Rating:  - A classic...
One of the reasons I don't quite think of myself as a computer geek (although I am) is that I don't know some of the "geeky" languages like Perl. I need to rectify that some day, and one of O'Reilly's books will help... Learning Perl (4th Edition) by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy. This is one of the classic Perl guides, and it's well worth owning.
Contents: Introduction; Scalar Data; Lists and Arrays; Subroutines; Input and Output; Hashes; In the World of Regular Expressions; Matching with Regular Expressions; Processing Text with Regular Expressions; More Control Structures; File Tests; Directory Operations; Strings and Sorting; Process Management; Perl Modules; Some Advanced Perl Techniques; Exercise Answers; Beyond the Llama; Index
Randal Schwartz is *the* best-selling Perl author and writer, and it shows in this book. He knows the subject inside and out, and knows how to communicate that knowledge to an audience. In Learning Perl, he and his fellow authors set out to cover the material that you'll use 90% of the time in day-to-day situations. Keeping that as the target, you'll get a lot of value out of working through this title. Each chapter also has a number of exercises at the end that will help you apply and solidify what you just learned. You can even cheat and check out the answers at the end, even though the authors beg you not to... :)
They do assume a background understanding of basic computing and programming concepts, so this wouldn't be the best title if you are looking to learn Perl as your first programming language. Of course, I don't think many people approach Perl from that perspective anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. With that assumption in place, you end up getting into the meat of Perl quickly. Couple that with a nice conversational approach to the writing, and you've got a book that will take you far. Oh, and don't ignore the footnotes... Some useful information (and great humor) is hidden down there...
If you need to learn Perl and you want to get there quickly, Learning Perl is the way to go. It's stood the test of time by making it to the 4th edition, and there's a reason for that...
Rating:  - boo! Don't get this if your a beginner!
The fist chapter is completly screwed up. they start of with the simple "hello world" program then you would think they would build on that. He starts off with a simple but cool program to accept a NAME input and tell you hello, Then you build that by guessing a secret word and hence your into scalar varibles etc... But then all of a sudden he's got you writing out more code but he doesn't explain where that goes... I flip back a page and nope I dont see where we got off track, so then he puts it together and it looks NOTHING like you just been working on! This back and forth goes on and on and is a DISASTER for the 1st chapter read by a newbie. One time your writing a cool program then the next you get lost because the author doesn't explain what the f^&* is going on.??
Then he goes on to say "putting it all together it looks like this" but it doesn't! Loads and loads are left out or just not explained. I've got 5+ years in linux and I challenge ANYONE to explain that 1st chapter in a logical manner.
Rating:  - Very good for the beginner
I've hacked around with perl a little bit and mostly used the faqs and learned things the hard way. This document is aimed right at the beginner, someone who's maybe used perl only for a day or too. On the other hand, it's really nifty that it gives the "tricks" that are difficult to find easily. Highly recommended to at least skim over if you can, and definitely a buy if you're new at Perl.
Rating: - A great book for learning, regardless of your background.
One highly ranked reviewer exaggerates that this book is only loved by expert Unix gurus and then steers you toward another title. Check the other reviews for yourself and you'll see this is a falsehood.
While Perl has its origins as the 'toolbox for Unix', this book is great for students learning Perl on ANY platform. I've been using the examples in this edition with the ActiveState distribution (available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows) on Windows and haven't had a single OS-related snag.
After trying several Perl books, all good mind you, this one's explanations, examples and exercises helped me finally get past Perl's reputation as a 'hairy' language and understand its beauty and efficiency for getting things done. It's clear from the quality of this book, that the authors have fine-tuned the content based on their years of experience teaching Perl, which they love.
I hope you use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature or browse a printed copy to decide which book is best for you.
Rating: - Read it again even if you've learned Perl
It's been a while since I introduced myself to Perl with the second edition of this book. A lot of time has gone between then and now, and I've become fairly confident that I have, in fact, learned Perl. Still, there's a lot of little things you can forget over the course of a few years. Might as well refresh myself now.
Yeah, I've forgotten a lot. Wow. Lots of little things that I forgot I could do, simply because I never needed to use them during that crucial gelling stage. This is a pretty good book, but my attention definitely wandered around the chapter on simple databases. Maybe the author could have swapped the last two chapters, since the "advanced" stuff like grep and map get used pretty much every day, while DBM files are at best used by a smaller lump of developers. But that's just my personal experience. Who knows?
It was worth reading, though. I think my Perl code will look a bit tighter and nicer than it has thanks to the little details that I missed the first time through.
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