Learning Perl (Learning)

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Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, brian d foy

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Pages: 304 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0596101058

Pub: O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Pub date: 2005-07-14

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 5645

Editorial Review:

When it comes to working a little "behind the scenes" magic for a Web site or putting together a UNIX script which interrogate databases and produce reports based on the information they contain, there are few better languages to do the job than Perl.
Learning Perl draws on the expertise of two of the major supporters of this highly flexible language, Randal Schwatrz and Tom Christiansen, to produce an introductory manual which manages to be concise yet informative throughout.
Weighing in at a mere (for a computer manual) 271 pages it achieves admirably what it sets out to do--teach Perl basics and no more. From the introduction to the different variable types through hash arrays, file access, process management and coding for the World Wide Web, it's a well-paced easy-to-understand book which assumes a rudimentary knowledge of programming but no more.
With its multitude of clear examples which help to hammer home the many points made and set exercises at the end of each chapter, it builds knowledge rather than drowning the reader with information as many other books seem to do.

This is the first in a series of books on the subject from O'Reilly Publishing, the others being Programming Perl, Advanced Perl Programming and the Perl Cookbook and it truly is a great introduction to a language which is enthusiastically supported by developers and Web coders worldwide. Well worth a read.

Reader Reviews:

The Perfect Introduction (1/1 people found this helpful)

I read the Programming Perl book first and wished I had read Learning Perl beforehand. It is quite simply the best introduction to anyone who wants to learn the language.

Although not as in-depth as Programming Perl, this book gives just the right overview to pick up the basics and write some really nice scripts.

Each chapter is followed by several exercises which force you to remember and use what you have learned in the chapter.

I read this book after a year or so of Perl programming and there were still a few things which this book taught me. It is an excellent companion to my Programming Perl book

Not for the absolute beginers (0/0 people found this helpful)

If you know nothing about computer programs and language then I have to say that this is not the book for you.

In fairness to the author he actually says that this is really a book for those with some knowledge of computer language, but that doesnt make it any easier for the absolute novice.

Maybe the second book you should buy.

Excellent introduction to a very useful language (1/1 people found this helpful)

Coming from a programming background, I find this an excellent book to allow me to quickly take advantage of Perl's simplicity and power. The chapters on Regular Expressions are particularly good - I had struggled with these until I read this book.

Perfect introduction to learning Perl scripting (1/1 people found this helpful)

I learnt Perl scripting from the third edition of The Llama, and recently had cause to brush up my Perl for a new job, so I thought I'd check out the fourth edition. I'm pleased to say it's still an excellent work. If you want to use Perl as a scripting language, this may be all you need for your entire scripting career. Some basic programming knowledge might be helpful, but even a complete beginner could get something out of this.

The basics are covered well: strings, numbers, control structures, subroutines, arrays and hashes, and most importantly, reading and writing files, and the mighty regular expressions. In fact, I've not read a better treatment of regular expressions anywhere else. Everything is clearly explained and well-written. Basically, this is the gold standard against which all introductory books to a programming language should be judged.

However, this book makes no claim to covering all of Perl. At least the main text of the book doesn't. I don't know what happened with the blurb on the back of the book, but it mentions, among other things: threading, references, objects, modules and package implementation. Technically, these topics are indeed present, but only in that a paragraph each is devoted to them in Appendix B. You will certainly learn nothing of any value about them.

There are some other minor quibbles: you may find the constant Flintstones references tiring after a while. Also potentially wearing are the sometimes inane footnotes, which breaks the flow of the reading experience for little reward. On the other hand, I found them a lot less annoying in this edition, so perhaps I've just mellowed out in the intervening years. Finally, the last chapter does a very whistlestop tour of map, grep, exception handling with eval, and array and hash slicing. I've never found the 'cram a bunch of stuff we don't have time to talk about into one chapter' approach to be very useful, and it doesn't work here, either. Fortunately, apart from the slices, it's all covered again at slightly greater length in Intermediate Perl.

Speaking of Intermediate Perl, if you want to learn Perl as a general purpose language, rather than for short scripts, you need to go and read that one next. Many suggest that you can graduate onto The Camel straight after The Llama, but I strongly disagree -- I tried and failed miserably.

But as long as you bear in mind you're only getting half the Perl experience, this is still the book I would thrust into the hands of anyone looking to learn Perl.

Making easy things difficult, and hard things impossible (1/5 people found this helpful)

I found this book difficult to follow from at chapter 3, in fact it was so confusing to me that I gave up at chapter 3 after attempting the exercises. I put my confusion down to not coming from a progamming background. I had dabbled a bit with VB but thats about all. I am not a complete IT novice, and am fairly competent in Unix/Linux.

For the complete programming novice like me, I would say steer well clear, at least until you have tackled a more newbie friendly title. I have just ordered Perl for Dummies (as I am clearly a Perl dummie!) and Perl Programming for the absolute beginner, so hopefully these will meet my Perl needs.

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