Wicked Cool Perl Scripts: Useful Perl Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems [Paperback]

Steve Oualline (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wicked Cool | Publication Date: February 15, 2006

Most Perl programmers have been frustrated at one time or another because the system just wouldn't do what they wanted it to do. There was that one simple and obvious utility that was missing that would make life so much easier: A tool to get a stock quote, show off a photograph collection, or even display a collection of favorite comics. Wicked Cool Perl Scripts is about writing those utilities quickly and easily. A collection of handy utilities that solves difficult problems, Wicked Cool Perl Scripts is a great resource for the savvy Perl programmer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A book about kick-starting your programming imagination . . . [it] will get you thinking about . . . creating practical solutions to your problems." -- About.com Guide to Perl, May 22, 2006

"Exemplifies the practical approach, highlighting utilities that make readers' computing and online lives easier." -- Library Journal Reviews, May 1, 2006

"Provides excellent and useful scripts to do the specific things the author intends them to be used for." -- O’Reilly.net, April 24, 2006

"This is not your typical Perl book . . . great for a Perl programmer who has a flair for unique issues." -- Free Software Magazine, April 20, 2006

From the Back Cover

You can do a lot of strange and wonderful things with the Perl language—if you know how. Many Perl programmers have been frustrated at one time or another because the system was missing some simple and obvious utility. Wicked Cool Perl Scripts is your guide to writing those utilities quickly and easily.

This book contains a wide variety of scripts including ones that make use of really cool Perl features (see script #1 Automatic Help Option) and Internet data mining (try script #18 Getting Stock Quotes or script #19 Comics Download).

It also contains games (like Teaching a Toddler, script #35), programs to make system administration easier (such as Mass File Renaming, script #21), and even a program to help someone hiking the Grand Canyon (script #42 Location Finder).

Even the most experienced programmer can benefit from script #46 the Regular Expression Grapher which shows you how a complex expression like /^.*(a|b|c).+$/ can be made into a simple, easily understood graph.

If you’re a Perl programmer who wants to learn the ins and outs as well as the hidden corners of the language, Wicked Cool Perl Scripts will show you simple and elegant hacks as well as some extreme examples of power programming. With Wicked Cool Perl Scripts in hand, you’ll be doing things you never even thought possible in Perl. You’ll be using the language to do real work, of course, but you’ll also be producing wickedly cool programs.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (February 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593270623
• ISBN-13: 978-1593270629
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #328,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A book full of examples of how NOT to write perl, February 18, 2007

By 

Thomas Legrady (Toronto, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wicked Cool Perl Scripts: Useful Perl Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems (Paperback)

I couldn't resist the title, so I got this book. Unfortunately, I cannot reccommend it to people who want to learn to write better Perl, execpt as a source of examples of the mistakes you should avoid.

For example, in one of the earliest examples, the authors uses "return undef" in a situation where the return value of the routine is assigned to an array, to indicate the routine didn't find any of whatever it was looking for. Unfortunately, this is a mistake, the correct code would be to use "return;" all on its own. The correct solution produces an empty array or interim values; the mistake creates an array containing one element, 'undef'.

There are a number of similar mistakes which indicate the author is in over his head, writing things he doesn't understand; the editors know even less about the matter; and the code was never tested and verified for correctness.

If you want to learn Perl, get "Learning Perl"; If you want to improve your Perl, get "Intermediate Perl.

Tom

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor riddled with syntax errors, June 16, 2006

By 

perl reviewer "perl reviewer" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wicked Cool Perl Scripts: Useful Perl Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems (Paperback)

I don't usually feel strong enough to write reviews however don't buy this book unless you want to spend hours debugging someone elses code just for the fun of it. I could have written my own in less time that it took me to fix the errors found in the code. In addition you would expect the downloadable code to work and they don't either. They are not even the same code examples found in the book. Unless you want to pay for the ideas and what modules to use this book is a waste of money.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not "Wicked Cool", February 19, 2006

By 

Anthony Lawrence "Unix, Linux and Mac OS X" (Middleboro, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wicked Cool Perl Scripts: Useful Perl Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems (Paperback)

I'm going to be grumpy about this.

I have nothing good to say about this book. I don't have anything bad to say (except maybe that I dislike titles like this), but nothing grabbed me, nothing excited me.

Maybe that's because the kinds of examples presented are just what Perl is best at doing - the author demonstrates that a properly stocked toolbox can indeed be used to build a birdhouse, repair a sticking door, hang a picture. Yaaaawnn..

If you know nothing whatsoever about Perl, I suppose this might be fun. But why would you read it if you knew nothing? I think that's probably the basic flaw here: it's not a "Learn Perl" book, and it doesn't explore the more esoteric areas. The subtitle says "Useful Perl Scripts that solve difficult problems", but there are no difficult problems here, just building birdhouses, hanging pictures, and so on.

Just not my cup of tea, I guess.