Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)

Softpanorama Bookshelf: Perl Books

(A slightly skeptical alternative to Camel Critiques)

There is an excellent open book Beginning Perl (for those who already know at least one programmer language). And it is not from O'Reilly.  Similarly Perl Developer's Guide (more basic intro book),  Perl 5 Interactive Course : Certified Edition (the main problem with it is that it overstresses regular expression, at least more than I like in the beginner-oriented book)) and Perl Black Book are not from O'Reilly and any of them is probably a better choice for majority of people as an introductory books. See more information below.

If you know some HTML and want to learn Perl then you probably will be better off with a CGI book like CGI Programming 101 (see also  cgi101.com ; the first six chapters of CGI Programming 101 are available free on this site) or for those who like illustrated books Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web Visual QuickStart Guide, Second Edition

Although the core of the language is very stable, Perl 5 is still a moving target and for non-introductory books the age of the book still matter. The current version is 5.8 and the book should cover it as it is better then previous versions (5.6 and 5.0). There soon will be 5.10 version that among other things introduces switch statement into the language.

Also a major revision of the language (version 6.0) is in works, but due to overcomplexity and errors in language design chances of  displacing of version 5 are pretty slim. I think that  version 6 is at least two years away from implementation; that means that buying a 5.6-5.8 oriented book is a pretty safe bet. In general, I recommend the books that are less than five years old. Please note that CGI-related books not included in this section. They are covered elsewhere.

"Its not about the acid in the paper, its about the Crack in the author."

Seems like everyone is writing a Perl book. The most disturbing part is that they're being written by people who have nothing to do with Perl. How to decide what's crap and what's not?

Worry no more! After many mirth-filled hours of flipping through many an awful Perl book, I have come up with a simple one-minute litmus test to determine if the book you're holding is worth the tree its printed on.

Historical Note This page was written back in 1999 when the flood of Perl books hit the market.

The Perl Book Litmus Test

Remember, the point of this test is to find bad books and there can only be negative results with this test. A book which passes all the tests put forth here CAN STILL SUCK.

The following tests check the five things books and beginning Perl programmers most commonly screw up. Its by no means intended to be cannonical, just a quick way to look for read flags. So flip to the index. Look up the following tidbits and answer the questions.  

localtime

Due to localtime's ahem "vintage" interface, date generation is usually botched in Perl. Its important that a book has a good discussion of localtime and its caveats. Does it state that it returns the number of years since 1900? Does it mention that when used in scalar context it returns a nicely formated date? Does it avoid things like `date`?

open || die $!

"Why doesn't $line = <FILE> work?" is one of the most common newbie questions. Its extremely important that a book drills it into the reader's head that all system calls should be checked and proper error messages returned. This means putting some sort of error checking on all system calls (not just open()), using and discussing $! and other good error messages.

srand

Not a common problem, but something often gotten wrong. If a book does drag out srand(), it often fails to point out that it should be called only once. (If srand is never mentioned, that's okay.)

array size

Does it clearly say that an array will return its number of elements in scalar context, or does it use/imply $num = $#array + 1;

flock

Any CGI program writing to a file is going to run into file corruption issues pretty fast. If the book covers topics which will lead to concurrent file acces, it should talk about flock(). Does it discuss and use flock instead of lockfiles? (ie. setting some .lock file instead of using flock()).

Portable Constants

When performing flocking, socket operations or sysopens does it use the constants defined by Perl (LOCK_SH and friends), or do they define their own unportable constants? If the subject never comes up that's ok.

Search Amazon by keywords:  You can use Honor System to make a contribution, supporting this site

Softpanorama Reviews

• Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
• Perl 5 By Example
• Perl Developer's Guide
• Effective Perl Programming
• Mastering Regular Expressions

Old News ;-)

Amazon.com Intermediate Perl Randal L. Schwartz,Tom Phoenix,brian d foy Books

Amazon.com Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules Randal L. Schwartz,Tom Phoenix Books

Important Note - Discontinued, May 4, 2006 By  Christopher L. Simons - See all my reviews    New editions of this book are no longer in the works, as this title is being discontinued. O'Reilly's "Intermediate Perl" by the same authors (Randal L. Schwartz, brian d foy, and Tom Phoenix) is the new edition of this book. The first edition of "Intermediate Perl" was released March 2006. So if you're thinking about purchasing this book, purchase "Intermediate Perl" instead. It includes the same material (albeit updated) by the same authors. Once again, this title has been discontinued.

Perl Medic Transforming Legacy Code

by Peter J. Scott

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (March 5, 2004)
• ISBN: 0201795264
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds. (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: based on 5 reviews. (Write a review)

One of the best Perl books out there, June 24, 2004
 

Reviewer:

David Cross "davorg" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

A quote on the front cover of this book says "if you code in Perl then you need to read this book". That's a pretty bold claim to make. It made me think of the hyperbole on covers of books that claim to teach you to program in Perl in just a few days. But this book is published by Addison Wesley, who are a well respected technical publisher of technical books and the quote is from Adam Turoff who certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to Perl programming. So in this case the claim isn't hyperbole. The book really is one that I want every Perl programmer to read.

