Learning Perl, Third Edition

The authors do a good job of getting the concepts across, but this book is high on: - Larry Wall. Ok, sure, he invented Perl and I'm sure he's a smart guy - but really guys, get over your love affair with him. It's really not helpful. - Footnotes. For the love of god, stop it. Sometimes it seems there's more text in the footnotes that in the section that the footnotes cover. It's distracting at best. - Perl. Sure, it's a Perl book and it's going to favorable to Perl - but - Perl isn't going to cure cancer, create world peace or create a 1000mpg car. Stop treating it like it's magic juice. - Condescension. I personally get the feeling that the authors are riding a rather spirited moral high horse and if you don't agree with them, you're just not that smart. They have good information and it's laid out well. The writing style and editing detracted immensely from this book for me. 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 name Learning Perl--also known affectionately as 'the Llama.' The first edition of Learning Perl appeared in 1993 and has been a bestseller ever since. Written by two of the most prominent and active members of the Perl community, this book is the quintessential tutorial for the Perl programming language.Perl began as a tool for Unix system administrators, used for countless small tasks throughout the workday. It has since blossomed into a full-featured programming language on practically every computing platform, and is used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and (of course) system administration--all this while still remaining the perfect tool for the small daily tasks it was designed for. Perl is quick, fun, and eminently useful. Many people start using Perl because they need it, but they continue to use Perl because they love it.The third edition of Learning Perl has not only been updated for Perl 5.6, but has also been rewritten from the ground up to reflect the needs of programmers learning Perl today. Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the book to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers trying to get started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the book is famous.This edition of the Llama includes an expanded and more gently-paced introduction to regular expressions, new exercises and solutions designed so readers can practice what they've learned while it's still fresh in their minds, and an overall reworking to bring Learning Perl into the new millennium.Perl is a language for getting your job done. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer. If you're just getting started with Perl, this is the book you want—whether you're a programmer, system administrator, or web hacker. Nicknamed "the Llama" by two generations of users, this bestseller closely follows the popular introductory Perl course taught by the authors since 1991. This 6th edition covers recent changes to the language up to version 5.14. Perl is suitable for almost any task on almost any platform, from short fixes to complete web applications. Learning Perl teaches you the basics and shows you how to write programs up to 128 lines long—roughly the size of 90% of the Perl programs in use today. Each chapter includes exercises to help you practice what you've just learned. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer. Topics include: Perl data and variable types Subroutines File operations Regular expressions String manipulation (including Unicode) Lists and sorting Process management Smart matching Use of third party modules Printing History November 1993 First Edition. April 1994 Minor corrections. August 1994 Minor corrections. July 1997 Second Edition. July 2001 Third Edition. July 2005 Fourth Edition. I usually dislike textbooks (bought this for a class), but this book is very nice. The language is more like having a conversation since the book will make jokes and admit to silly things that happen in Perl. The book makes very few assumptions about the reader's experience, but still may move fast for a total code beginner. Numerous, fully explained examples help in that regard. All in all, a great book. Shows how to write, debug, and run a Perl program, describes CGI scripting and data manipulation, and describes scalar values, basic operators, and associative arrays.