Programming Perl (3rd Edition) Reviews

• From a Perl novice

  
  By A26HZCFEYIGG8V on 2000-09-29
  I grew up teething on the trusty C=64, then went on to Q-Basic,Fortran-77 (I'm a mechanical engineer by schooling), and eventuallydabbled quite a bit with ANSI C. Except for a quarter of Fortran incollege, I've always been self-taught for computers and programming.I thought that this book would be the place to start my 'career' inPerl. Since it is the 'hot new thing' (although not that new) and Iam interested in Linux and the Apache web server, learning Perl seemedto be the natural extension. And on almost every FAQ, web site, etcetera about Perl, all speak of 'THE CAMEL' as being the bible.

  BOYWAS I WRONG! I am not NEARLY smart enough to learn Perl straightfrom the Camel's mouth. But that doesn't mean that this is a terriblebook by any means, not at all. But I quickly jumped back on line hereat Amazon and picked up 'the Llama', aka Learning Perl, 2d Edition.Here's my path to success, being that I wasn't smart enough to learnfrom this book by itself! hahaha...

  (1) Read 'Learning Perl'straight through at a leisurely pace. Just get a feel for thelanguage and syntax. (2) Download and install Perl... (3) Read'Learning Perl' a second time, this time not continuing until yousuccessfully complete the exercises at the end of each chapter. (4)Read 'Programming Perl', and when you get to a part that you havetrouble with, refer back to the lessons and examples in theLlama.

  This worked quite well for me, and using the Llama before ANDin conjunction with the Camel seemed to enhance the meaning for me ofboth. My newest endeavor is to work through 'CGI Programming withPerl', another O'Reilly animal book ('the Mouse'? ).

  Overall, thisis what I would term a 'readable reference'. While it doesn't havethe tutorial structure of the Llama or other learner's books, it isn'tquite as sticky as reading a pure reference guide. It's a wellthought out book for those with a half-way solid grasp of Perl and areready to start tackling some intermediate to higher level programminggoals. END
  
  

• Who said ....

  
  By A29I2OST2YY603 on 2001-05-10
  The book is definetely written for those who at least have some (or maybe a little more than just "some") programming background, and willing to learn Perl from the author of the language.

  I read the first edition of the book, which was about 200 pages, or something in that range, which filled my mind with nothing but questions. Current edition, however, could answer to all of those questions (well, almost). Of course, to make it answer them I had to re-read the book four times. But none of the books I currently own (and I own quite a few) could've taken me to the innards of the language so deep no matter how many times I had read them. So the book is of value.

  The Camel book, especially, does a great job on Regular Expressions and pattern matching. If you want to learn RegEx of perl in very details, you definitely need listen to the author of Perl. "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl is also a good choise, but doesn't include the latest updates.

  Formats aren't covered very well though. So you might consider "The Lama book" for that ("Learning Perl"). Still, none of the books can tell you about the innards of the Perl in so much detail overall than "Programming Perl".

  OOP is also toched upon in the book. Since purpose of the author is not to preach you OO lingo (but plain Perl), you'll treat that part just as an intorduction to OOP and consider "Object Oriented perl" by Damian Convey as the next text book.

  I found chpater 14, "Tied variables" very helpfull though. It might remind you of DBM/Berkley DB, through the syntax

  tie my %db, 'AnyDBM_File', 'my_file', O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0664;

  but unfortunately it's not about DBM at all. It is about how the "tie" function works, and teaches you how to create your own classes for implementing with "tie". After that chapter, I even had to update some of my classes and saved lots of time for their updates.

  "Compiling", chapter 18 ,is a must read chapter for those who "live & breath" with Perl (like me, may be ?).

  I don't want you to buy the book unless you have a good understanding of Programming or/and have knowledge of some programming languages. Otherwise, it won't help at all.

  If your purpose is just to get started with Web applications, go for "CGI progamming 101" by Jacqueline Hamilton. It is a good start. But if you want to go even deeper, "Learning Perl" and "Perl Coookbook" is the next choise. Keep the "The Camel" book as the next (but definitely, not the last).
  
