Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
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 the need for a third edition came about. It's now over 1,000 pages, which it needs to be, as it performs several different duties. First, it's an introduction to the Perl language for those who are new to programming; also, it's a guide for those who are coming from other languages; and, finally, it's a Perl language reference. Among Larry Wall's other pursuits is being a linguist, and it's perhaps for this reason that 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. Also, as it's largely interpreted, programs written in Perl tend to run unmodified on a variety of platforms--although 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 shift of viewpoint eliminates blind spots in the reader's understanding and provides 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 much more ground here than in the previous edition. Even if you have both previous editions, you'll want this latest version--if only for the new jokes. --Steve Patient, amazon.co.uk |
Customer Reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Impress everyone with regular expressions, May 9, 2023
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. Every 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. You won't be left standing there like a sitting duck. I doubt that I can give it enough stars.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 great book for perl beginners, Apr 15, 2023
I was beginning to learn perl and found this book very useful. Later I learnt that it has a lot to offer to the more advanced user of perl as well. Great book to start with.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Best Perl Book around..., Mar 5, 2023
I learned Perl from man pages a while ago... Then got this book about five or so years ago when I started teaching a class on Perl. Let me tell you, this is the best Perl book out there...
You do need to be able to program to understand this book---and to appreciate many of the insights/jokes it makes. This book is funny! It spends -some- time explaining the syntax, etc., but the true value of this book comes from explaining the motivation for various language features. The philosophy behind Perl. Once you get the philosophy behind Perl, the entire language starts to make a lot of sense---it becomes beautiful, easy to read, understand, etc. The book also answers questions like ``why should I learn Perl?'', and ``what makes it better than other languages?''
The way that I use the book is (in class): You read the first 5 chapters to learn the language (actually, the first 2 chapters are enough to give you a good grasp of how to do pretty much anything), then the rest of the book becomes a pretty good reference on how to do specific things (like networking, threads, OOP, etc.).
Oh, and I use Perl every day for pretty much everything. My rule: if it needs speed, use C, if it needs a GUI, use Java or C#, if it's web-based, use PHP, and for everything else (no particular need; 99% of the stuff that I do) use Perl.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Daunting, but so is life, Jan 30, 2023
For those reviewers complaining about the complexity of this book, you should bear in mind that this is aimed at people with some Perl experience and does in fact provide extremely useful information.
It is not intended to be read from cover to cover, rather it servers as an encylopedia or verbose dictionary of Perl. The occasional funny bits break up what is otherwise a fairly dry book.
If you want examples etc then get Learning Perl or the Perl Cookbook from the same publisher. In fact if you are serious about Perl you should have all three books.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
the quintessential perl source, Jan 3, 2023
It is nearly impossible to deprecate the book written by the author of a language. Just as there will be no way to replace Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language", there will also never be a book that can replace Larry Wall's "Programming Perl".
"Programming Perl" is more then just a tutorial: it's a reference to the Perl language, the perl interpreter, and the Perl mindset. the first several chapters explain--in depth--the features of the Perl language. The middle section offers an explanation of some of the concepts, technologies and hurdles of modern Perl, including Unicode, IPC, threading, and even mixed programming with C. The final section explains all the little "extras" that make Perl so versatile: CPAN, the standard modules, and hints on portability and documentation.
nearly 300 pages of reference tables and charts at the end, round out this magnificent book. This is invaluable for an Perl programmer.
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