Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web (Visual QuickStart Guide) [Paperback]

Elizabeth Castro (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 020135358X | ISBN-13: 978-0201353587 | Publication Date: November 13, 1998

For any course in Digital Graphics, Web Design, Web Scripting and Development, Multimedia, Page Layout, Office Tools, and Operating Systems. These task-based, visual reference guides feature step-by-step instructions and plenty of screen shots to guide students and teachers through the most important tasks. Visual QuickStart Guides are the ideal way to get students up and running quickly, and are used for intermediate and advanced students as a quick reference.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the best things about Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web is the seamless way the author incorporates terminology into her explanations. Elizabeth Castro, author of HTML 4 for the World Wide Web, understands the intermediate user: someone who would be bored by a beginner's guide, but isn't ready to step up to heavy-hitting programming texts either.

In Perl and CGI, she explains basic concepts--such as the difference between a compiled and an interpreted script--within the text, so there's no need to keep flipping back to the glossary. Readers should be familiar with HTML and comfortable with technical explanations, diagrams, and general vocabulary.

Anyone trying to get a grasp on something as complex and powerful as Perl will appreciate Castro's relatively straightforward technique. For example, in the first chapter, Castro explains some basic Perl concepts sensibly: that the $ stands for the s in scalar; the @ sign stands for the a in array; and that the % that labels a hash or associative array indicates two circles on each side of the slash as parts of a pair. This granular, logical way of building Perl knowledge will get new Perl users started. More experienced users will want to use this book as a workbook and refresher. --Jennifer Buckendorff

From the Back Cover

Perl is by far the most popular programming language for creating scripts that add powerful interactive features to Web pages. Included on most UNIX platforms and available free of charge for Windows and Macintosh, Perl lets you place forms on your Web site that collect and process user input such as product orders and comments, enables visitors to conduct keyword searches, and lets you integrate a database into your site, among many other capabilities.

Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide gets you to the heart of Perl scripting with CGI. Even first-time programmers will be able to create interactive Web pages and, more importantly, use their newfound familiarity with Perl to understand and customize the multitude of scripts that already exist on the Web. Following on the huge success of Elizabeth Castro's top-selling HTML 4: Visual QuickStart Guide ---the book on HTML--her Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide is sure to become the choice for learning Perl and CGI.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press (November 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 020135358X
• ISBN-13: 978-0201353587
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (126 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #844,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I moved to Barcelona in 1987 to study bilingualism but found a job in a computer company instead. After managing the translation of many different computer programs (FreeHand, PageMaker, Illustrator, and more), I started a publishing company to translate and publish computer books in Spanish. In 1993, moved back to the US to write my own books. Started with Netscape, and then moved on to HTML, Perl, XML, Blogger, iPhoto, and most recently EPUB. You can find more personal info about me at my blog A Year in Barcelona (http://www.ayearinbarcelona.com). My regular blog is Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis (http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com). I spend a fair bit of time on Twitter (@lizcastro). And my full website is www.ElizabethCastro.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb for the Beginner.. not the best reference book though, December 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web (Visual QuickStart Guide) (Paperback)

I bought this title back when I was first teaching myself Perl. At the time, I had done some BASIC and VB programming, but knew nothing about Perl and CGI except that it was one of the most common ways to add some interactivity and form handling to a web site.

Admittedly, the coverage of the subject is a little light, and the hold-the-novice-user-by-the-hand- style was actually confusing (she should have used the more standard method of using bold, italics, and monospace fonts to indicate output, user required input, and variables) BUT considering I was at the absolute beginner level with respect to Perl and CGI, I feel the book lived up to my expectations. I wanted something to get me started quickly, and not to assume I knew anything about CGI and PERL but did assume that I knew HTML. I did not want a book that would cover the subject matter exhaustively, just give me a basic "Quick-Start" which it did quite well.

I continued to use the book as a reference for a few months, though it's really not laid out well for that purpose. (I would suggest the O'Reilly Perl CD Bookshelf for that) If you know PERL and CGI basics, this one is not for you, but if you're comfortable with HTML and want to start doing more, It's worth a try.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 2nd edition: Flawed masterpiece, July 4, 2001

By 

"webfielding" (Scottsbluff, NE United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, Second Edition (Paperback)

I taught myself CGI programming with the first edition of this book a couple of years ago, and have spent most of the ensuing time as a professional web programmer. This alone is testament to the effectiveness of Castro's teaching/writing ability.

The second edition does add much that was missing from the first edition, such as the "use strict" pragma that forces programmers to declare variables, and the CGI.pm library that, for one, circumvents the tedium of parsing form data. Arguably the most important edition, however, is the discussion of setting up a local test environment, but it is also in this area that the book falls short.

In particular I find it bothersome that the author does not recommend installing Apache as a test environment. After all, Apache is the environment under which most CGI scripts will eventually run on virtual web hosts running the Linux/Unix operating system.

So by testing with Apache for Windows, you will be emulating the actual production environment of the script much more closely than by using the other web servers that are recommended. In fact, there are a number of (free) products on the market that bundle Apache and Perl together, so that you don't have to go through the extra step of downloading and installing Perl seperately from the web server software, as in the book's examples.

Another sin of omission is that no consideration is given to the persistent storage of data, other than cumbersome text files. However, this has been one of the areas in which the greatest strides have been made since the first edition. Retrieval and storage of data from web applications, using some sort of database, are practically a given today.

Perhaps the author thought that a discussion of the Perl DBI (Database Interface) would be too much of a digression, and would involve setting up additional database software. However, a few of the same bundles I mentioned above not only include Apache and Perl, but also the mySQL database engine.

At the very least I think there should have been discussion of the very simple "DBM" database system available on almost all Unix systems. Perl makes it very easy to store hash arrays to disk in this format, and just as easy to import them into hashes. This would at least provide readers with a stepping stone to eventually investigating the more robust DBI library.

So I rate the content a 5, but I take off one point for what the book lacks.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars it is what it says it is, January 12, 2000

By 

James A. Donaldson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web (Visual QuickStart Guide) (Paperback)

I just completed a class on writing CGI scripts with Perl, and although this was not part of the reading list for the class, nevertheless it's what I used to actually learn what I needed to know. This is NOT a book about learning Perl. It is about writing CGI scripts using Perl. You'll get a decent introduction to Perl syntax and Castro will move you right into applying it to writing CGI scripts, primarily for handling forms. I'm not aware of any other book that gives you exactly what you need (if this is what you're looking for) in such a nice, compact introduction. The "visual" part of the book (the pictures the previous reviewer is lamenting the absence of), is really just simple "screenshot"-like figures showing what Netscape or Explorer would look like given the particular exercise being explained. No, there are no big color pictures in here, but it's really not necessary. Prior knowledge of HTML is recommended, but not absolutely necessary as the author spends some time explaining the HTML syntax behind forms.