Rating:  - A Good Starting Place
I came to this book with 10 years C/C++ programming experience and need to quickly learn enough Perl to understand and modify some Perl scripts. "Learning Perl" met my needs perfectly. This book is well organized and its presentation of the language is relatively clear and concise. A slight annoyance is the near constant promotion of Perl.
While I've gained a degree of competence and confidence with Perl, I'm still not a zealot. It's on to the camel book for me
Rating:  - excellent introduction
Well written, lots of tongue-in-cheek jokes.
Answers to the exercises, which I find valuable.
I've been programming in C for over 20 years, have occassionally worked in perl (but don't know it off the top of
my head). I found the book very easy to read, and very
informative.
I think the book is geared towards an experienced programmer who wants to learn perl.
Rating: - A REAL WHIRLWIND TOUR
If you want to spend some time learning Perl, this fourth edition of the book is for you. Authors Randal Schwartz, Tom Phoenix and brian foy, have done an outstanding job of providing you with a book that helps you understand why the Perl programming language is the workhorse of the Internet; as well as, the language of choice for system administrators, web hackers, and casual programmers around the world.
Schwartz, Phoenix and foy begin by asking you a number of questions: What does Perl stand for? How can you get Perl? How do you make a Perl program? And, so forth. Next, the authors cover scalar data, with respect to numbers and strings. Then, they examine lists (an ordered collection of scalars) and arrays ( a variable that contains a list). The authors continue by showing you how Perl can make subrountines, which are user-defined functions. In addition, the authors next introduce you to the workings of standard input, output and error streams. They also show you a feature that makes Perl one of the world's great programming languages--hashes. Next, the authors take you on a trip to visit the world of regular expressions, where you can forget about the world of Perl. Then, they show you where this world fits into Perl's world. The authors continue by showing you how to use patterns to locate the parts of strings that you want to change. Then, you'll see some alternative ways to write Perl code. In addition, the authors present a complete set of tests that are used by Perl to help you find information about files. They also show you how Perl lets you manipulate operations directories directly, in ways that are even fairly portable from one operating system to another. Next, the authors show you a simpler way of working with strings and sorting. Then, they present the inner workings of process management. The authors continue by showing you how to use modules that already exist. Finally, they examine some advanced Perl techniques.
With the preceding in mind, the authors have done an excellent job of giving you a real whirlwind tour of Perl. So, at the end of the day, you'll know whether this is the right Perl book for you!
Rating: - very good book for starting perl
This is excellent book for beginers. Why?
1)The authors are established experts on perl. When I say experts I mean so much so they are famous in the perl community. It is also clear from this book that they have a wealth of other knowledge related to perl (especially linux, design patterns, etc).
2)Randal Schwartz's writing is extremely clear.
3)there are exercises at the end of each chapter. of course, if you want to learn a language to have to use it, not just read it. they do not neglect this important fact (like so many other authors). they give their own expert solutions as well. comparing their solutions with your own further facilates comprehension of teh material.
the only minus is i wish they added a few chapter on OO perl and references!
don't start with the camel and skip the llama. even if you are smart enough, it is faster to learn to walk and then run and to try and run from the start.
sorry for any spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, etc. although i spend hours on this book, i wrote this review in a minute or two.
Rating: - A great book if you are familiar with coding.
Luckily I am familiar with how to code, and so this book turned out to be a fabulous resource. To be fair, the authors state that you should really have done some sort of programming before or this book will not be as much value to you. But with that pre-requisite covered 'Learning Perl' is a fun and information dense learning tool. Not to say that you can't do it if you have never coded before, but it will be more of a struggle.
Coming in at under 275 pages, the book doesn't waste time in getting down to what you need to know. I am a self-learner, and I was constantly amazed at the end of each chapter at how much we had covered. Given such information rich text, you might imagine it to be a little dry. Not so. The book exhibits a quirky, geeky sense of humor. And be warned; it uses footnotes extensively. While that may not be your bag, I found the footnotes made the book more like an internet browsing experience. You use the footnote like a link to more detailed and in-depth information.
I would give the book 5 stars but for one small beef. The authors assume that you are a UNIX programmer. There are numerous references to UNIX arcana, which you are supposed to just know. Phrases like 'If you want to make a Perl program [..] like the utilities cat, sed, awk, [..] and many others..' mean nothing to me. Furthermore there is little (a couple of paragraphs) to explain how to get Perl up and running on a Windows box. Now, I can easily overlook the little Microsoft digs, but I think more of an effort could have been made to reach out to the 'other side'.
So now, I am building my own Perl library. And I love the functionality it gives me. Once I figured out how to call programs from other web platforms I was one happy camper. All in all the time spent with this book was well worth it. Mainly the book provided a quick and comprehensive introduction to a powerful and flexible language. Thankfully the authors took a difficult subject and made it easier with their light in tone / heavy on the info style. Check it out.
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