Perl gets a lot of bad press from people who claim that it encourages people to write unreadable code. Whilst there's certainly a lot of very bad Perl code out there I think that's more a sign that it's used by a lot of people who don't know how to program than a reflection on the language itself. And that's where this book comes in. It assumes that you are familiar with the syntax of Perl but that you've never really been shown how to use it effectively. Which is a situation that many Perl programmers find themselves in.

Perl Medic is actually targetted at people who have to maintain older Perl code written by someone else, but I think that the information it contains is just as useful to anyone coding in Perl. Peter Scott has a lot of experience in writing Perl and in training other people to write Perl and the distillation of that experience and knowledge into these 300-odd pages mean that there are few Perl programmers who won't pick up something useful from this book.

The main emphasis in the book is on increasing the maintainability of code. The techniques are wide-ranging. I particularly enjoyed the examples of refactoring programs and the coverage of using modules from CPAN. Two other very good sections are the one on antipatterns in chapter 4 and the one on cargo cult programming in chapter 6. Together these sections give a programmer a number of easy to recognise quick wins when improving existing code and a checklist of things not to do when writing new code.

There are a couple of niggles. I've already mentioned that I think the book has been slightly mis-targetted and that it should have been aimed at anyone writing Perl code. The other problem that I had was that the medic analogy that runs through the book gets a bit strained at times. But these are only minor and they shouldn't prevent you from adding this book to your library.

In fact, all in all, the quote on the front cover is pretty accurate.

A good book with a misleading title, May 18, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
While the "medic" metaphor recurs throughout the book, most of the material isn't directly related to repairing old code. Instead, this is a collection of best practices for new code. (The author recommends rewriting existing code if at all possible.) It ends up resembling another excellent Perl title, Joseph Hall's Effective Perl Programming. Good company to keep. Perl Medic has the advantage of being newer, and of covering a bit more material. The writing style is very easy to read, and the order of presentation works well. An excellent title for any intermediate-level Perl programmer.

One of the best Perl Books out there, April 24, 2004
 

Reviewer:

David Cross "davorg" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

A quote on the front cover of this book says "if you code in Perl then you need to read this book". That's a pretty bold claim to make. It made me think of the hyperbole on covers of books that claim to teach you to program in Perl in just a few days. But this book is published by Addison Wesley, who are a well respected technical publisher of technical books and the quote is from Adam Turoff who certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to Perl programming. So in this case the claim isn't hyperbole. The book really is one that I want every Perl programmer to read.

Perl gets a lot of bad press from people who claim that it encourages people to write unreadable code. Whilst there's certainly a lot of very bad Perl code out there I think that's more a sign that it's used by a lot of people who don't know how to program than a reflection on the language itself. And that's where this book comes in. It assumes that you are familiar with the syntax of Perl but that you've never really been shown how to use it effectively. Which is a situation that many Perl programmers find themselves in.

Perl Medic is actually targetted at people who have to maintain older Perl code written by someone else, but I think that the information it contains is just as useful to anyone coding in Perl. Peter Scott has a lot of experience in writing Perl and in training other people to write Perl and the distillation of that experience and knowledge into these 300-odd pages mean that there are few Perl programmers who won't pick up something useful from this book.

The main emphasis in the book is on increasing the maintainability of code. The techniques are wide-ranging. I particularly enjoyed the examples of refactoring programs and the coverage of using modules from CPAN. Two other very good sections are the one on antipatterns in chapter 4 and the one on cargo cult programming in chapter 6. Together these sections give a programmer a number of easy to recognise quick wins when improving existing code and a checklist of things not to do when writing new code.

There are a couple of niggles. I've already mentioned that I think the book has been slightly mis-targetted and that it should have been aimed at anyone writing Perl code. The other problem that I had was that the medic analogy that runs through the book gets a bit strained at times. But these are only minor and they shouldn't prevent you from adding this book to your library.

In fact, all in all, the quote on the front cover is pretty accurate.

Writing CGI Applications with Perl

????? Perl Core Language Little Black Book The Essentials of the Perl Language

by Steven Holzner

• Paperback: 500 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.17 x 8.98 x 6.40
• Publisher: Paraglyph Publishing; (July 1, 2002)
• ISBN: 1932111425
   
• Other Editions: Paperback | All Editions
   
• Average Customer Review: Based on 17 reviews. Write a review.
   
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: 226,166
  (Publishers & Authors: improve your sales)

It's very rare for a book to have 17 five-star reviews. Might really be good book.

