In this update of a bestseller, two leading Perl trainers teach you to use the most universal scripting language in the age of the World Wide Web. With a foreword by Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, this smooth, carefully paced book is the "official" guide for both formal (classroom) and informal learning. It is now current for Perl version 5.004. Learning Perl is a hands-on tutorial designed to get you writing useful Perl scripts as quickly as possible. Exercises (with complete solutions) accompany each chapter. A lengthy new chapter in this edition introduces you to CGI programming, while touching also on the use of library modules, references, and Perl's object-oriented constructs. Perl is a language for easily manipulating text, files, and processes. It comes standard on most UNIX platforms and is available free of charge on all other important operating systems. Perl technical support is informally available -- often within minutes -- from a pool of experts who monitor a USENET newsgroup (comp.lang.perl.misc) with tens of thousands of readers. Contents include:

• A quick tutorial stroll through Perl basics
• Systematic, topic-by-topic coverage of Perl's broad capabilities
• Lots of brief code examples
• Programming exercises for each topic, with fully worked-out answers
• How to execute system commands from your Perl program
• How to manage DBM databases using Perl
• An introduction to CGI programming for the Web

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Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  October 05 2000
Submitted by Jon DeCamp   [Respond | View]

Greetings,

I am just finishing up with Learning Perl and am very dissapointed. I expected this book to be aimed for beginners, and to be well written. You can't expect someone new to fill in the blanks themselves, but Mr. Schwartz does.

The most exciting part about having a "Learning" book is that it comes with Exersises at the end of the chapters. These exersises are lame, to be blunt. They aren't explained well enough, and the chapters preceding them don't give you all the knowledge to complete them.

The worst part is the answers at the end of the chapters where Mr. Schwartz has the ability to make you feel like you've learned nothing. He'll write the code (That you must match your code to) using techniques that he never teaches, and using bad techniques as well (command; command; command; [Look, one line of code!). On one he even says, "Yes, this one needs some explaining." But never explains! It needed explaining because there were way too many things there not mentioned in the chapter/book.

There are frequent code-flaws in his examples throughout the pages.

Be warned. If you must learn Perl, then you'll need to buy more than just this book. If you know nothing about programming, or shell scripting, then I'm afraid that this book could become too difficult.

-JD


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  April 15 2000
Submitted by Mark A. McRee   [Respond | View]



I am a currently a student of computer science. Turbo Pascal 7.0 is the only programming language I am versed in. If you are a beginning programmer who knows the basics (variables, constants, program structure, loops, arrays, etc.) you will breeze through learning a second language. If you are a sheer novice, there are plenty of source code examples that do a wonderful job of associating the task with the syntax. Learning Perl is very well written and makes it easy to learn the syntax. Learning Perl was like a good novel to me. I didn't want to stop because the ease of associating the syntax with the task was not a foreign thing. It was like the plot of a good novel easily unfolding right before your eyes. Thanks Mr. Wall, Mr. Schwartz, and Mr. Christiansen. You did great!


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  March 04 2000
Submitted by Sorin   [Respond | View]



Programming Perl is a must for all webmasters who want to know CGI!!!


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  December 22 1999
Submitted by John Greene,Ph.D., Johns Hopkins Univers   [Respond | View]



I've just used Learning Perl as a text for a course on bioinformatics for biologists, none of whom had programmed before. They found the book very difficult to read for beginners, as it DOES presume some knowledge of programming, preferably in C (not as bad as the Camel book, however!). I kept wishing for more and better introductory examples in the text, and some of the Exercises at the end of the chapters were a little obscure. Simpler exercises might be better.
I love O'Reilly books and recommend them to my students - but next semester I will be switching to a newly published book on Perl aimed at true programming newbies.


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  October 26 1999
Submitted by Uzo   [Respond | View]



This is an excellent book. Randal and Tom did a great job. This book assumes absolutely no programming experience with Perl, but it does assume some "minor" previous programming experience. If you have never programmed before, you "might" find this book hard. If you are not coming from the unix environment, you might find chapter 7 "regular expressions" hard. I read this book front to back, and backwards, and it was well enjoyed tho I have tons of previous programming experience. The book is a little bit quick paced, but that is the lovely aspect of it. I like books that get straight to the point with sample example. If you are going to learn Perl, this is door number 1. Uzo


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  September 29 1999
Submitted by Adam J. Foxson   [Respond | View]



This is THE best book on the market for learning PERL from scratch without necesarrily having any prior programming background. The book is elegant, consise, thorough, and takes users step by step from knowing nothing about PERL, to knowing PERL at a very comfortable intermediate level. It comes with my highest possible recommendation. If you however are coming from a background of programming experience and don't want to be hand held you're better off with Progamming PERL, because that simply is.. The PERL "bible". :-)


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  September 25 1999
Submitted by Michael   [Respond | View]



I started reading this book with no previous programming experience. At the beginning the pace was just right. But starting around chapter 5 or so I ran into a brick wall. But first, the good stuff. I really appreciate the inclusion of exercises at the end of the chapter. They help the learning process alot. The book is well written and I think the chapters are laid out logically. Now, the things I would like to see improved: Chapter 5's exercise #2 really confused me. After a few hours of trying I finally gave up and typed in the answer from the back of the book. The code given in the answer produced an error message until I changed the line to the alternative mentioned in the comments. Chapter 6 barely mentioned the printf function and then required it's use in an exercise at the end of the chapter. A simple table listing enough information to at least get through the exercises would have been more helpful than the reference to another programming language or book. After Chapter 6 I am shelving the book to be replaced by a more thorough book with a better grasp of it's intended audience. I understand that this book is intended as a companion to "Programming Perl", but at $70 for the set I'll be better off spending $30 for a more complete book that I can actually work through.


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  August 17 1999
Submitted by Chris X Edwards   [Respond | View]



I had heard Perl was cool. This book cured any
skepticism I had. Perl IS cool and this book
leads a novice through it nicely. I think that
experienced programmers will appreciate Perl
the most since it culls the good stuff from many
programming techniques. As an experienced
programmer, I didn't have too much trouble with
stuff in the book, but I did sense that it
sometimes ran a pretty big range of skill levels
and sophistication.
My only big pet peeve: the foot notes denoted
with astricks. With all that Perl code looking
remarkably like gibberish, it was sometimes quite
hard to find the footnotes reference.
Oh ya, this book is highly Unix-centric. It
mentions DOS, etc, but really, if you're going
to embark on a Perl agenda, get a clue...& Linux.


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  July 28 1999
Submitted by Len Shmunis   [Respond | View]



Excellent, it's a great book for a beginner !


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  April 15 1999
Submitted by Geoffrey Cleaves   [Respond | View]



A very, very good book. Before reading this book all I knew was that Perl was a free way to program. Now I'm use Perl everyday at my office in order to produce reports, create dynamic web pages, even query ODBC databases. Granted the last item was outiside the book's scope, but Learning Perl gave me the base of knowledge I needed.

Geoff


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  March 21 1999
Submitted by Mike Levine   [Respond | View]



Excellent book for beginners. I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to understand the fundamentals of PERL.

Well written and at a pace which makes it easy to understand.


Learning Perl, 2nd Edition Review,  December 26 1998
Submitted by Bill Lo   [Respond | View]



I enjoyed this book very much. I'm a programmer who programs quite a bit of awk (and sed in combination which admittedly I don't think I enjoy doing!). This book has convinced me that I really should give up on awk and sed. Maybe someday... Only wish the price were lower altho I think it's still reasonable!

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