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Minimal Perl: For Unix and Linux People

by Tim Maher (Author)

4.5 21 ratings

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No-nonsense and practical, yet with wit and charm. A joy to read.""
-Dan Sanderson, Software Developer, Amazon.com
""Shows style, not just facts-valuable.""
-Brian Downs, former Training Director, Lucent Technologies
""Brilliant, never tedious-highly recommended!""
-Jon Allen, Maintainer of perldoc.perl.org
""You could have chosen no better primer than this book.""
-Damian Conway, from the Foreword
Perl is a complex language that can be difficult to master. Perl advocates boast that ""There's More Than One Way To Do It,"" but do you really want to learn several ways of saying the same thing to a computer?
To make Perl more accessible, Dr. Tim Maher has over the years designed and taught an essential subset of the language that is smaller, yet practical and powerful. With this engaging book you can now benefit from ""Minimal Perl,"" even if all you know about Unix is grep.
You will learn how to write simple Perl commands-many just one-liners-that go far beyond the limitations of Unix utilities, and those of Linux, MacOS/X, etc. And you'll acquire the more advanced Perl skills used in scripts by capitalizing on your knowledge of related Shell resources. Sprinkled throughout are many Unix-specific Perl tips.
This book is especially suitable for system administrators, webmasters, and software developers.

About the Author

Tim Maher has worked for U.C. Berkeley as a senior programmer/analyst, for the University of Utah as a professor of computer science, and for AT&T, DEC, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, and Consultix as a course developer and/or lecturer on operating systems and programming languages. He founded Seattle's SPUG, one of the oldest, largest, and most active Perl users groups and served as its leader for its first six years. He serves on the Advisory Board of the University of Washington that oversees its Perl Certificate Program, and has led discussions in the Perl community about the development of a certification process for Perl programmers. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

ISBN-10

1932394508
ISBN-13

978-1932394504
Publisher

Manning
Publication date

October 1, 2006
Language

English
Dimensions

7.38 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
Print length

464 pages
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Manning (October 1, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1932394508
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1932394504
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.96 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.38 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,261,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #117 in Perl Programming
- #271 in Linux Programming
- #447 in Unix Operating System

Customer Reviews:
4.5 21 ratings

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Ruth Boaz

Practical, useable, and it doesn't even say "for dummies"

Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2010

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One thing goes without question - Mr. Maher knows his Perl. In this book he takes the most practical pieces of the language and shows you how to use them. Many programming books start so far back to the "beginning" that the first half is dry and boring. Tim's book is neither dry nor boring! The book has an enjoyable cadence as well as being informative and applicable. The quick reference pages are a real value-add as well.

Don't let the "For UNIX and Linux People" part of the title scare you away. While Tim does a great job of showing how Perl compares, contrasts, and can be integrated with Unix, this books is really for everyone. If you're trying to find a good Perl book and maybe are thinking "Hm, that wizard-looking guy or Camel?" Hands-down go for the wizard. (Note: wizard-looking guy is actually an Albanian). Camel has a place in the world, but if its not what you know you need, then this book is almost certainly a better place to start.

If you read this book and want to go deeper... I discovered Tim Maher also teaches via his Seattle based company, Consultix. (From experience, he is an even better teacher than he is writer.)

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Bruce Coryell

Title a little misleading

Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2009

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This is an excellent work in how to harness PERL to better use the Linux/ Unix shell and command line. But a warning: this is NOT a good introduction to either the PERL scripting language or shell programming. Rather you need to be familiar with both first before you approach this book, specifically, you need to be familiar with sed, awk, and grep, and you really need to be already familiar with PERL. That said, the book does an excellent job of building on that knowledge and gives some real empowerment.

2 people found this helpful

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Z. Madon

The unix way, perl style

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2007

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The cw tells you to not to use perl when traditional commands will do, but this book tosses that aside. It thoroughly covers several use cases where perl really does a better job. In addition, by switching from sed, grep, awk, and so forth completely to perl, you don't have to think as much of syntax stuff each time you run a command. One of the first things that sold me was eliminating the common stack of greps, and replacing it with a single line of perl.

The book is also well written and enjoyable. You should have some basic abilities in perl or unix/linux, but it provides a lot of introductory material that is specific to this book's idiom of minimal perl. If you have questions about the book, the publisher provides a forum to ask the author.

If you believe in the unix way, but are sometimes frustrated by whichever unix you use, or especially if you switch between unices, this book offers a way to cure that frustration.