PERL for programmers only, February 1, 2001     Reviewer: Paul Cotter (see more about me) from Miami, Fl United States This is a combination of reference and learning. I would not advise this for a person trying to learn PERL as their first language, but if you already have a grasp of C++, Java, VB, Python or some other complex scripting language then this is ideal. So we do not have the first three chapters explaining what a program is. There is a useful rip-out card with most of the syntax. PERL is full of obscure symbols and patterns such as $_[0] or $] or even /^((\((\d{3}\))? ?\d{3}-\d{4},? *)+$/ (which locates a telephone number). The book explains them concisely and provides reference tables which are useful after you have mastered the fundamentals. If you want a more gentle entry then something like "PERL and CGI for the World Wide Web" by Castro will lead you in a more 'human' way. It's excellent, but after you have been through it it will be placed on the shelf - it's not a reference document. If you want lots of complex examples so you can play round with pre-existing code then look at "Mastering PERL 5". PCLLBB (plus the rip-out card) is the book I keep within arm's length. The blank pages at the back I have written in as a secondary index to the tables. Incidentally the index is good. The only problem (as with all indexes) is if you do not know what you are looking for. For example, to remove a line feed you use chomp() and you can look up truncate, line feed, substring etc and not find it. This is where you need your own index!

The best way of learning Perls..., February 21, 2002     Reviewer: rarmente from West New York, NJ - United States In a line, buy this book if you want to start programming in perl I started reading this book 5 days ago, and I already consider myself a perl programmer. I am a computer engineering student at Stevens Institute of Tech and my main focus of study is network security from a programmer standpoint. After a couple of days reading this book, I could already create simple client/server applications. In addition, I learned how to handle files in numerous ways, and how to work with their content "you will be amazed how easy this is done in Perl" and even formating text, creating DBM Database files etc. Object oriented programming is very well explained and finally CGI scrips are also very well presented "with lots of security warnings." I would give this book six stars if I could since it does its job VERY well! My extensive programming experienced really helped me in the reading process, but the language and examples are so clear that even newbies in programming could assimilate the content easily!!! You can contact me at rarmente@stevens-tech.edu if you have further questions.

Perl for C Programmers

Steve Oualline

Speak Perl with a C Accent, April 30, 2003
 

Reviewer: Noah Green (see more about me) from New York, NY USA

After years of trying, I've finally learned Perl. And it's all thanks to this book.

My biggest obstacles to learning Perl have always been: the language's twisted, almost willfully obscure syntax, and the chattiness, annoying humor, and equally obscure tone of the language's leading book for beginners, which I will leave nameless (hint: there's an animal on the cover.) It often seems as if both the book and the language take a perverse pride in being so arbitrary, riddled with exceptions and special cases, and overly complex. I'm sure most Perl people will disagree with me, but most Java and C/C++ folks I know would not. We are really past the point in history where it's funny or cute for a language to be so difficult and obscure. More than ever, time is money, the latter of which is in far shorter supply since the dot-com crash. We (and our bosses) just want to get things done. Not everyone wants to be a funny hacker with a funny t-shirt who thinks it's funny when no one else can understand their code. Unfortunately, while Perl is the champion of the heavy-lifting in text processing, its extremely flexible and often counter-intuitive syntax can make these benefits inaccessible to many programmers. Furthermore, the unnamed introductory book has a chatty folksy, verbose tone that seems to deepen and celebrate these faults.

Oualline's book turns out to be the antidote. Using a brief, business-like tone, the author brings the logic and organization of the C language to bear in his approach to teaching and using Perl. Here's a quote from the book that sums up Oualline's mindset: "Perl's designers have stated that their philosophy in designing Perl is 'There's more than one way to do it.' My philosophy is a little different: 'There is only one clearest way to do it.'" Basically, by taking a single, C-flavored route through Perl's syntax, shunning its more confusing and counter-intuitive elements, Oualline provides you with an empowering, working knowledge of the language. Once he gets you there, you finally see just how awesome a language Perl can be, particularly for reporting and system administration.

In short, Oualline teaches you to speak Perl with a C accent.

One example of this is the way he recommends that you write Perl subroutines. Contrary to nearly every published piece of Perl documentation, he tells you to declare all of them with parameter specifications. That is, if you are writing a subroutine called "do_it" that will always accept two scalar parameters, write: 

"sub do_it ($$) { . . . }" instead of "sub_doit { . . . }".

Sure, this is less fun and less flexible than not specifying parameters, which Perl will allow you to do. But in Oualline's opinion, "[that] form of parameter passing should be avoided. By using a parameter specification, you give Perl the capability to do valuable parameter checking. Leave out the parameter specification, and you invite chaos." Like I said, this goes against all conventional Perl wisdom, but for people who are used to mainstream, highly-structured, strongly-typed languages, it definitely makes thinking about Perl much easier.