  

• Don't Believe the (Sp|C)urious Negative Reviews

  
  By A2Z25FJR5AVOHX on 2002-01-10
  If you're like me, and you're shopping for a book, you immediately start reading the negative reviews and work upwards. So I started reading the reviews and read through them all, bought the book despite the many negative, and frankly, snippish comments made by many reviewers and decided that I need to respond.

  Many say that the examples are convoluted, or that he focuses on obscure language references. One says the book starts quickly with a discussion of the splice function. The first mention of splice is on page 355, which I certainly don't define as 'quickly'....

  Others say that there are no examples, or they are not explained clearly, but there's a short sample program right on page 18, and then 4 pages are devoted to analyzing the program and how it works. Further review through the book shows many small examples, especially in the sections that outline the core functions of Perl, and the core modules of Perl.

  Others come here and criticize Perl the language, and use this as a platform for their own advocacy of other languages. This is just silly. If you're interested in Perl, or you've been using Perl and you want to know more, buy this book. In the universe of computer programming, every language choice you make is controversial, and subject to debate, and just because some reviewers do not like Perl the language, it does not mitigate the quality of this book.

  That all being said, and debunking the frankly lousy reviews, I'll caution that this is NOT for beginning programmers, or people with limited technical knowledge. O'Reilly knows this, and anyone who has read this book should know this too. There is a book called 'Beginning Perl', also from O'Reilly, and written by one of the other top minds in Perl. It is easy to follow, provides many concrete examples and is where a beginning programer should begin. If you have a technical background, you will probably be able to start with this book, though Learning Perl is still worth reading.

  What this book provides is not only an exhaustive guide to the language of Perl, and it's abilities, but also insight into it's design, the decisions of the creator of the language (Larry Wall, the main author of the book created Perl), and the major philosophy behind Perl.

  This is a valuable reference and worth having.

  This is the book that I turn to when I have Perl questions.

  And this book is worth every penny I spent to get it.
  
  

• Well-written, but tries too hard to disguise Perl's flaws

  
  By A35PLM0LLD0XM9 on 2001-07-01
  To be very short about it: Perl is a great language for some things (small scripts), but a bad language for other things (systems programming). In this book, Larry Wall tries very hard to convince you that Perl is the programming language for everyone -- that it does everything. It doesn't.

  If you read this book with the knowledge that Perl is Larry Wall's baby, you won't be fooled into thinking it's the uber-language. In particular, Wall's description of how Perl does OOP is laughable; he lambastes other languages for taking a paranoid view of data-hiding, which is a smokescreen so that you won't realize how badly Perl does OOP.

  It's best to read this book if you're in the middle of a programming project involving Perl. That way you'll KNOW what it does well and what it does badly. It does regular expressions exceedingly well. Its lack of data typing slows down the programmer. Larry Wall will not tell you these things; he will attack C and C++ for their deficits, but will carefully ignore Perl's.

  So in short, it teaches Perl very well, but the fact that it lies to the reader at a fundamental level makes me remove one star. When Larry puts out an honest fourth edition, the fifth star will return.
  
  

• THE Perl book (but tricky, sometimes)

  
  By A18V01YK0DCRFT on 2000-10-20
  Finally we have the third edition of this famous Perl book. At the time of the Perl 4 book, there was nearly no alternative. Now we are flooded by Perl books and many are great. Nevertheless, this one remains the "standard" Perl guide from the master himself. They don't comment on why Randal Schwartz left the authoring team and has been replaced by Jon Orwant. The book has now over 1000 pages and is printed on good quality paper. The organization of the chapters is much better. Since Perl can do so many things, one book is still not enough to cover each topic extensively enough. I wished some more explanations about recursive regular expressions, for instance. But on the other hand they know this and therefore recommend the online documentation (perldoc ...). Some examles in the book are somewhat tricky, so that one has to use the brains. Whether this is good or bad must be judged individually. The parts and chapters are now as follows:

