Programming Perl

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Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant

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Pages: 1092 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0596000278

Pub: O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Pub date: 2000-07-14

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 12798

Editorial Review:

Larry Wall wrote Perl and he wrote Programming Perl. Better yet, he writes amusingly and well--all of which comes across in this latest edition of the definitive guide to the language.
Like Topsy, Perl just grew, and as a result so has Programming Perl. It's now over 1,000 pages but needs to be as it does several different jobs. Firstly, it's an introduction to the Perl language for those new to programming. It's a guide for those coming from other languages and it's a Perl language reference.
Larry Wall is a linguist, among his other interests, and perhaps for this reason Perl is a peculiarly flexible language with many routes to achieving the same ends, as the authors ably demonstrate. It's also extensible in several ways, designed to work with many other languages and, as it's largely interpreted, Perl programs tend to run unmodified on a variety of platforms--though platform-specific Perl modules and programming practices are also discussed.
A major strength of Programming Perl is the way subject areas are approached from several directions. This constant viewpoint-shifting eliminates blind spots in the reader's understanding as well as providing a pleasing echo of the way Perl itself can take many routes from here to there.

Because the Perl community is both knowledgeable and active the language covers a lot more ground than it did at the time the last edition of Programming Perl was published. Even if you have both previous editions you'll want this latest version--if only for the new jokes. --Steve Patient

Reader Reviews:

If your serious about Perl then get this book! (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is the first book I read on Perl and I must say it was absolutely excellent. It gives a thorough understanding of the language and is a vital reference for anyone who is serious about Perl.

It doesn't receive the full 5 for me though as inexperienced programmers may struggle with the content. If you don't have much programming experience I would suggest Learning Perl as a starter then move on to this book.

Essential for lovers of Perl culture, recommended for the rest of us (1/1 people found this helpful)

Perl seems capable of evoking both rapturous adoration and abject disgust from those who are exposed to it. If your feelings are closer to the former than the latter, well, you probably own this book already, and you love it.

After all, The Camel consists of the God of Perl and two Perl demigods writing the definitive reference about Perl from top to bottom. What's not to love? In particular, if you've ever heard Larry Wall give a talk, you'll be able to spot his contributions: droll, parenthetical and punning.

For those of us who just like Perl (or even just have to work with it), it's not quite as essential as you might have been led to believe. In part this might be because the third edition is getting on a bit, and plenty of other good Perl books have emerged in the intervening time. And in part, it's because definitive tomes such as this one by definition contain large chunks that you don't need, where you'll spend most of your time just nodding and thinking 'yep, I already know that'.

But of course, there's always a few bits you didn't know, and that's where The Camel comes in handy. The first part of the book, which goes over the core of the language, is a must read in this respect. To be honest, I didn't find the explanations to be quite as cogent as what can be found elsewhere (e.g. Perl Best Practices or Advanced Perl Programming), but it's all in one place here.

In addition, beyond the core language, lots of other material is present, including: threading, details on Perl's internals, and a long list of Perl idioms and dos and don'ts. There's also the reference section, which covers the built in functions, and briefly outlines what's in the standard packages that come with Perl, which is also helpful, although in most cases I expect an internet search (or the perl man pages) is just as fast, and in the case of the standard library, provides more information.

On the one hand, I think you can get by without owning this. On the other you will not regret buying this book -- Perl has enough quirks that it's nice to have The Camel close to hand. Nice, but not essential.

THE reference, but not to begin with... (5/6 people found this helpful)

This book is an in-depth and comprehensive reference about Perl Language. Despite some depreciative comments I've seen around, it is very well written and is a joy to read.
I didn't give it 5 starts because I started with Perl with this book, which was not such a good idea, Learning Perl (or a similar book) might have been a wiser choice. Nevertheless It's not impossible to start with this one, specially if you already program using another language, just don't get lost in the middle of all details about some specific issue.
You might spend more time than you wanted to start writing some usefull program but after you write it the book gives all you need to know to unleash the power of Perl.

Impress everyone with regular expressions (9/18 people found this helpful)

I have to admit that before using this book I used learning perl. However everything that I learned in the first book was in the first chapter of this book. I'm very impressed with the layout of this book. Beverage time I turned a new page I found something else I had to try. One paragraph in chapter six prime outlines the whole reason for really wanting to use pearl.

"Perl doesn't just glue together other computer languages. It also glues together command line interpreters, operating systems, processes, machines, devices, networks, databases, institutions, cultures, web pages, GUIs, peers, servers, and clients, not to mention people like system administrators, users, and of course, hackers, both not be in nice. In fact pearl is rather competitive about cooperative."

This book is well designed to get you off the Ground and hit the deck running. I doubt that I can give it enough stars.

Perfect for perl beginners through professionals (12/14 people found this helpful)

For a start, perl is the ultimate data manipulation language. That makes it perfect for a vast variety of fields, network people, bioinformatics, all sorts.

For an absolute beginner to all programming then this book is probably just slightly beyond your reach. I would go for "Learning Perl". However if you know what a programming language is and you are familiar with how programs function in general then you should not have much trouble just picking this book up and ploughing through it.

Programming Perl is a joy to read and work through. It talks in a nice and friendly language and you don't really realise that you are learning things. It takes you through each of the fundamental topics in perl and tells you why they work when you need to know and what they are useful for.

This book is also a great reference. It has a large section at the back of the book which covers all the perl commands worth knowing, and how to use them.

If you are thinking about learning perl then this book is absolutly essential. Every perl programmer has a copy, and you should too.

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