The book has a few flaws and omissions. For example, while stressing that we should specify parameters, Oualline forgets to mention that this means we must either put subroutine declarations at the beginning of a progam, or use forward references. Given his emphasis on parameter specification, he should have mentioned this. Also, his discussion of parameter passing is incomplete - he does not explain how directly accessing the @_ array in a subroutine will alter the caller's copy of the parameters. Then again, the other introductory book I mentioned doesn't cover these facts, either. I had to dig through perldoc to figure all this stuff out. Finally, a chapter on accessing databases from Perl would have been nice.

This book is not for everyone. If you want to learn Perl in all its gory details, and, more importantly, if you want to adopt the style and mindset of the Perl programmer, then you probably will want to look to another beginner book. Ditto if you're the kind of programmer who's more interested in playing syntactical games than in designing an effective architecture. However, if you are a programmer of C/C++, Java, or a similar language, who just wants to get things done effectively, clearly, and quickly, then this is the best route to go down.

oreilly.com -- Online Catalog Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules

Best of The Perl Journal 

Edited by Jon Orwant 

0-596-00310-2,

600 pages,

$39.95 US (est.)

The first of three volumes from the archives of The Perl Journal that O'Reilly has exclusive rights to distribute, this book is a compilation of the best from TPJ: 71 articles providing a comprehensive tour of how experts implement computer science concepts in the real world, with code walkthroughs, case studies, and explanations of difficult techniques that can't be found in any other book. [Full Description]

Perl & XML is aimed at Perl programmers who need to work with XML documents and data. This book gives a complete, comprehensive tour of the landscape of Perl and XML, making sense of the myriad of modules, terminology, and techniques. The last two chapters of Perl and XML give complete examples of XML applications, pulling together all the tools at your disposal.

Mysql and Perl for the Web

by Paul DuBois
List Price: $44.99
Paperback - 552 pages 1 Ed edition (August 3, 2001)
New Riders Publishing; ISBN: 0735710546 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.15 x 9.03 x 7.03

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 14,492

Average Customer Review: Based on 13 reviews.

???? Professional Perl Programming

Peter Wainwright, Aldo Calpini, Arthur Corliss, Simon Cozens, JJ Merelo-Guervos, Aalhad Saraf, Chris Nandor

Our Price: $47.99

Mass Market Paperback - 1214 pages 1st edition (February 2001)
Wrox Press Inc; ISBN: 1861004494 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.68 x 9.09 x 7.22

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 40,991

Avg. Customer Rating:

Number of Reviews: 1

???? Network Programming with Perl

Lincoln D. Stein

Our Price: $44.95

Paperback - 576 pages 1st edition (December 29, 2000)

Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201615711 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.42 x 9.23 x 7.37

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3,132

Avg. Customer Rating:

Number of Reviews: 5

*** Data Munging with Perl

by David Cross

Amazon Price: $29.56

Paperback - 300 pages 1st edition (January 15, 2001)

Manning Publications Company; ISBN: 1930110006 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.65 x 9.23 x 7.36

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3,530

Avg. Customer Rating:
Number of Reviews: 3

This is a pretty weak introductory book, not a professional one. I found nothing special in it and the presentation is rather boring and superficial. Even those topics that are (generally) well studied like processing formatted data (each book on Perl has a chapter on this topic) are not covered in depth and lack refinement.  I would recommend Perl for System Administration  instead.
 

Good for data-processing *beginners*, July 6, 2001
Reviewer: Goldin Evgeny (see more about me) from Israel
It's a guide. David takes you through the different "data munging" tasks ( record oriented data ? binary data ? fixed-width data ? XML ? ) and shows you his proper ways of dealing with them ( or, at least, thinking about them ). It's not an encyclopedia of "data munging", the book is 300 pages and many of them ( too many, may be ) are detailed descriptions of useful CPAN modules ( which I wasn't reading as careful as the rest of the book, since POD was always enough ), so it covers only a usual data processing tasks letting you to go deeper by yourself for more advanced topics. After you'll finish it much less "data sources" will scare you - the solutions and references are inside.

As I said, it may be good for data-processing beginners, but Perl experts will hardly find lot's of new information in it.

P.S. I trust him and therefore follow his advices in every script I start to think of ( especially the one about "UNIX filter model" ).

***+ Perl for System Administration

          By David N. Blank-Edelman

1st Edition July 2000,

ISBN 1-56592-609-9, 400 pages, $34.95
 

Some good ideas and good examples of parsing system files in Unix. The author tries to cover both Unix and NT and this make readers who are mostly interested in one OS disappointed ;-). Unix is covered very superficially. But generally this is good book, better than Data Mangling with Perl.

