Customer Reviews

Programming Perl (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The book itself, used as a Reference and for mastering Perl, is a five star book. But there are a quite a few disadvantages:

1. The book is not intended to the ones who have no programming experience at all. The read should be at least an intermediate programmer, because the basic programming concepts of the language (Variables, Subs and etc..) are badly explained.

2. Because of Perl's C Like Syntax, it is recommended that the reader will know C, Awk, or Grep and Some experience in the Unix Environment.

3. The Book itself is badly organized, certain complicated things are shown in examples and explanations, and those things are taught many pages afterwards. For Example: An Example of a perl program is shown on page 10, and that example contains subs and pattern matching, which are taught 100 Pages later!

These are the 3 Main Disadvantages. For Conclusion, if you're new to programming, or want to learn Perl easliy, buy "Learning Perl", but if you're a somewhat experienced programmer, and want to master Perl, this book is the best one you'll find for that purpose.

The official reference for the Perl language did not improve in its second generation. The original "purple Camel" is, in my opinion, a true classic where books about programming and programming languages are concerned--I rank it right there with The C Programming Language, Anatomy of Lisp, Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs, and so forth. It was a classic because it was filled with lucid expressions of the thoughts of Perl's quintessentially pragmatic creator, Larry Wall. It was a classic because it provided a literate and thoroughly reasoned counterpoint to arguments in favor of more formally based languages and programming styles.

But ... somewhere in the extensive revisions, additions, extensions, and deletions that transformed the first Camel book into this, the second Camel book, the magic went away. And some very suspicious stuff went in. The book lost its digressive, essayic feel and became more of a perfunctory reference work. Additionally, some of the completely new material turned out to be just a little ... strange. The discussion of object-oriented programming based around the term "thingy" just doesn't do it for me. (Ignore all that and read Damian Conway's book instead.)

Preferences of style and tone aside, an unavoidable flaw of an infrequently-updated book like this one is that it inevitably refers to an obsolescent version of Perl. If you want current Perl documentation, you need to read the man(ual) pages that came with that version of Perl. What's in this book is generally but not completely accurate for newer versions of Perl. And because it's intended to be a more or less complete reference covering even small details, it can't help but be dead wrong on some points as the language continues to evolve. Bear in mind, also, that much of the material in this book comes STRAIGHT from the man pages. (Just not the up-to-date versions.)

A third edition is in the works, which will no doubt be at least a temporary improvement. If the newer version restores the insight and charm of the original, it will certainly deserve a place on your programming bookshelf. But as a reference work intended to cover a constantly-evolving language, Programming Perl will always suffer by being out of date.

If you are the type who dislikes reading electronic documentation, by all means, buy a copy of this book. But you'll find that you have to use the online documentation anyway.

This is an excellent companion to the Learing Perl book (also by O'Reilly). If you are new to Perl like I was not too long ago, then start with the Learning Perl book first before you touch this one.

This book is intended to serve as a reference as it tackles the more complicated aspects of Perl. If you start learning Perl with this book, then you will find it a very difficult language to graps. However, I do not want to take anything away from this book. This book is fantastic for those who want to dive into Perl a bit more and have passed the beginners level. I purchased both the books and once I had finished reading the Learning Perl book, I started turning to this book to get a better understanding of things, especially regular expressions.

This is one of three O'Reilly books I own on Perl (the other two being Learning Perl and Advanced Perl Programming). This book has the down-and-dirty on nearly everything in Perl. I think it's best used as a reference when you need look up how to do something. However, I often use the Learning Perl when I want to see an example, since it's examples seem to be better and more straightforward.

However, this book does have examples as well, and often has examples for the more nontrivial cases that you have to deal with.

All in all, I wouldn't want to sit down and write a lot of Perl without this book. I've written way too much Perl code in the last year, and I reference this book quite a bit. If you're serious about Perl coding then get this book. If you've never written a line of Perl code before, get the Learning Perl book first and rip through that. Then get this book.

No joke. Get all of O'Reilly's Perl Books for just twice the price. Thorough, Convenient, and best of all- Cheap. Go search for it on Amazon- "The Perl CD Bookshelf".

