Perl Black Book: The Most Comprehensive Perl Reference Available Today (Paperback)

by Steven Holzner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Written by Steve Holzner, former contributing editor for PC Magazine and the author of 50 computer books. There are over a million copies of his books in print. Includes 250 pages of CGI programming, the driving force behind Perl's popularity. Includes over 1,000 programming examples. Comprehensive coverage of Perl syntax and programming. If you can have only one book on Perl, this is it! Written at a higher technical level than other books currently on the market.

About the Author
Steven Holzner (Cambridge, MA) is a former contributing editor for PC Magazine and has authored more than 60 books ranging in subject from assembly language to C++. His books have sold over a million copies and have been translated into 15 languages. Steven was on the faculty of Cornell University for 10 years, where he earned his Ph.D., and has also been on the faculty of his undergraduate school, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1328 pages
• Publisher: Coriolis Group Books; Bk&CD Rom edition (August 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576104656
• ISBN-13: 978-1576104651
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #168,610 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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

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.

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

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.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

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

By A Customer

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.