???? Debugging Perl Troubleshooting for Programmers

Martin Brown

Paperback - 425 pages 1st edition (January 15, 2000)

Computing McGraw-Hill; ISBN: 0072126760 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.11 x 9.16 x 7.50

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 35,093

Avg. Customer Rating:

Number of Reviews: 1

**** McGraw-Hill Betabooks Instant Perl Modules

Douglas Sparling

$49.99

007212962X

***+ Cross-Platform Perl  (no e-text available)

Eric Johnson

Amazon Price: $31.99
Paperback - 500 pages 2nd Bk&cdr edition (September 2000)
IDG Books Worldwide; ISBN: 0764547291
See also his book Perl Modules
The book has a web site at http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm, but it's not very useful for Perl (but contains a good links for Linux).

**** Perl Developer's Guide 

New edition of old book. Decent intro to intermeduate book. Some Perl 5.6 elements are covered (return of an array in subroutines, etc.). See information below  

****  Beginning Perl by Simon Cozens. A very good, may be the best introductory book. see information below.

???? CGI Programming with Perl, 2nd Edition by Scott Guelich, et al. Paperback (July 2000)

The electronic versions of 7 pretty average Perl books (only Cookbook is decent):  the second edition of Perl in a Nutshell (paperback version included), the third editions of Learning Perl and Programming Perl, the Perl Cookbook, and 3 new titles: Perl & XML, Perl & LWP, and Mastering Perl/Tk.

Overpriced and with bad selections, buy previous version or version 4.0 instead.

Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason

Mason is a tool for embedding the Perl programming language into text, in order to create text dynamically, most often in HTML. But Mason does not simply stop at HTML. It can just as easily create XML, WML, POD, configuration files, or the complete works of Shakespeare.

This is an old hat now, but you bac buy it really cheap.  Six O'Reilly books on one CD-ROM in HTML format. Only one book is really good (cookbook). Advanced Perl can be useful too. CD includes:

Perl in a Nutshell; Programming Perl, 2nd Edition; Perl Cookbook(very good); Advanced Perl Programming(good); Learning Perl(outdated and weak); and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems(this is just a bad joke). As a bonus, the almost useless printed version of Perl in a Nutshell is also included.

by David Till

Paperback, 870 pages,/ Published by Sams 16-May-1996 (second edition)

ISBN: 0672308940 ;

This tutorial assumes no prior programming knowledge or experience. It starts with basic concepts, and then builds upon them. Each chapter contains a Q&A section, summary, quiz, and a series of exercises which allow the reader to practice using the language features which were just learned.

Teach Yourself Perl 5 in 21 Days, Second Edition is the ideal book for beginning - and intermediate - level users who want to gain a solid understanding of this programming language. Using step-by-step tutorials and the easy-to-follow approach, you can Teach yourself Perl 5 in 21 Days! Through various teaching elements, you'll learn everything you need to know about this popular programming language. You'll discover how to manipulate text, generate reports, and perform system tasks. Through practical, hands-on instructions, logically organized lessons, and helpful Q & A sections, you'll master Perl functions and concepts and be developing robust programs in no time. Plus, Do/Don't boxes show you how to avoid potential programming pitfalls, illustrations explain constructs such as associative arrays, and tables serve as handy references.

This well-structured book is actually both a good introductory text and a reference. For more obscure example one can use some examples form the David Medinets' book. It  assumes that you are familiar with the basics of using the UNIX operating system. It is good for Linux users but will be extremely useful for Windows users too. Contains exercises after each chapter, "Do and Don't" boxes and unlike other books it does contain a chapter on Perl debugger !

Avg. Customer Review: ***+ Number of Reviews: 38

From Amazon readers reviews: 

A reader from San Diego, CA , January 28, 1999 *****
The Best PERL Book Available!
This is both an excellent way to learn Perl and a great reference book. The book is easy to read, really teaches the essentials of the language, and has a great index for reference (although not as good as the previous Perl 4 version of the book)...

David Medinets./ Que's October 1996/658 pages/CD-ROM/ISBN: 0789708663 Paperback - 658 pages Bk&Cd-Rom edition (October 1996)
Que Corp; ISBN: 0789708663 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.74 x 9.04 x 7.37

Currently it's probably the secondary choice among the open introductory books on Perl. I do not recommend it as an introductory book. Simon cozens and David Till's  books  are a better introductory books and I realized it hard way -- by teaching a class using Perl5 by Example.  My experience suggests that it should not be used in the university environment but probably can be OK for self-study, especially if one have some experience with other languages. As an introductory book it's pretty weak -- the author uses too much obscure Perl idioms and many examples are weak and poorly thought out. In case you decided to use it, the book probably should be used only as a reference with Teach Yourself Perl 5 in 21 Days  as a primary text.

The main advantage of the book is that the full text is available both on the CD-ROM and online from the Web(for example here  Perl 5 by Example -- try to search Yahoo! for the mirror nearest to you; ).