7 people found this helpful

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Brian Wisti

Good as more than just a Perl introduction

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2007

This book is being promoted as a Perl introduction for those who are already familiar with other popular shell tools such as grep, sed, and awk. I can't vouch for how useful it is in that context, although the quality of material and delivery style probably make it a good resource.

I came at the book from a different angle. Perl is familiar, but the other shell tools aren't. I started exploring Linux and UNIX when the GUI shells were starting to become useful in their own right and find/grep/sed/awk didn't seem as important. Perl has largely been an application programming language for me, so I never learned more than the barest hint of its scripting power. There is a huge "shell scripting tool" shaped hole in my Perl and UNIX knowledge.

"Minimal Perl" has been rapidly filling that gap. Even the first 20 pages were enlightening - they showed information on some of the more useful command-line options to Perl along with plentiful examples. Remember that for the last nine years "perl" eq "application language" in my head. The only command line options I cared about were -w and -T, and I stopped caring about -w when 5.6 was released. My new understanding of -l, -n, and -p meant that I could suddenly whip out a quick one-liner for a simple task, rather than write too many lines of C-style code for the same job.

I have been bouncing through the book as I find one of my needs matched by a chapter subject, but the rest of the book has been more of the same. You practice using Perl in combination with other shell tools and then as a complete replacement for those tools. The concepts from this book have saved my [...] a few times already, as I was able to combine them with my existing knowledge of Perl to find and fix code issues quickly.

The writing style is enjoyable. "Minimal Perl" is written in a relaxed, light-hearted manner which still manages to convey thoughts very clearly. You will learn a lot about the differences between Perl and the shell tools, even if you weren't that familiar with the shell tools in the first place. You will learn about the author's almost unhealthy love of AWK before he discovered Perl. More importantly, you'll learn how to use Perl as more than an awkward replacement for C++.

The physical layout of the book is first-rate, which I have come to expect from Manning. The font is large and readable. The book is printed on good thick paper, which matters more than I would have thought. The tables and code samples are easy to find, although I would have appreciated a table listing in the table of contents. After double-checking through this book while writing the review, that's the only complaint I was able to come up with: a table listing would be nice. [...]

I recommend this book to anyone who knows Perl but hasn't used it to do any dirty work in the shell. This will have an impact on when and how you use Perl.

21 people found this helpful

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B. Knight

Does what it says it does.

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2017

Verified Purchase

Has chapters on using it as an AWK replacement and as a SED replacement. I have started using PERL as a safe cross-platform replacement for those tools, since their behavior differs between Mac OS X and Linux. But PERL is the same in both those environments.

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2008

Verified Purchase

Minimal Perl focuses on translating UNIX/Linux shell commands to Perl (awk, sed, grep, and the like). It doesn't go into whole programs as much as single-use lines, which is fine for simple tasks like checking log files or filtering text files. There are a few conventional programs thrown in the book but all of them are very short. In fact, the comments generally outweigh the code.
Don't take that as bad, though. Tim Maher introduces some great ideas that I haven't seen in the other Perl books I've read. It's a great reference to have on hand for simple tasks. Maher uses clear examples and clever text to get across some complex (and often difficult to read) Perl.
If your looking for traditional programming book, this probably isn't for you. Stick with O'Reilly for how to write complete programs. Minimal Perl is all about quick and disposable code that's more powerful then shell commands but not the overkill of a complete program.

5 people found this helpful

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anon

Billaint simplification of Perl, or rather, presentation of a subset of Perl

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 7, 2017

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Brilliant simplification of Perl. It works by taking the subset of the language that is most similar to sed, awk and grep, and bash scripting, and showing how to do what these do, and go beyond what they do, using Perl.

The ideal audience would be someone who has used Sed, then moved on to Awk when there was stuff that was either impossible or very complicated to do in Sed, then written some bash scripts. This book shows you how to do all the stuff you already know, and how to go beyond it, in just the one language, and in very similar style.

I found the jocular tone a bit forced and irritating in places - this is a book you are going to keep going back to some pages, and the light touch gets old on the third or fourth visit. But this is a minor point. The great plus is that one ends up able to do in Perl what one can already do in Awk within a an hour or so. Using it as we use Awk one-liners is taught immediately, and the second part, which is using Perl as scripting, is beautifully clear.

This will probably sound like its aimed at beginner programmers, but not really. Its just a very easy and rapid route into Perl for almost anyone, using what those who pick it up will already know as the gateway. I am not sure how well you'd get on with it without this background, but if you have it, the book makes maximum and profitable use of it.

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