Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Missing basic syntax rules. I wonder if the authors use Perl, April 30, 2002
My 2-star review is from the perspective of an intermediate Perl user. From my exp. with 'Unix in a Nutshell', I expected this book to be all I needed in my briefcase at work. As it turns out, I'll take the "Camel" (Programming Perl) and leave this uninspiring book at home.Let me give you an example: I was poring over a (slightly) complicated regular expression, trying to figure out what was going on...there seemed no rhyme or reason to it.....there were way too many spaces and yet the pattern was matching!! I then noticed the "x" option on the end of it: /reg-ex/x Thinking this could be the culprit, I broke out Perl:NUTSHELL...I found the appropriate table and it said: this option used to Enable Extended regular expressions. Ah-ha! But wait, what are Extended regular Epressions, and what is the deal with all these extra spaces in my reg-ex? I forwarded a bit and found the section about Extended Regular Expressions. And I found.........nothing. As it turns out (after looking in the Camel), the "x" means that all whitespace in the pattern is ignored, hence all the darn spaces. I made a point to look (again) for this bit of syntactic info in Perl:NUTSHELL, and it is not there. So what is the use of this book then, considering it is missing such a BASIC SYNTAX rule? Good question.
Another gripe: where's the freakin examples? While I don't expect NUTSHELL books to EXPLAIN the examples tutorial style, I do expect some basic usage examples to help me with commands I havn't used (again, see Unix in a Nutshell)!! Another quick example for you Perl non-gurus (like myself): I came upon the Perl "filetest" operator "-t"....but the test had no following argument (e.g. the file's name), so I was confused. Off to the Nutshell. Oops. Nothing there except the shortest little description possible. Sigh. Back to the Camel, where I found that this particular file test operator defaults to a filehandle, <STDIN>, and not the usual variable which is $_ (perl's typical default). Hello? This isn't important!? Totally ridiculous for a supposed "reference" book. In conclusion, this book seems to have zero "learning" value, being so terse (not to mention boring) and having so few examples, and only mediocre reference usefulness. Don't buy this one, buy the other O'Reilly books on Perl (Learning Perl and Programming Perl are high quality, as is Perl Cookbook). You might have to lug the Camel around (dromedaries are heavy), but it is superior to this inconcise man-page in every way (has a big reference section + a big 'learning' section). PS. this is the 1st ed. Maybe the 2nd will be worth the money.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Annoyingly Inconsistent and Incomplete, August 10, 2000
This was one of my first books after Learning Perl, and I have to say after using it for about a month that I'm having to go and buy other books. Nutshell does not equal incomplete in my mind, and something that purports to be a reference should be at least as complete as the documentation. A short list of what I've been ticked of by so far:1) Less than 2 pages devoted to object oriented perl. I realize that probably less than 20% of all perl people will ever write anything object oriented, but I'm find OO essential for breaking down complicated problems. 2) Missing library calls; for example, in the DBI library: prepare_cached, connect_on_init really do exist. 3) Incomplete documentation of each and every library call; what are the possible values of an attribute hash? You better RTM, because usually you won't find it here. 4) Inconsistent documentation of library calls: sometimes they tell you what type the function wants, and sometimes they don't. 5) Lack of example usage in the libraries. This is not nitpicky stuff. A comprehensive reference book should answer the purpose at least 60% of the time, or it becomes a waste of time. But, if you use this book first, you will *still* have to look at the documentation or another book, guaranteed. This book bears all the hallmarks of having been hurriedly compiled from information available online, without expert review, and poorly edited. I realize documentation is a boring thankless task (better than Sominex for me), but nevertheless this book does not hit the mark.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
wrong emphases in language reference, good module docs, September 9, 2000
I'd been occasionally writing perl for a few months without a decent reference, and have always relied on O'Reilly's _In A Nutshell_ series, so got this book. I think this did not live up to standards..After an introduction to CPAN (online perl archive) and installing perl, the basic constructs of the language are explained in reasonable (for programmers) detail - data types, statements, special vars, operators, regex, subroutines, pod and the perl debugger. Some of it reads like a tutorial rather than reference, using paragraphs where tables would suit, slowing down ability to access info. On advanced topics such as object orientation (3 pages), it faded into "throw a few paragraphs together". Occasional usage notes (e.g. anonymous subroutines for closures) would have been nice too. A full function reference and alphabetised list of standard modules is given, with specific sections on databases, network programming, perl/tk, CGI and win32. With the exception of the CGI section (maybe thanks to its duplication in _Webmaster In A Nutshell_) they are usually little more than a list of methods/subroutines. I'd advise buying the Camel book, and sticking to the online docs for modules and functions.
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