I have been a Perl programmer for the last two years and I thought now is a good time to buy a reference book in Perl. Obviously my choice was "Learning Perl" by Larry Wall. Content is good, as a reference it is excellent, as a study book it is weak and it is not at all good for the beginners. At some places you may feel the language need not be this artistic. I wished that the book contained more examples and a little more detail on how to use PERL functions.

I have been looking into various Perl books which are good for people good in Perl (some sort of reference + as a study book). One book which is worth mentioning is Perl Black Book. If you wish to buy only one book in PERL -- The "Perl Black Book" is the best one. It starts from the basics.. have enough examples, goes into details about everything and does not miss out anything.

First off, If you want to be a Perl Programer, you _MUST_ own this. Thats a point blank statement.

As many of the other reviews may argue, its either for or not for beginners. They are both right. The book is not designed to teach, but to explain. Its a reference book that is superb, especially when it comes to the things that you need every day, but forget (the arguments to a particular function, for example, or certainly various characters on regular expressions).

My first edition was dog eared. This edition I had to bind, because the cover fell off. (I actually own two, one for work one for home).

Its lacking some of the humor, but thats to be expected when you expand a topic. My biggest complaint is that you really need to buy both the Cookbook and Programming Perl.

Any Perl programmer worth his salt owns the "Camel" book, and its so vaery rarely in good shape.

There are some great things about this book. The information is accurate, detailed, clear, and concise. However, there are too many places where a clear expository style is badly needed. One example of several (see other reviews here for other examples): if you already know what the m// operator does, and how to combine it with =~, you are OK; but if you don't know, there is no easy way to figure it out. Here's what you have to do.

First you go to chapter 3, the function reference, and see in the category listing on p.143 that there is a pattern matching function called m//. The alphabetical listing doesn't have it, however. If you're lucky, you notice that they've listed it under // instead of m//, and you are referred from there to a section of chapter 2 called regular expressions (p. 58). But the first mention of m// is on p.66, 8 pages later. What's more, the first example is:

/(\w+)\s*=\s*\1/;

which doesn't show the m// notation (which is how it's indexed, after all), and doesn't show the =~ notation because it makes use of $_ without saying so.

If instead you look up =~ in the index, you are sent to p.80, which assumes you already know about m//, s/// and the fact that m// is //. The definition is "Binary =~ binds a scalar expression to a pattern match[. . .].". This is not very helpful if you're looking it up because you haven't used it before (and only newbies are *going* to look up m// in the first place). So an example would be nice, something simple like:

$fred = "abcd"; if ($fred =~ m/bc/) { print "matched!\n"; }

but instead they jump into fine points.

I repeat, a great book, and a compulsory purchase if you are serious about Perl. But it will drive you crazy while you're learning.

"Programming Perl" simply has everything about Perl you will ever need to know. If it's in Perl, it's in this book, as far as I can tell. Finding what you're looking for will be another matter. The organization of this volume leaves much to be desired. But the index is pretty helpful so searching through this book is a little like looking for a needle in a hay stack, but with a magnet in hand.

But don't let the name fool you: This book is not the place to learn Perl, as I found the hard way. It just simply assumes too much knowledge on the part of the reader, and has a horrendous paucity of example code. If Perl is something you are going to explore and use to a great extent, "Programming Perl" will eventually become indispensible to you, I am certain. But if you are new to the language: DANGER! DANGER! ABUNAI!

All things considered, I would give it four stars -- five for its breadth of coverage minus one for its poor organization. But the book's title implies that it is meant as an introduction to Perl, but an introduction it just ain't! The authors say as much themselves in their introduction, but I think the unsuspecting novice deserves to see it on the front cover too. So I am taking away one more star for a total of three.

"Programming Perl": a great reference, a horrid learning tool.

This book is a reference, nothing less and nothing more. If you already know Perl and want a reference, you might as well get this one. It has a geeky mystique too it and a certain crowd will look up to you for owning it. But that's all it's good for. As a reference, it throws piles and piles of Perl special identifiers, syntax operators, and other stuff in your face without a single decent example. Even a master programmer will not learn Perl from such a presentation, any more than you can learn English from reading a dictionary. To actually learn the language, for those of us who buy books because we hope to learn something, try Learning Perl by the same publisher.