Customer Reviews

PERL

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

 

 

If you are not a heavily experienced PERL programmer and enjoy hacking other people's scripts, this is an excellent companion. This book makes it easy to look up just about any perl syntax you can dream up and it also gives examples of how the function is called. Not very usefull if you want to look up a function and you don't know what it is called, but if you want to understand whats going on behind the perl curtain I would recommend that you get this. Besides, it will look good on your shelf. Trust me.

After spending about 12 hours in Borders reading Perl reference books I finally decided on this one, and I do not regret my decision. This big book is by far the most thurough and easiest to follow Perl5 reference available. I have only one gripe about this book, and that I wish the Appendix contained Index page numbers. When I look something up in the Appendix I don't want to have to go to the Index to locate a page number for that item. But it's a minor inconvenience that I'm willing to live with. Otherwise this is a great book for anyone who already has a basic grasp of Perl syntax and needs a thurough yet easy-to-follow reference guide to help in more advanced programming.

I found this book to be an excellent reference for the type of Perl hacker who mostly figures things out for himself but still might end up trawling through the man pages alot. To be able to quickly browse to a subject that you have in black and white helps alot. I found the areas covering DBI and CGI lacking although, granted, that is not the aim of this publication. Strictly not to read from cover to cover but rather, to quickly look up a consice, detailed explanation of something.

I've never been a fan of very big books, I always think they've been padded out with extra information that shouldn't be there. But this one, it just isn't the case. It's got everything you need to know about Perl in here, right down from the basics of variables and syntax up to things like debugging and the Perl compiler. A lot of this stuff I've never seen before - even in the Perl documentation, and there are some great tips on using Perl for different jobs. My favorite has to be how you can use the Perl compiler to help optimize and clean your code - not by compiling, but just by looking at some of the output it gives. This one will be sat on my shelf for a long time.

I actually found this book in a bookstore while looking for Programming Perl. This book has an excellent reference section, with in-depth descriptions on everything. It is very well formatted. I don't know how good it is to learn from, but if you want a quick lookup reference this book is for you. Programming Perl provides the same information, but costs about $50.

The size of this book is immense, but it matches the available content. If you want to know the details of a Perl feature or extensions it's all contained in this book. The layout is a little odd, and you really need to know Perl to make the best use of the book. It's already saved me a few hours trawling through the Perl documentation - the book pointed me in the right direction on a script that wasn't working correctly. The inclusion of information on complex data structures and databases also helped me solve a few problems I'd had with another script that wasn't displaying information properly.

This book is an outstanding Perl REFERENCE.

It's perfect for those times when you need something done in Perl but can't recall the syntax, semantics or parameters of some construct or function, or just when looking for a way to do something. I use it daily when writing in Perl, preferring it over perldoc and half a bookshelf of other Perl books that I have access to - it's that much better.

It's not a "tutorial", though, and it's not "for dummies". While you can certainly learn Perl from scratch using just this volume, I would advise against that if you're a TOTAL programming beginner. There are better "tutorial" books out there, get one of those and then get this as a reference. If you're a programmer already proficient in some other language, you won't have much of a problem switching to Perl using just this book.

Pros :
* it's very readable
* goes into considerable detail - mind the page count!
* the explanations are to the point - no useless stories or "cute" stuff
* summary tables are there when they ought to be - easy on the eyes
* it has a very comprehensive index - a must for a reference
* it's original content - not a perldoc rehash like some other books <cough>
* for each function there's an additional short summary including scalar/list context return values (love that one!).

Cons :
* it's... big. physically. not very convenient - but the content is well worth it!
* it's slightly dated (it covers Perl 5.6) but that hardly shows as of 5.8
* the more serious problem is that of availability - you can hardly find this book in stores nowadays, no idea why.

In a word, if you're shopping for a Perl reference - this is the book to get.

I felt this book fell into the trap that many teaching books fall into - it assumes that the reader is at the same level as the author.

Don't get me wrong, it was a *very* useful book, but it could have been a lot clearer about many of the key issues.

For a beginner - don't buy this book. For an "advanced beginner", do =D

Terrible book for learning Perl. As an example, I needed to know how to add an element to the end of an array. So I went to the 'Variables and Data' chapter where there is a section on arrays. Well, it mentions how to create an array, how to change the value of a specific array position and thats about it. I had to search online to find out how to do a very basic thing--add to the end of an array. The 'Variables and Data' section makes no mention of using 'push(@array, "whatever")'. I keep having to search online for very basic things that should be easily found in this book. Oh, and starting the book by talking in-depth about 'Perl parsing rules'--I got confused from the start. Definitely not something you want to learn Perl with.

Apparently, this book is not for beginners. You will get lost if you try to learn perl by yourself. It may be a good reference book, I think, after I read the exhaustive listing of I/O variations.