Learning Perl

I am a computer professional, but not a programmer. I took a C++ course in college, 10 years ago, and in the last couple years I have taken up Bash scripting. I figured I could probably do more if I learned a real language, instead of just playing with Bash.This book did not disappoint. It's been excellent. It takes a very practical approach to educating the reader on the mechanics of Perl, focusing on cumulative knowledge as the chapters move along. The text is reasonably engaging, and the material moves at a good pace - not too fast and not too slow. The exercises at the end of the chapters help reinforce the material, and even includes estimates of how long the programming should take. It clearly articulates differences between Perl versions without droning on incessantly about tiny nuances. It is riddled with footnotes for more advanced users to help them understand more and more exceptions to basic rules, as they are initially taught by the text.To be clear, this book isn't a book that teaches how to program. If you're looking for something that covers procedural logic, this is not the book for you. However, I would suspect that even someone without a deep computer background, but just a strong willingness to learn, would find this book beneficial.If you ARE a programmer, you might find it a bit novice, and the pace a little slow - maybe not though, maybe you should just absorb the material faster and fly through the chapters. It's hard for me to say.It was exactly what I was looking for, and after some more practice, I believe I may be moving on to Intermediate Perl.

This book is very good, and by far the best Perl book1. it has emphasized a lot on perl principle:2. it compares a lot of different usage and lead you to know how and why3. it has a lot of informationI have ever bought another perl book "beginning perl by Jame Lees", and read about it. Though the latter is a good book, it has not touched why and how to use perl when there are choices. That has forced me to continue to search for another book.Actually I find this book by luck. I had attended some perl training program, and it has touched a lot more in-depth about perl. Then I found this book is one of the two major reference book.The only drawback is that the book can be more compact by cutting those verbose sentences. So, I am skipping a lot of readings by jumping from examples to examples to understand concepts, why and how to use perl.

Love this book. I set myself at a pace to read about 10 pages a day and that seemed to be a good pace for me. Soaked in the material very well and I love the exercises. I have a few minor gripes but nothing worth docking a star for. For example they occasionally use features you haven't learned yet without explaining, there are a couple things I don't think they spend enough time on or make you practice enough (eg: working with filehandles) and I think toward the end of the book they got a little bit lazy with the exercises. Also you'll hate the flintstones by the end of the book.Those gripes aside this is a fantastic way to learn Perl. The first script I wrote after finishing the book was over 500 lines and automated a painful task I had to do every day at work.

This book is a fair introduction to the world of Perl and the depths of the dark twisted psyche that is the mind of Larry Wall. (As an aside, I have never before touched a programming language that has been as willfully perverse as Perl, but that is by design and surprisingly works to make the experienced coder's life easier). It is a decent starting point, although it is a bit too verbose at times. In my mind, the biggest flaw of this book is that the code examples lack explicit blocks listing the output for given code snippets and a lack of how variables have actually been defined. There are also cases where the authors decided to be cute instead of clear - the most recent example I stumbled upon was a string labeled as a "Coke\tSprite" producing a Coke, a Tab and a Sprite. While this is good for a snigger, I'm not sure it's worth the extra mental effort required to process it. There are more concise introductions online, but this does not make a bad starting point, especially if you have little prior programming experience. The exercises provided are very helpful to start developing a feeling of progress in learning the language.

I initially bought this 1st edition book in 1997 and read every page on my bus ride to work. This is the only programming book I have read every page of and thoroughly enjoyed reading. I do have the other O'Reilly Perl books ( Programming Perl, Perl Cookbook, Regular Expressions ) and enjoy them but they are just too heavy to lug around and so they get left at home while I love to carry my lightweight Learning Perl book for a quick 15 min read at bus stop or coffee shop. This book makes Learning Perl a breeze and I highly recommend it. Buying the 6th edition will be my 3rd purchase of this book. This is the only tech book I have purchased multiple times due to getting the updates and due to book getting worn out by myself carrying it around.

I buy so many electronics from Amazon I feel like I need to review the book for its construction. Like "Excellent binding, pages were not torn."As for actual content it is complete, has several advances topics and is worded nicely. It doesn't measure up to some of the other O'Reilly books in some spots. Most notably it doesn't hilight how to install Perl (I normally have the stuff installed beforehand, I just noticed it wasn't there this time around).I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn Perl, its clear, and it uses a realatively recent version of Perl as compared with its competitors and has some fallow-up books by the same publisher, should you want to further your learning.