where Perl fits into the realm of computer languages and how it came about and then moves on to the actual meat of teaching you the various commands and structures within the language.

One of the things that makes this unique as a book on learning a programming language is that it can really take you a long way past the beginner stage. While the core of the text sticks to explaining the basics and avoids getting tangled up in details that won't matter to a beginner, the book also contains extensive footnotes to provide more in-depth information.

The writing is very clear, and benefits from the extensive experience that the authors have in teaching people to use Perl. It also includes some humorous comments that I really enjoyed, though I'll admit to having a weakness for geek humor in general.

I received access to an electronic copy of this book at no charge from O'Reilly Media Inc. for the purpose of writing this review.

This is an excellent Perl book for everyone from freshers to experts.
Its interesting to read with good examples wherever required & exercises for practice.
Will definitely be getting Intermediate Perl once I complete this.

This book is the best start for Learning Perl, but only if you feel comfortable with other aspects of computing, such as HTML, FTP, and so on. To be of real value to the reader, they should already have some type of access to Perl (this is fairly easy if they have Linux installed). The book progresses in a logical manner. If the reader is exclusively a Windows user, they would probably be much better off with `Learning Perl on Win32'. Either book is a must for any serious Perl programming. If the reader is a complete novice, the best choice is `Perl for Dummies'. The Dummies book has a CD with a version of Perl for Windows from ActiveState. `Learn Perl in 24 Hours' is also an excellent choice.