Rating:  - I swear by this book.
This is a excellent book whether you are learning perl (granted you have somewhat of a clue about programming in general), buffing up on your perl, or as a desktop reference. This book can very easily be the only perl book you will need in your collection.
Rating: - A Reference Book
This is an excellent companion to the Learing Perl book (also by O'Reilly). If you are new to Perl like I was not too long ago, then start with the Learning Perl book first before you touch this one.
This book is intended to serve as a reference as it tackles the more complicated aspects of Perl. If you start learning Perl with this book, then you will find it a very difficult language to graps. However, I do not want to take anything away from this book. This book is fantastic for those who want to dive into Perl a bit more and have passed the beginners level. I purchased both the books and once I had finished reading the Learning Perl book, I started turning to this book to get a better understanding of things, especially regular expressions.
Rating:  - Badly Organized, but a Great Reference
The book itself, used as a Reference and for mastering Perl, is a five star book. But there are a quite a few disadvantages:
1. The book is not intended to the ones who have no programming experience at all. The read should be at least an intermediate programmer, because the basic programming concepts of the language (Variables, Subs and etc..) are badly explained.
2. Because of Perl's C Like Syntax, it is recommended that the reader will know C, Awk, or Grep and Some experience in the Unix Environment.
3. The Book itself is badly organized, certain complicated things are shown in examples and explanations, and those things are taught many pages afterwards. For Example: An Example of a perl program is shown on page 10, and that example contains subs and pattern matching, which are taught 100 Pages later!
These are the 3 Main Disadvantages. For Conclusion, if you're new to programming, or want to learn Perl easliy, buy "Learning Perl", but if you're a somewhat experienced programmer, and want to master Perl, this book is the best one you'll find for that purpose.
Rating:  - Part intro (weak), Part reference (great), Weak Index
The reference sections were great -- I read them end to end. This book would be great if that's what you were buying it for. If you've already been lightly introduced to Perl, (and you can find what you are looking for without a decent index), you wouldn't do badly with this book.
However, even if you know a broad range of other computer languages, Perl is full of painfully implicit semantics and esoteric details, so a few chapters of introduction are important. The book had those chapters, to it's credit, but the writing in them was wandering and weakly structured, and not so well edited -- somewhat like the Perl language itself? I had heard Perl criticized as a collection of many individually "neat" features and shortcuts, lacking overall design and simplifying consistency. The book seemed to reinforce that feeling.
With so many features, you would have expected some extra effort to have been invested into a decent index. Unfortunately, I have often found it rather hard to find what I'm looking for.
The layout scheme conforms to the extremely flat OReilly Books standard (e.g. subsection levels deliniated by subtle font size differences in headings). That standard looks distinctly like old LaTeX output, or something similarly invented before graphical layout tools.
In summary, even if you know lots of languages, don't buy this book expecting an easy ride into the world of Perl, based on the names "Larry Wall" or "OReilly".
Rating: - A mix between a reference manual and a learning book
Designated "The Ultimate Perl Reference" by many Perl programmers, this book rates high on the expectations list.
The book is aimed at programmers with some experience with Perl. If you want read an introduction take "Learning Perl", also from O'Reilly.
Indeed almost anything you look for is in there. All aspects of the language are treated at a rapid pace and there are numerous small examples. Besides the official stuff there are also tips and tricks, both Perl-specific and general.
The book however is a mix between a learning book and a reference manual and that is a pity, because trying to be both it fails to be either.
The most severe lack is a thorough and precise index enabling you to get from "I want to do this" to "This is how you that in Perl".
Still I rate it at 4 stars because it is a valuable language reference.
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