Rating:  - OUTSTANDING!!!!
Quite simply, this book blew me away.
"A computer book blew you away???" you are probably saying, but let's keep this in the context of the computer industry. When I opened up "Learning Perl" I knew nothing about Perl other than it was a very popular language that had a strong following. When I got done with this book I felt that I had a solid grasp of what Perl could do and how to do it.
What blew me away about this book more so than many other computer books is the exceptional writing.
EXCEPTIONAL.
Not good, not great, but above and beyond nearly anything I have read before. While reading this book, you feel like the Authors are in front of you teaching a class and you can tell it's material that they love. Never before have I opened a book about learning something and was engrossed enough to read it cover to cover. Without having to produce a 900 page manual that certainly very few people would delve into, Schwartz & Christiansen/Phoenix have written a book that makes learning Perl fun and it's a fantastic introduction or refresher for anyone that wants to use this great language.
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Rating:  - Not for experienced programmers
It's a good book for learning the very basic things about Perl, if you are just starting with programming languages, but it's too basic for those who already are programmers in other languages such as C.
Most of the book's content is covered more in-depth during the Programming Perl's first chapter.
Rating:  - Good Book - NOT FOR BEGINNERS!!!!!
This is a great book but its NOT for someone who is completely new to perl and programming. This book assumes that you already have some experience programming with another language. I finished reading this book in two weeks. While reading I could feel for that person who is totally new to programming and is trying to understand some of the concepts that are explained. The book has few examples and does not walk you through from step 1 each time a new concept is introduced. It expects you to take all the knowlege from the previous chapter and carry it to the next and again to the next which I think would be pretty difficult for a person who has never programmed before to do. For example the simplest but most important $!/usr/bin/perl. The book only mentions this in the intro chapter and you never see it again for the remainder of the book. My suggestion would be first to read Perl How to Program by Deitel, then Learning Perl, then the Camel. The cookbook can wait. It will be awhile before you will need that.
Rating: - Great way to learn Perl if you can program
I have read some of the other reviews. I beg to differ with some who say that you must be a Unix hacker to use the book. You merely have to be a programmer. This book is great.
This sentence from the book's Preface should be posted prominently on the product purchase page. "Although you don't need to know a single bit about Perl to begin reading this book, we do recommend that you already have familiarity with basic programming concepts such as variables, loops, subroutines, and arrays, and the all-important 'editing a source code file with your favorite text editor.' "
Amazon.com
It is fully accessible to the novice programmer. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inaccurate statement per authors' own statement.
From Book News, Inc.
A guide for both novice and experienced programmers who will find Perl a useful language for the tasks of manipulating text, files, and processes, superseding C, sed, awk, and the UNIX shell. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inaccurate statement per authors' own statement.
Book Info
This new edition has been rewritten to take a ground-up approach for programmers just learning Perl. Softcover. DLC: Perl (Computer Program Language).
Absolutely accurate statement.
The publisher, O'Reilly and Associates
Learning Perl, written by a leading Perl instructor, provides a systematic, step-by-step, tutorial approach to learning the language. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Absolutely accurate statement.
Product Description:
Written by two of the most prominent and active members of the Perl community, this book is the quintessential tutorial to the Perl programming language.
Absolutely accurate statement.
Rating: - good
I read this book a while ago although I havent played in Perl for a long time this is a great book. If your on a linux/unix based system its even better as I feel its aimed highly towards it since a lot of examples are based on *nix programs such as grep, awk.
I had experience with PHP, so learning the first few chapters were extremely easy (and even without it the text is easy going so it doesnt push you too quickly), it doesnt go over the top by trying to teach radical things like OO and also has a few commonly used Modules you can use.
One good explained topic was Regular Expressions. Ive always found them hard even for a simple expression, however my understanding has greatly improved although I still consider myself a novice with it, it does get explained extremely well.
Overall this is a good book, I didnt find any typos too my knowledge and all the examples that I did worked. Some of the exercises were quite hard though.
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