Customer Reviews

Perl 5 by Example

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a Professional Perl Programmer. My site is David Nishimoto's Perl Page. I've read the 'Perl by Example' book many times and find it to be one of the best written books for perl. I like the book because it takes the reader - concept by concept through the Perl Language. The large number of examples helps demonstrate how the language syntax behaves. My experience in teaching perl is that examples are very helpful in understanding syntax. Once a programmer understands the Perl Language, Perl Function modules can be created to insulate some of the complexity of the language. Perl's substitution, match, and translate grammers are explained very well in the book. I valued the explainations on user defined functions and built in functions. The 'Perl by Example' book finishes with a discussion of CGI and interface with the http server, also very valueable. The book keeps the reader enthused about learning Perl by building from simple concepts to more advanced concepts through the document. I feel comfortable in recommending this book as a valuable Perl resource.

Finally! An author that knows how important examples really are. This book does not lie -- it contains many, many sample Perl scripts readers can trace through.

There are appropriate questions and exercises at the end of each chapter. A CD with source code is included.

The author is wonderful with his writing, and each sample script is commonly explained line by line.

I don't understand why everybody likes those O'Reilly books so much more than this. I couldn't find one error in it (at least not yet). I'd rather have this one book and get everything I need instead of buying an arsenal of those O'Reilly's.... They don't even come with CD's and they're written in the worst paper ever invented with the smallest print possible.

I have been perl programming for a little over 2 years now, and this is the _best_ book I've found for beginning to intermediate programming. The O'Reilly books, even the "Learning Perl" book doesn't give the reader enough examples, nor are the explanations aimed toward the new programmer. Perl5 By Example does a fantastic job of explaining the examples given, and doing so in terms a new programmer would understand.

Perl 5 by example is the best Perl book I've studied. I use the Perl 5 book along with the 'CGI For Windows' book to teach an internet/multimedia class, at an University level. 'Perl 5 by example' has an excellent teaching format: Definition, explaination, and hundreds of sample code fragments, to illustrate the point. 'Perl 5 by example' combines beginning concepts, intermediate, and advance perl programming practices. One of the most valueable sections in 'Perl 5 by example' is the creating reports section. The second most valueable section is the regular expression explaination. I keep the 'Perl 5 by example' book close as a valueable language reference. Database is also a key interest for me. Combining perl with sybase and using the reporting capability helps students start learning how to create enterprise wide solutions. Write to me for details on some of the perl projects that were created using the book. Upon studing this book and reader should have the knowledge to write numerous cgi scripts, create perl modules, and understand at an intermediate level the perl language.

Very good book for someone starting from Scratch. Have given it to a couple of my employees and within a week they were productive and had already done a few programs.

As a new Perl user myself, don't know how good it is for advanced users, but for beginners it is very good.

The topics on hand are clearly explained and the examples for each topic are usefull and easy to use.

I am a professional PERL programmer and I find that this book is still very usefull as a reference. It is an excellent primer for people who don't have formal training in programming. I have recommended it several times to non-programmers and have gotten many thanks for the referal.

Typically I'm an O'Reilly fan but if you are trying to decide between "Learning PERL" or this book... buy THIS BOOK. Inside it's intended scope this book is the best reference you can currently buy.

Even if you don't need the programming introduction you can still reference the excellant Regular Expressions Chapters and the amazing Appendicies and Index.

This book will take you from a novice to an intermediate PERL programmer. For that I give this book 5 stars. If you need to do advanced PERL programming this book is still a good reference... but you are looking for another book then.

I agree with fellow reviewer, James Tolley from NYC, I honestly don't understand how this book got such high ratings. I read with amazement other reviews by people who claim to be programmers, they must be pals of the author. I will itemize in detail where I find problems with this book:

1)
This book is riddled with typos and errors. Not a good thing when you are trying to learn something new. The book leads you astray. To the authors credit, he has published his book on a web site and it seems to be much better than the printed book. But then, why would you BUY the book? The good news is that the book provides nice wide margins so you can note the typos and make corrections.

2)
Examples of perl scripts (hence, Perl 5 by EXAMPLE) are all through the book and at first glance it looks like a great way to learn. Problem is, I've just found 2 examples (one right after the other) that don't even work as examples for what was taught. In chapter 5 we are learning about the "my" and "local" functions. I took the examples provided (from the Web site, mind you) and ran them with the "my" and with the "local" operators in them and they ran great. But then I removed them and the script produced the same result. So what was the point?

3)
This book offers review questions at the end of each chapter. The answers to the review questions are provided at the end of the book in Appendix A. That's good. However, in my opinion, the review questions aren't nearly as important as the review exercises that follow the questions at the end of every chapter. The exercises are where you are asked to write perl programs to reinforce what you learned in the chapter you just read. There are no answers to these all important exercises. Not in the book, not on the CD-ROM not on the author's web site. When I wrote to the author he offered to review my work as time permits. Nice offer, but not what I had in mind.

I have several books on perl and the O'Reilly books (i.e. Learning Perl) are far better. Learning Perl has exercises at the end of each chapter and the answers are provided in the back.

This book will only serve to confuse beginners with misinformation and force them to extra unnecessary effort in order to combat the lax attitude in which this book was produced. A proofreader that knows how to write perl might have helped on this account.

The concept for the book and the approach are terrific ideas. But do you want to have to read the book and then check the Web site and run every script to make sure you weren't given misinformation? This is a book that depends on you to allow for a "fudge factor." Expect more for your hard earned money.

This is the book that got me hooked on perl, the step by step examples
help you get your ideas from concept to code, with out all the debuging
in C++, more flexible then C++ too and its a free open source software!
"If you need to minipulate data, you need to use perl". most of its developers
have done all the hard work, making it a higher level language then C++
and allowing you to quicklly prototype any algorithm you can imagine!

Nice service. Received in 3 weeks for an international shipment which was expected for two months! Thank you!

Well, i just bought the book yesterday and came here to read about the customer reviews. From what i gather , people who bought it before 1998 didn't get the full version of the CD. My guess is that there were some faults with the earlier CD but they updated the CD over the years. The book stated that i shoud get msie2.0 but i got msie3.0.(Okay, So they got msie5.0 now). So for the guys who are worried about not getting the right stuffs in the CD, my advice is to check with the storekeeper before purchasing! And i think this is a good book for beginners wanting to get started on PERL, definitely not recommended for advanced users as already indicated on the back of the book(User Level=Casual)