Customer Reviews

A Little Book on Perl

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

 

 

This book is great for those who already know how to program in C or C++. I am a C++ programmer and I needed to quickly learn the basics of Perl and this book was great. It's short, concise, and to the point - it got me up and running really fast. Within a few days, I was writing useful small scripts and ready to move on to some more advanced materials, including the O'reilly books on Perl.

I think only one addition would make this book even better: have a list of resources (other books, web sites) at the end of each chapter to find more information about certain topics. For instance, the chapter on CGI programming can point readers to Lincoln Stein's book on CGI.pm for more detailed information.

This book provides a clear concise description of the programming language Perl for someone who has programmed in another programming language like `C' and is familiar with UNIX tools such as sed and awk. The book contains clear examples showing the correct use of fundamental Perl constructs, Perl control statements and Perl data types (scalar, array, hash and reference). The book also includes a chapter on CGI programming with Perl. Each chapter has some exercises for the reader to test his Perl skills. No answers are given for the exercises.

I first started learning perl with the Camel/Llama books from O'Reilly - but did not like the style [or prehaps I lack a sense of humor?] and gave up.

A 'Little Book on Perl' is just that. I skimmed over it for 30mins on the bus each morning and after 3 days felt I knew enough to throw away my awk and shell scripts and use perl in anger. This being a small book is a great advantage for someone familar with programming - you get to know the basic features of the language fast. There are however some irritations - the opening example script has typos, and some of the page numbers are incorrect - my copy has the debugger chapter included twice. Still it is the best perl book I have seen.

We are using this book in my Perl class, and the general consensus is that this book is mediocre at best. Much of this comes from the fact that we are required to do the exercises at the back of the book, which, among other things, sometimes require you know information that has not yet been covered. Also some of the chapters do a poor job at explaining things, especially the functions chapter, in which even the examples in the chapter did not work when compiled. In its defense(short as it may be), however, the fact that it is short and concise made Perl more easy to handle.

I first started learning perl with the Camel/Llama books from O'Reilly - but did not like the style [or prehaps I lack a sense of humor?] and gave up.

A 'Little Book on Perl' is just that. I skimmed over it for 30mins on the bus each morning and after 3 days felt I knew enough to throw away my awk and shell scripts and use perl in anger. This being a small book is a great advantage for someone familar with programming - you get to know the basic features of the language fast. There are however some irritations - the opening example script has typos, and some of the page numbers are incorrect - my copy has the debugger chapter included twice. Still it is the best perl book I have seen.

I first started learning perl with the Camel/Llama books from O'Reilly - but did not like the style [or prehaps I lack a sense of humor?] and gave up.

A 'Little Book on Perl' is just that. I skimmed over it for 30mins on the bus each morning and after 3 days felt I knew enough to throw away my awk and shell scripts and use perl in anger. This being a small book is a great advantage for someone familar with programming - you get to know the basic features of the language fast. There are however some irritations - the opening example script has typos, and some of the page numbers are incorrect - my copy has the debugger chapter included twice. Still it is the best perl book I have seen.