Rating:  - A quick and painless way to learn the fundamentals of PERL
TEACH YOURSELF PERL IN 21 DAYS was the first book I bought on the Perl scripting language. While it has no claims above being an introduction to the material, it has got quite a lot of information packed into its 720 pages. I had no background in Perl at all (though I already knew several other CS languages and scripts), but with this book I had no trouble picking it up. I was able to learn a fair amount of knowledge in a short amount of time. The layout of the book is quite helpful and organized; people with no background in Computer Science can start from the beginning with no trouble, while those readers who already know most of the fundamentals can skip ahead to the later chapters.
This book will teach you almost everything you will need to know as a beginning Perl programmer. It starts with the basics (the ever-present "Hello World" example, operators, variables) and slowly moves to more in-depth topics (such as hashing, lists, strings, loops and subroutines) until finally getting to the harder stuff (file I/O, CGI scripting and references). TEACH YOURSELF PERL IN 21 DAYS won't give you everything that you will ever need to know, but it will definitely fill in almost all of the blanks that you need to know most of the time.
As a book for beginners, this book should have everything you're looking for. It also makes a fairly good reference guide once you've managed to establish yourself as a Perl programmer. I'd advise buying a second, more advanced book, once you're ready to move onto more sophisticated topics. But as an introduction, this book will cover practically everything you will need to know. Recommended.
Rating:  - The best Perl book I have found !
This is definitely the best Perl book ! Definitely for beginner as well as those who already know some Perl language. I started with "Learning Perl" by Schwartz but I think this one is even better. I particularly like the quiz , Q&A sections as well as the exercises. THERE IS NO WAY to learn Perl without EXERCISES! Out of 5 Perl books that I bought, I found this one and the Learning Perl camel book to be the two books that everyone should own.
Rating:  - Verbose, ok beginners book
I have an extensive programming background. I joined a new group that used PERL and a co-worker had this book so I borrowed it. It was somewhat frustrating because of its long windedness. The book could have conveyed the same ideas in 1/2 - 2/3's the space in some cases, especially the begiiner stuff like control flow. Also, it glosses over some of the advanced topics.
Even so, it did the job and I learned PERL.
If you are a beginner this book should be ok.
I don't think the O'Reilly PERL books are good for learning PERL, only as references. The PERL Cookbook is pretty good, with some useful examples.
Rating: - I think that lot of people need perspective...
...when buying books. If the book says "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 days", any advanced topics that it covers is gravy. Obviously it's a beginners book. Some of the complaints I've read are just silly. "Don't buy the book because Lemay got a math formula wrong" (if you know what the right formula is, great. She's not supposed to teach you algebra too!), "don't buy the book because when you're done learning everything that the book has to offer (which is substantial) it won't turn into a super advanced book" (go buy one of those 2000 page tomes that tries to please everyone and only succeeds in breaking your back). No book can please everyone. However, if the book clearly lets you know that it's a beginners book, and you insist on complaining that that is what it is,... duh?
I orginally bought this book because I had a need to write a script to connect to a db. I found out that perl could talk to dbs, so I decided that this would be a cool way to learn perl. So I tried to find a perl book that talked about connection to dbs. Unfortunately, the few books out there that talked about this assumed you were an expert in perl and had no time to teach it to you. So I realized that I needed a good, quick foundation in perl.
I dusted of my perl for dummies book. Now this is a true beginners book. Way too lightweight! This book will not prepare you for perl code that you'd see in the "real world". The important part is, THIS BOOK WILL! The greatest thing that an author can do for you is give you a spoon so that you can feed yourself. This book does that.
By the way, this book has a lot of topics that I haven't seen in "advanced" books. Don't think that it's a lightweight. The author does cover enough material so you can educate yourself afterwards. I probably have about 40+ technical books, and this is one of the better ones.
As someone who makes a living developing web apps, I need to be able to learn new stuff QUICKLY and get projects done. This author helped me greatly in this regard.
Rating: - Simply bad math!
This is a nice book for starters (those who have no experience in programming at all). I'm giving it only 3 stars because there are a few minor math errors. For example on page 50 a formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit is $cel * 5 /9 +32. It should be $cel * 9/5 +32. If you are serious about learning Perl get some of O'Reilly's books.
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