See also the author interview

David Medinets "... has been programming since 1980, when he starting with a Radio Shack Model 1.". He has written also Visual Basic Script Quick Reference, and HTML Quick Reference, 2nd Edition for Que and also co-authored books on such topics as Lotus Notes, C++, Visual Basic, and Microsoft Office. In past he used REXX that probably is an advantage for any Perl programmer/writer as REXX (although a weaker scripting language)  has some features that are difficult to program in Perl. This seems to be his first scripting language book. He is also a co-author of Using Lotus Notes 4 (1996). The book is conveniently structured into four parts:

Part I: Basic Perl

Part II: Intermediate Perl

Part III: Advanced Perl

Part IV: Perl and the Internet

There are also 5 appendixes:

A - Review Questions
B - Glossary
C - Function List
D - The Windows Registry
E - What's On the CD?

 

Strangely enough most of readers reviews in the Amazon.com website are quite positive. Here is one example:davepamn@ieighty.net from Utah , January 30, 1999 ******

The Best Perl Book I've studied
Perl 5 by example is the best Perl book I've studied. I use the Perl 5 book along with the 'CGI For Windows' book to teach an internet/multimedia class, at an University level. 'Perl 5 by example' has an excellent teaching format: Definition, explanation, and hundreds of sample code fragments, to illustrate the point. 'Perl 5 by example' combines beginning concepts, intermediate, and advance Perl programming practices. One of the most valuable sections in 'Perl 5 by example' is the creating reports section. The second most valuable section is the regular expression explanation. I keep the 'Perl 5 by example' book close as a valuable language reference. Database is also a key interest for me. Combining Perl with Sybase and using the reporting capability helps students start learning how to create enterprise wide solutions. Write to me for details on some of the Perl projects that were created using the book. Upon studying this book and reader should have the knowledge to write numerous cgi scripts, create Perl modules, and understand at an intermediate level the Perl language.

???? Perl 5 Quick Reference (Quick Reference Series)  -- no longer available from inform.it

Michael O. Foghlu,  / Paperback / Published by Que 1996 / ISBN: 0789708884
Amazon price: $15.99 ~ You Save: $4.00 (20%)

The complete Perl reference - useful for finding the syntax for the most common and obscure Perl commands.

???? Special Edition Using Perl 5 for Web Programming -- no longer available from inform.it

David Harlan, Michael O'Foghlu / Paperback / Published  by Que 16-Oct-1996 /ISBN: 0789706598

Categories: Web Development, Programming, Perl

Covers Perl OOP structure, socket programming, HTML conversions, building Internet search utilities, and more!

???? Web Programming With Perl 5  -- no longer available from inform.it

Bill Middleton, et al / Paperback / Published 11-Mar-1997/ISBN: 1575211122
Amazon price: $23.99 ~ You Save: $6.00 (20%)

 

Introductory books

Finding a decent introductory Perl books is not that difficult as there are several excellent books on the subject. Selecting between them is a little bit more tricky ;-). At the same time probably does not make much sense to buy two introductory books. I recommend Effective Perl Programming as your second book. In no way Learning Perl should be your first Perl book. Perl 5 Interactive Course : Certified Edition has e-text and support site but does not cover Perl 5.6.

****+ [Open] Beginning Perl

by Simon Cozens

Amazon price: $31.99
Paperback - 700 pages 1st edition (May 25, 2000)
Wrox Press Inc; ISBN: 1861003145
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 35,003
Avg. Customer Review:
Number of Reviews: 1

 

Probably the best Perl into book for those who already know at least one programming language ! From the point of view of the quality of the text and the quality of the examples (see source code) it can well be the best Perl introductory book.  Also 700 pages is not bad for a Perl book ;-)

[Note this is an open book. etext in availbale from http://learn.perl.org/library/beginning_perl

TOC
Introduction	
Chapter 1: First Steps In Perl	
Chapter 2: Working with Simple Values	
Chapter 3: Lists and Hashes	
Chapter 4: Loops and Decisions	
Chapter 5: Regular Expressions	
Chapter 6: Files and Data	
Chapter 7: References	
Chapter 8: Subroutines	
Chapter 9: Running and Debugging Perl	
Chapter 10: Modules	
Chapter 11: Object-Oriented Perl	
Chapter 12: Introduction to CGI	
Chapter 13: Perl and Databases	
Chapter 14: The World of Perl	
Appendix A: Regular Expressions	
Appendix B: Special Variables	
Appendix C: Function Reference	
Appendix D: The Perl Standard Modules	
Appendix E: Command Line Reference	
Appendix F: The ASCII Character Set	
Appendix G: Licenses	
Appendix H: Solutions to Exercises	
Appendix J: Support, Errata and P2P.Wrox.Com	
Index	

****  Perl Developer's Guide

Ed Peschko (Editor), Michele Dewolfe,

Amazon price: $47.99

Paperback - 912 pages (June 8, 2000)
Osborne McGraw-Hill; ISBN: 0072126302
New edition of old book. Some Perl 5.6 elements are covered (return of an array in subroutines, etc.). Here is a very good Amazon Review: 
 

A much better second edition , July 20, 2000
Reviewer: Andrew Fernandez (see more about me) from Boulder, Colorado USA

This book is the much needed update to the first book by Ed and Michelle, published in 1998 that went by a different name, "Perl 5, Complete". The first book came out way too early with too many errors. Ed acknowledges this in his preface to the second edition. I enjoyed his first book, because catching errors made me learn the material better, but the second edition is soo much better.

