Perl Black Book [Paperback]

Steve Holzner (Author), Steven Holzner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1932111107 | ISBN-13: 978-1932111101 | Publication Date: July 1, 2002 | Edition: Second Edition

Award-winning author Steven Holzner has updated his best-selling first edition to cover all aspects of Perl language version 5.6 including: syntax changes, improved security features, new database modules, and built-in functions. Three new chapters have been added to the second edition covering XML with DOM, SAX, CGI, SOAP, and WML.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steve Holzner is an award-winning author who has been writing about Java topics since Java first appeared. He's a former PC Magazine contributing editor, and his many books have been translated into 18 languages around the world. His books sold more than 1.5 million copies, and many of his bestsellers have been on Java.

Steve graduated from MIT and got his PhD at Cornell; he's been a very popular member of the faculty at both MIT and Cornell, teaching thousands of students over the years and earning an average student evaluation over 4.9 out of 5.0. He also runs his own software company and teaches week-long classes to corporate programmers on Java around the country.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1296 pages
• Publisher: Paraglyph Press; Second Edition edition (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932111107
• ISBN-13: 978-1932111101
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,208,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steven Holzner is an award-winning author who has written extensively on Ajax and JavaScript. With over 100 titles published, he's sold over a million copies of his books and been translated into 16 languages. As a former faculty member of MIT and Cornell, he teaches corporate seminars around the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ideal Reference Material, July 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Perl Black Book: The Most Comprehensive Perl Reference Available Today (Paperback)

Perl Black Book is probably the best technical book I have ever read. This book will save you time through its organization, concise explanatory style, and content. The "Black Book" enables a programmer to quickly access information, especially keyword syntax. Each chapter begins with an overview of what will be covered including page numbers for "immediate solutions" to those problems you need a quick answer to. I don't know how many times I have spent more time than I would like sifting through pages of text looking for the correct syntax for the 'if' construct, or playing back-and-forth with the glossary trying to locate a specific function to manipulate a string. This book will help you find answers quickly. The book covers nearly every major aspect of beginning/intermediate level Perl programming in a consistent, fluent, and well-organized manner. Regular expressions, cgi programming w/ Perl, OO, and Perl/Tk are all covered. If you have an understanding of the basic elements of programming, this book serves as a valuable reference, and helps to further explain and clarify some of the more difficult aspects of the language without being too verbose. This book does not provide very many references to additional information, however.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great reference manual, September 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Perl Black Book: The Most Comprehensive Perl Reference Available Today (Paperback)

This is a fantastic perl book. It is very complete, well written, and organized in a "problem solving" fashion that makes it a valuable reference tool. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because in some areas the author doesn't provide quite enough detail about the BASICS that make the code work. I wouldn't recommend this book if you are an absolute beginner to programming, but if you have any experince at all, you should do just fine with this book. Buy it, you won't regret it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's really a know-it-all Perl book, February 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Perl Black Book: The Most Comprehensive Perl Reference Available Today (Paperback)

I just started learning Perl and wanted a good reference that wouldn't talk to me on the level of Perl for Dummies but also wouldn't go so high that it was pointless. I wanted real-world examples and a lot of information on data structures. This book is amazing. I've had several rather obscure questions that it has answered perfectly and a rather large amount of confustion that the author cleared up nicely. He gives great examples and walks the reader through Perl from "Hello World" to a CGI database and interacting with windowing systems (Tk and Windows). Absolutely required for a serious library.