  Part I: Overview. 1.) An Overview of Perl, Part II: The Gory Details, 2.) Bits and Pieces, 3.) Uniray and binary operators, 4.) Statements and Declarations, 5.) Pattern Matching, 6.) Subroutines, 7.) Formats, 8.) References, 9.) Data Structures, 10.) Packages, 11.) Modules, 12.) Objects, 13.) Overloading, 14.) Tied Variables, Part III: Perl as Technology, 15.) Unicode, 16.) Interprocess Communication, 17.) Threads, 18.) Compiling, 19.) The Command-Line Interface, 20.) The Perl Debugger, 21.) Internals and Externals, Part IV: Perl as Culture, 22.) CPAN, 23.) Security 24.) Common Practices, 25.) Portable Perl, 26.) Plaon Old Documentation, 27.) Perl Culture, Part V: Reference Manual, 28.) Special Names, 29. Functions, 30.) The Standard Perl Library, 31.) Pragmatic Modules, 32.) Standard Modules, 33.) Diagnostic Messages.
  
  

• Too Much Garbage, Not Enough Perl
  By on 2002-04-21
  Here's a quick summary of my opinion: I think the third edition is a TERRIBLE book for people who already know how to program, and want to come up to speed on Perl. And if your not familiar with unix systems, you SURE should look elsewhere, cuz you'll get no help from this book.

  In the intro to the third edition, the authors note that they've added "more tutorial information for non-programmers."

  Well, let me tell you: Between all this new tutorial information (comparing Perl to English) and the author's "funny" comments in parentheses, it's hard to follow the substance of this book.

  I've been programming for years. I can apprecaite a funny programming book - as long as it's well written. Humor in a such a book can help to keep the reader engaged in a dry topic. But THIS book!? Man! Every other paragraph has three "funny" interjections. It gets tiring.

  MUCH worse is the "tutorial information" for those who might be new to programming. The book reads like somebody went through the text, interjecting explanations anywhere they thought a programming neophyte might not understand something. It's really hard for an experienced developer to read past this stuff.

  Taken all together, you get good material interspersed with too many pseudo-jokes and too much useless quasi-turtorial information. It's hard to follow. It's hard to dig out anything useful.

  Another really enormous failing of this book is its near total assumption that readers have unix backgrounds. Oh, there are some condescending references to non-unix platforms ("welcome to OUR world" is one). But many things are explained as being "similar to shell scripting". So, while the authors assumes that the reader might not know what an array is (arrgh) they assume you know what DBM is, or what name globbing is, or whatever. This book is VERY unhelpful to Windows programmers.

  To hear other people talk about this book, you'd think it was handed down to the development community on Mt. Sinai etched on stone tablets. Well, that MAY have been true of the second edition. But this edition... Yuck! Absolutely HIDEOUS.
  
  

• Poorly Written, Poorly Originized, Highly Overrated
  By A2NBERKNDP4PL1 on 2003-12-11
  For somebody who is a "linguist", Larry Wall has a horrid writing style that interferes with learning important concepts. For example, he constantly names object "thingys". For example:

  ...but a hard reference just points to a thingy. It doesn't know (or care) whether there are any other references to the thingy, or whether any of those references are through variables. Hence, a hard rerefence can refer to an anonymous thingy. As such anonymous thingies...

  The minute you notice this, you stop reading and just count all the references to "thingy" on a page. its a staggering number. By writting in this style, it seriously detracts from the readablity. I didn't buy this book for it's writing style, I bought it as a reference to perl. Surely there is a better term then "thingy". In fact, I'm not even sure what "thingy" is susposed to refer to as I have yet to find a definition in the book.

  Plus he always uses "just" to modify his sentences. This gives this book a very condecending tone as if all these concepts are JUST obvious (you idiot). "to do this, just blah blah" . I hate to say it, but this "everything is obvious" attitude is rife in the perl community and it's a shame that Larry promotes it in his book. Nothing is "just" and nothing is obvious, if it was, why are you "just" spending 4 pages talking about it?

  Poorly written and highly overrated. No good for beginners or experts. There has to be a better book out there on perl then this "bible".
  
  

• If you buy one Perl book, make it this
  By on 2000-08-01
  Perl has affectionately been described as the swiss-army chainsaw of languages. While Java gets all the press, it is Perl which is quietly working in many back-offices, doing all sorts of menial tasks which take too long in other languages.