High points for this second edition include:
 

1) a good tutorial for object-oriented programming starting with creating modules up to full object-oriented programming with perl/tk.
 

2) a great section on data-structures like arrays-of-arrars, and hash or hashes, etc... that are essential if you want to do intermediate or above Perl programming.
 

3) A great chapter on real-world examples using perl/tk and OLE programing with Perl for Microsoft Windows plus other code samples.
 

4) Some great new appendixes for Perl "grammer and structure" that weren't in the first edition. Basically a concise reference for symantics that would benefit anybody.
 

5) A much improved index that was practically non-existent in the first edition.
 

All in all, I would say the second edition would be a good edition to learning and even improving your Perl skills since it is a huge tome of Perl information that can be both used as a reference and as a tutorial.

 

        I have only the first edition that was called Perl 5 Complete. I even wrote the first review about the first edition of the book on Amazon.com. I also used it in one introductory e-commerce class. As usuall, you love a textbook much less after you use it a class -- errors and omissions became more evident :-(.

Still, most my students were able to grasp details of the language from the book, but now the book looks a little bit watery -- each chapter can be compressed into half without losing any useful content. So the number of pages can probably reduced in half. Also examples in the first edition are not that great and somewhat buggy.

 

All-in-all this is a good intro Perl 5 book with some well thought examples and multi-OS coverage.

 

Chapter 9 on regular expressions is not bad and many readers on Amazon like it. I was not impressed, but still I agree that it's OK, especially for novices.

 

Last seven chapters actually constitute a good intermediate book. They contain detailed treatment (with good examples) of interesting topics like PerlTk, interfacing Perl to Win32 applications, databases and more.

 

Attention: CGI coverage is very weak. File operations are much better covered in other books.

 

Even with problems mentioned above it is probably one of the best introductory Perl book. It is more suitable for those who have some programming experience in other language.

For people without programming experience no book can probably help ;-),  but Jon Orwant's book might to be an alternative. The main problem with it is that it overstresses regular expression (at least more than I like in the beginner-oriented book). If you have some experience with other high level languages this book is a  reasonable choice, although nothing is perfect in this world ;-)

 

***+  Perl 5 Interactive Course : Certified Edition (both e-text and support site are available !!!)

Jon Orwant / Paperback, 2-d edition / Published 1997

Paperback - 860 pages Bk&Cd-Rom edition (November 1, 1997)
Waite Group Pr; ISBN: 1571691138 ;
Avg. Customer Review: *****
Number of Reviews: 11

 

Nikolai Bezroukov's review: A very good introductory book with exercises and quizzes.  Slightly outdated (not Perl 5.6).

 

Jon Orwant used to publish Linux Journal. This is second or third edition. Probably should be your first book on Perl, especially if you try to study it by yourself.

I like the illustrations. The book contains very useful quizzes and exercises after each lesson  -- the best of any introductory book I read. Web site www.waite.com/ezone (or http://www.mcp.com/distance_learning/frame_ezone.html )contains e-text, additional materials, quizes that can be graded automatically and the reader can ask questions about the book. Good typographic quality, far superior in comparison with O'Reilly books. e-text and on-line quizzes are available from the support site. This is just great !

Negative points -- the author too much emphasize regular expressions at the expense of more procedural operations on string (substr, index, pack, etc.) and that might be a problem for beginners. Some tests are pretty obscure and actually teach wrong practice (see tests for control structures and subroutines as an example). The book does not provide enough warning about problems with Perl and how to avoid them.

Here are some reviews from amazon.com that probably worth reading:
 

Irina@oven.com from New York, USA , July 15, 1999 *****
It is a great book!

When I read other people's reviews, I always wonder what kind of background these people have in programming. Well, here is my background: I know HTML, JavaScript, C++, a little bit of Java, DHTML, and databases. When I found out that I had to learn Perl, I was scared because, after 4 years of college, that is the first language that I had to learn completely on my own. However, this book made my learning experience as easy as possible. The book provides very good explanations, a lot of examples, and an EXCELLENT reference section. I think this is one of the best programming books I have read so far.

 

A reader from New Jersey , January 30, 1999 *****
A Strong Learning Tool for the Perl Language
As far as books that claim they will teach you Perl in any number of days / lessons, this book is by far the best. The lessons, exercises and on-line quizzes are structured very well to make sure you understand the material in the lesson. The lessons are short and sweet and cover only a few topics at a time, which makes it easy to master a lesson at a time.

