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Featured customer reviews
Review of Learning Perl, June 19 2008
Overall I find that "Learning Perl" is a good book. The authors painstakingly try to teach how to program Perl the way professional Perl programmers do. The book also tries to explain some of the "predefined variables" (such as @_, $!) that people who maintain Perl programs might come across with (Thanks for this).
One of my "gripe" is that it seems that Chapter 1 can be more terse. It needs 11 pages before it shows the "hello world" program, (Seems that there are only 3 scripts found in Chap. 1 is "Hello World", there are a couple of other, 2 others are just to show that you can write complicated programs using perl ).
It would be nice if "Learning Perl" and "Intermediate Perl" can be combined into one book (It is almost akin to splitting a C++ book into 2 books, 1 book for non-OO features of C++, and another book for the OO features of C++ [A little exaggeration])
Overall a very good book, especially for those who don't have programming background.
The code examples ARE downloadable, May 07 2008
A simple google search:
site:oreilly.com learning perl code download
Shows that the code examples are available at:
examples.oreilly.com/learnperl4
However, the README file in the archive says the code goes with the third edition of the book.
An enjoyable read!, April 15 2008
Simply the best, May 10 2006
There were a few reasons why I wanted to learn Perl. Amongst those reasons were IRSSI (https://www.irssi.org) , an IRC client, which can use Perl scripts. My main motivation though, was to use Perl for the administration of UNIX based systems.
I have never programmed before, so I'm proud to say that Perl is my first language. I didn't know a single thing about Perl, but once I purchased Learning Perl, I quickly became familiar with the language (I'm amazed at how fast I learned). The book taught me everything from what a Scalar Variable is, to how Larry Wall thinks (perhaps that is an exaggeration), but I did indeed learn a lot. I found Perl to be an easy language to learn, thanks to Learning Perl.
And because this book was so great, I did not hesitate to purchase Intermediate Perl, Mastering Regular Expressions, and Peogramming Perl. They are all (in my opinion) a must have.
Read this first!, October 27 2005
Even if you are a brainiac, you probably shouldn't jump right to the Camel.
I read about half of the Camel and then picked this (Llama) up and I'm very glad I did.
Perfect pace and choice of topics.
Really cleared up some of the fundamentals that were hindering my progress with the Camel.
Maybe I just needed to read Camel twice, but it's alot easier to just read this one first.
I am enjoying this one so much, I bought the Alpaca already. I have every confidence that the Camel will be a much more pleasant read after Llama and Alpaca.
If you are only 3 or 4 chapters into Camel, don't assume you are sailing smooth. You are about to hit very choppy water.
One gripe: book mentions downloadable code, but website has none. Not a big deal, since you should be typing everything anyway to get practice with the syntax.
Media reviews
"...you end up getting into the meat of Perl quickly. Couple that with a nice conversational approach to the writing, and you've got a book that will take you far...If you need to learn Perl and you want to get there quickly, Learning Perl is the way to go. It's stood the test of time by making it to the 4th edition, and there's a reason for that."
-- Thomas Duff, Duffbert's Random Musings
"I will have to say this book was a very good introduction into Perl (I still use it from time to time as a reference). It has really helped me in getting the basic syntax of Perl down. I would totally recommend this book to anyone that is wanting to begin the journey into programming with Perl."
-- Jonathan C. Otsuka, Kansas City Perl Mongers
"Learning Perl is generally in the top three recommended books for new Perl programmers, next to Programming Perl ("The Camel Book"). Now in its fourth edition, Learning Perl returns with updates covering the stable 5.8 series of Perl. The changes are subtle, but the improvements make for a clearer and more readable book...The book is chock-full of useful information, and even experienced Perl coders would do well to at least leaf through the pages of this book for paradigms to help their coding. Absolute beginner programmers would likely find this text a little over their heads, but intermediate programmers will find Learning Perl a valuable resource in their road to proficiency with Perl."
--Craig Maloney, Slashdot, July 2005
"Learning Perl is one of the best books for learning Perl. It's easy to read. All of the basic concepts are covered. Beginners will not learn poor programming habits or be bogged down by unnecessary items. One of the famous quotes from Larry Wall (the creator of Perl) about Perl is that its design goal is "to make easy tasks easy and difficult tasks possible." Learning Perl makes the simple task of learning Perl easy and the task of becoming a Perl programmer possible."