  I depend upon Perl to write small one-off programs that access and transform data. I also used it to migrate data for 1,800 employees from unstructured Excel spreadsheets to a relational database. It took me far less time and was essentially free when compared to other data migration approaches.

  This book is the definitive work on Perl. The authors' love of Perl comes through. What also comes through is that the authors genuinely love their audience. While you will find that they are endowed with laziness, impatience and hubris, you will soon discover that there can be an immensely positive slant to these "vices". Their sense of humor lends fun to what could become a dry subject in others' hands.

  Learn Perl from the people that invented the language, that work and train others in the language everyday. Buy this book.
  
  

• The Perl bible, plain and simple
  By ATKPXQXU00J64 on 2001-07-17
  I regard this book as the Perl equivalent of Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language. Simply put, it is the bible for the language: long, thorough, authoratative, and indulging in a fair amount of proselytizing. (The preaching becomes almost amusing when it tries to portray Perl's implementation of OOP as anything but ugly.) If nothing else, the authors' enthusiasm for the language shines through. Along with a somewhat witty writing style, it makes for good reading.

  I have to disagree with those warning Perl newbies away from this book. I must admit that I did read Learning Perl first, as a result of all these cautionary tales. However, I felt that I learning nothing useful from the Llama, and I didn't even write my first Perl program until I began the Camel. Reading Programming Perl was very satisfying in that it portrayed the language in a no-nonsense manner that allowed me at last to see all that Learning Perl tried so hard to hide. Certainly, I don't recommend Programming Perl to those who are programming for the first time. However, experienced C programmers and computer scientists will probably pick up Perl pretty readily from this book. If nothing else, at least try Programming Perl first. You'll certainly need it eventually, since Learning Perl is not sufficient for anything but the most surface understanding of how to use the language. (The authors at least address the reader as somebody who knows nothing about Perl.)

  The bottom line: if you're a programmer, you should have this book. Perl is just too useful a language not to know.
  
  

• TERRIBLE BOOK
  By A2JQ3OFWOH6KX4 on 2001-09-02
  I think the real reason Larry Wall wrote this book was just to brag about his baby creation. 80-90% of this book is just Larry going on and on about how Perl is the greatest language ever because it loosely models human languages. The real content of this book is so watered down it's as if O'Reilly told Wall, "Sorry, 200 pages is too short, try to go for 1000 so we can sell the book for [price] rather than $30."

  Larry should take a note from Dennis Ritchie(the creator of C) and his book "The C Programming Language". Ritchie DOESN'T go on and on about how he's the greatest genius in the world and how C is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Ritchie's book is 250 pages and documents EVERY TINY DETAIL of the C language. It takes Larry 1000 pages to do the same for Perl, a MUCH simpler language. That's just sad.
  
  

• Urghh..
  By A9FDQDNCN2O7H on 2003-09-16
  I have a Computer Science degree, I am familiar with C++ and Unix. I figured with the awful economy and me having a hard time finding a job, it might be about time for me to learn Perl (among other things). So I saw the glowing reviews of this book and purchased it.

  I honestly gleaned more about Perl from a dinky little 5 minute online tutorial than I can squeeze out of this. I just CANNOT bite into this book; there's too much garbage for people who don't know the difference betwen Unix and French. There is no decent pace, no steady flow of teaching, no way to simply and utterly learn how to program in Perl. The structure is so frustrating, I've had the urge to rip my hair out several times.

  Bottom line: If you want to learn ABOUT Perl, this is the book for you. If you want to LEARN Perl, don't bother. Look for a tutorial book instead.
  
  

• Step 3 in learning Perl (for CGI)
  By A3RK9LZQKL2YIN on 2000-11-11
  Why step 3? Step 1, Learning Perl; Step 2, CGI programming with Perl; and this is three. A perfect book for explaining the how and why of what you've learned along the way, yet too deep for the very beginner. I read the chapter on regular expressions first, and now my regexps are much cleaner and more powerful. Then I went to chapter one and read the rest of the book to the end. You can program just fine without this book, but you'll be working too hard. I've cut my programs down in size, while making them much more readable (and faster too!). So do yourself a favor and buy this mug. You'll be glad you did. It's such a wealth of knowledge, and it rubs off on you.
  