The examples in the book are effective and can be used immediately to help you solve those simple real world problems. The book does fall short in helping you easily conquer more complex issues quickly. However, the online resources are great for helping you address these problems.

***+ Cross-Platform Perl  (no e-text available)

Eric Johnson

Amazon Price: $31.99
Paperback - 500 pages 2nd Bk&cdr edition (September 2000)
IDG Books Worldwide; ISBN: 0764547291
See also his book Perl Modules

The book has a web site at http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm, but it's not very useful for Perl (but contains a good links for Linux).

 

I owned the first edition. The first edition was pretty decent and contained some  examples that you can use in your own development, especially related to Perl/Tk. Parts of Perl like regular expressions are treated superficially and text contains mistakes. For example on page 104 the book states that in construct /pattern/ Perl returns 1 (true) or 0 (false).  That is not true. A simple contra example is a statement like

        ($name, $subject) = /^([^:\s]*):\s+(.*)/; # parse e-mail header

 

See also a review by Donald Bryson in UnixWorld Online. The book does not have a e-text online (or at least beta as Perl 5 Complete).

Eric F. Johnson is a prolific writer and authored several books including:

• Unix Programming Tools (1997)
• Graphical Applications With Tcl and Tk  (1996)
• Advanced X Window Applications Programming The Basics and Beyond (1990)

and a book Perl Modules (1998).

He co-authored a large number of books on Unix(including several on Linux)  and X Windows including:

• Unix in Plain English
• Linux Programming (Mis Press Slackware Series) (see also interview with Kevin Reichard)
• Using X; Troubleshooting the X Window System Motif and Open Look
• Linux Configuration and Installation (Mis Press Slackware Series)
• Teach Yourself Unix
• Advanced X Window Application Programming (1994)
• X Window Applications Programming
• Power Programming...Motif

**+   Learning Perl (Nutshell book)

Randall L. Schwartz, Tom Christiansen / Paperback, 302 pages / O'Reilly, July 1997/ 2-nd edition

 

The main advantage of the book is that it is short.  It covers only Perl 4. The second edition is not much different from the first one and if you like to buy the book you can save some money buying the first edition -- it still can be found 50%-75% off.

Again -- buyer beware it's just an introduction to Perl 4 not to Perl 5. Perl 4 is a reasonable subset of Perl to master at the beginning level, but the the problem is that some Perl 5 features simplify programming of typical algorithms and you learn the wrong language.

The first edition was one of the first books on Perl published and this it has definite historical value.

The second edition is simply disappointing. It's kind of Randall L. Schwartz fiasko. The "Just Another Perl Hacker" as any hacker should be lazy, but probably not to such an extent: the only one new chapter (brief overview of CGI) and one new appendix (listing of standard Perl modules) were added (probably by Tom Christiansen, as the team now includes him). The examples and exercises are identical to the the first edition. You may try Perl Complete instead, if this is your first book. Skip this book if you already have at least one introductory book on Perl.

If you like Randal Schwartz convoluted "hacker" style with excessive emphasis on Perl idioms,  Effective Perl Programming might be a better deal...
 

*** Poorly organized and difficult to use April 8, 1999
Reviewer: A reader from Illinois

As an experienced systems administrator and script writer I was extremely offput by this book. Of course it's an ORA book and thus the quality is there, but I swear I have no idea how the authors got this poorly organized, confusing amalgamation past the editors unless they were simply too baffled to reject it and gave up. For starters, the footnotes often contradict the text which references them. The writing is thick and assumes too much. The authors' sense of humor apparently dictates the presense of smart-alecky and totally irrelevant commentary at random spots, just to make sure that the reader is absolutely lost. And the index! The index references such important aspects of Perl as "Astro [from "the Jetsons"], pronouncing 'Windex'" and "Max Headroom," yet if you look up the keyword "hash" -- which has an entire chapter devoted to it -- there is no listing at all in the entire index. You can look up associative arrays (a deprecated term) though. I found this book to be hostile to the learning process. In fact, I picked it up no fewer than three times trying to learn basic perl from it, only to toss it down in frustration after pulling my hair out. Compare the ORA Korn shell book, which is beautifully instructive, concise and clear, and with a wonderful index with nearly every important function listed. This was the first ORA book I wished I hadn't bothered to purchase. One could argue that perl5 is simply too complex to be gently introduced, yet I learned more about perl from reading Webmonkey's quickie six page tutorial than I did from "Learning Perl." I was quite disappointed with this book. Buy a copy if you must, but plan to use it as a (poor) reference because its teaching abilities are limited.

* Learning Perl on Win32 Systems

Randal L. Schwartz, et al / Paperback / Published 1997
I bought it and had found that it completely  missed the target. Words "W32 Systems" in the title is a joke. Content is essentially the same as in Learning Perl so this book is a self-plagiarism. Do not buy this book unless it is discounted 50% or more.