--Russell Dyer, Unix Review, August 2005
"The Perl programming language is everywhere in the Net; people write code in Perl who've never thought of using any other tool, and programmers with C++ chops still pick Perl to write those little utilities that help them tweak their C code. If you already know how to program in another language, and want to learn Perl, this is the book to learn it from."
--DrPat, PaperFrigate and Blogcritics, July 2005
Read all reviews
Learning Perl, Fourth Edition
By Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, brian d foy
July 2005
Pages: 304
ISBN 10: 0-596-10105-8 |
ISBN 13: 9780596101053
(Average of 5 Customer Reviews)
This book is OUT OF PRINT. Please consider the latest edition.
DescriptionInformed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the Llama to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers getting started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the Llama is famous. If you ask Perl programmers today what book they relied on most when they were learning Perl, you'll find that an overwhelming majority will point to the Llama. With good reason. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer.
Full Description
Learning Perl, better known as "the Llama book", starts the programmer on the way to mastery. Written by three prominent members of the Perl community who each have several years of experience teaching Perl around the world, this edition has been updated to account for all the recent changes to the language up to Perl 5.8.
Perl is the language for people who want to get work done. It started as a tool for Unix system administrators who needed something powerful for small tasks. Since then, Perl has blossomed into a full-featured programming language used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and system administration--on practically all platforms--while remaining the favorite tool for the small daily tasks it was designed for. You might start using Perl because you need it, but you'll continue to use it because you love it.
Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the Llama to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers getting started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the Llama is famous.
The book includes new exercises and solutions so you can practice what you've learned while it's still fresh in your mind. Here are just some of the topics covered:
- Perl variable types
- subroutines
- file operations
- regular expressions
- text processing
- strings and sorting
- process management
- using third party modules
Featured customer reviews
Review of Learning Perl, June 19 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Ludwig Lim
[Respond | View]
Overall I find that "Learning Perl" is a good book. The authors painstakingly try to teach how to program Perl the way professional Perl programmers do. The book also tries to explain some of the "predefined variables" (such as @_, $!) that people who maintain Perl programs might come across with (Thanks for this).
One of my "gripe" is that it seems that Chapter 1 can be more terse. It needs 11 pages before it shows the "hello world" program, (Seems that there are only 3 scripts found in Chap. 1 is "Hello World", there are a couple of other, 2 others are just to show that you can write complicated programs using perl ).
It would be nice if "Learning Perl" and "Intermediate Perl" can be combined into one book (It is almost akin to splitting a C++ book into 2 books, 1 book for non-OO features of C++, and another book for the OO features of C++ [A little exaggeration])
Overall a very good book, especially for those who don't have programming background.
The code examples ARE downloadable, May 07 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
ggeller
[Respond | View]
A simple google search:
site:oreilly.com learning perl code download
Shows that the code examples are available at:
examples.oreilly.com/learnperl4
However, the README file in the archive says the code goes with the third edition of the book.
An enjoyable read!, April 15 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Brad C
[Respond | View]
I'm still in the process of reading this book, affectionately nick-named the llama by the Perl community. But I feel I've made it far enough in that I have a good feel for the writing style and overall quality of the book.
While there are a couple of technical errors here and there, they are mostly to do with the formatting and typography rather than the code. If you do find an error in your edition (there have been many additional printings of the 4th Edition), the books website (where you're probably reading this review right now) has a comprehensive list of errata, along with their corrections.
I have to say I really enjoy the writing style of the authors, and from what I've seen of the alpaca, there's more to come. They make the subject matter interesting, covering only what's needed, deferring more advanced techniques to later texts.
In my own experience, I am finding this book a great help in clarifying certain concepts as I read from cover-to-cover. But since I have decided to take on the maintenance of a previous programmer's Perl/Tk program, the learning curve is a little steeper than it may otherwise have been. That said, if I'd not decided to look at this code, I'd not likely be bothering to learn Perl at all, and what a shame that would be. I do find it to be a rather enjoyable language. Anyway, this book is a great tool, and is easy to use in conjunction with Mastering Perl/Tk as well as the Definitive Reference: the Camel.
Finally, a note to the authors: Keep up the great work! This is exactly the kind of book I have come to expect from O'Reilly, though I have, on occasion, been disappointed.
Simply the best, May 10 2006
Rating:
Submitted by
Matthew
[Respond | View]
There were a few reasons why I wanted to learn Perl. Amongst those reasons were IRSSI (https://www.irssi.org) , an IRC client, which can use Perl scripts. My main motivation though, was to use Perl for the administration of UNIX based systems.
I have never programmed before, so I'm proud to say that Perl is my first language. I didn't know a single thing about Perl, but once I purchased Learning Perl, I quickly became familiar with the language (I'm amazed at how fast I learned). The book taught me everything from what a Scalar Variable is, to how Larry Wall thinks (perhaps that is an exaggeration), but I did indeed learn a lot. I found Perl to be an easy language to learn, thanks to Learning Perl.
And because this book was so great, I did not hesitate to purchase Intermediate Perl, Mastering Regular Expressions, and Peogramming Perl. They are all (in my opinion) a must have.
Read this first!, October 27 2005
Rating:
Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]
Even if you are a brainiac, you probably shouldn't jump right to the Camel.
I read about half of the Camel and then picked this (Llama) up and I'm very glad I did.
Perfect pace and choice of topics.
Really cleared up some of the fundamentals that were hindering my progress with the Camel.
Maybe I just needed to read Camel twice, but it's alot easier to just read this one first.
I am enjoying this one so much, I bought the Alpaca already. I have every confidence that the Camel will be a much more pleasant read after Llama and Alpaca.
If you are only 3 or 4 chapters into Camel, don't assume you are sailing smooth. You are about to hit very choppy water.
One gripe: book mentions downloadable code, but website has none. Not a big deal, since you should be typing everything anyway to get practice with the syntax.
Media reviews
"...you end up getting into the meat of Perl quickly. Couple that with a nice conversational approach to the writing, and you've got a book that will take you far...If you need to learn Perl and you want to get there quickly, Learning Perl is the way to go. It's stood the test of time by making it to the 4th edition, and there's a reason for that."
-- Thomas Duff, Duffbert's Random Musings
"I will have to say this book was a very good introduction into Perl (I still use it from time to time as a reference). It has really helped me in getting the basic syntax of Perl down. I would totally recommend this book to anyone that is wanting to begin the journey into programming with Perl."
-- Jonathan C. Otsuka, Kansas City Perl Mongers
"Learning Perl is generally in the top three recommended books for new Perl programmers, next to Programming Perl ("The Camel Book"). Now in its fourth edition, Learning Perl returns with updates covering the stable 5.8 series of Perl. The changes are subtle, but the improvements make for a clearer and more readable book...The book is chock-full of useful information, and even experienced Perl coders would do well to at least leaf through the pages of this book for paradigms to help their coding. Absolute beginner programmers would likely find this text a little over their heads, but intermediate programmers will find Learning Perl a valuable resource in their road to proficiency with Perl."
--Craig Maloney, Slashdot, July 2005
"Learning Perl is one of the best books for learning Perl. It's easy to read. All of the basic concepts are covered. Beginners will not learn poor programming habits or be bogged down by unnecessary items. One of the famous quotes from Larry Wall (the creator of Perl) about Perl is that its design goal is "to make easy tasks easy and difficult tasks possible." Learning Perl makes the simple task of learning Perl easy and the task of becoming a Perl programmer possible."
--Russell Dyer, Unix Review, August 2005
"The Perl programming language is everywhere in the Net; people write code in Perl who've never thought of using any other tool, and programmers with C++ chops still pick Perl to write those little utilities that help them tweak their C code. If you already know how to program in another language, and want to learn Perl, this is the book to learn it from."
--DrPat, PaperFrigate and Blogcritics, July 2005
Read all reviews
"If you need to learn Perl and you want to get there quickly, Learning Perl is the way to go. It's stood the test of time by making it to the 4th edition, and there's a reason for that..."
--Thomas Duff, Duffbert's Random Musings
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