  
• Not for the weak of mind!
  By A1YICJM9RV4F8X on 2002-05-30
  I bought this book because it was recommended to me for learning Perl. I have never used Perl before, and started reading from the beginning. It is well written and quite readable, but I started to get lost after 60 or so pages. (Note that I do have plenty of experience in other languages, but that was not really helpful to me in deciphering the terminology in this book.) It was getting into complicated stuff without really showing how to write simple test programs, which is what I really needed. In fact, it gives rather few code examples, and those that are given are usually no more than 3 lines, so the reader doesn't get a good idea of how to put together a whole program.
  However, as I said, it is quite readable, and very informative. It may be better suited to someone who already knows how to program in Perl and wants to learn more. In summary, my recommendation:
  Buy this book if you:
  -are fanatical about Perl and need to know everything about it
  -are very smart/experienced in programming, particularly with prior experience in Perl
  -know how to code in Perl already but want a handy reference to the minute details in it
  Do not buy this book if you:
  -are not very good/experienced at programming
  -only need to know the basics
  -will only be using Perl for a short time
  
  
• Terrible Information
  By AB3ZN92RNU5BN on 2004-03-28
  This book I bought after reading Elizebeth Castros's book "Perl And CGI for the Worl Wide Web". Personally I thought this book would be an intruiging dive into the world of Perl. I was dissapointed at the authors lack of coverage. He goes into this dumb speech about all the nooks and crannies; but fails at giving the reader a simple or otherwise not-so-simple example about a certain perl concept to make the subject more real to the reader. Of course I was able to apply out of curiousity the short examples. But that was because I read Elizebeth Castros's book "Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web"! I could not even apply the data in this book without my head getting spinny!And then running into a wall. Larry Wall's wall har har har! Well the humor is funny. But the book is not worth my time. Im sad that I wasted my precious time reading this junk!
  If your interested in progressing to a higher learning level read the book "Core Perl" there are some good O'Reilly books out there, this one sucks! And you may prefer to read the other O'Reilly book about Perl. Of course other readers gave it high praise but they of course probably read other books and used this one as an idiosyncracy! Bypass this one fellas!
  
  
• Impress everyone with regular expressions
  By A20EEWWSFMZ1PN on 2005-05-09
  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.
  
  
  
  
• Mandatory for Perl programming, but maddening all the same
  By A311L6YC4N0BKN on 2004-02-12
  This book is like the Perl tax: everyone involved with Perl needs to pay out and get it, whether they want to or not. There is no other place where all the innards and tricky bits of Perl are laid bare. In that regard it's a bit like sendmail admins having to buy the bat book (the o'reilly sendmail book).

  But unlike the bat book, and much as I respect this book and its authors, I find using it absolutely infuriating, not least because the index is a mess. Remember that perl is full of obscure little atoms like ., ^, $* and so on. You need an index that lists every darn one and their combinations. Unfortunately, the indexers of this book did not complete the job, which means that if you quickly want to refresh your memory about something small but important (like: whats the regular expression for whitespace, or is it .= or =. for string appends), you have to go trawling through the whole book.
  
  

• Perl Bible
  By A3Q8XUG14QSSI9 on 2000-12-21
  The guys on the newsgroups & mailing list are right. This book is Perl Bible. But if you are absolutely new to Perl, get the llama book first. This book is just to the point, no code rewrite for each section like Wrox, or Sams book. It just contains the code that has to do with the topic. The regular expression (which is the best part of Perl) is nicely explained in around 180 pages. And with all those Larry's jokes, I bet you won't fall asleep while reading this book :)
  
  
• Overrated...
  By A3TY5TM5J49593 on 2002-09-30
  Ok this is the book on Perl. Or so people say. I don't know what they are thinking, because the book is not organized enough to be usable as a reference, and it lacks the easy progression of a good tutorial. However, it is the standard reference on Perl, and if you are serious about learning it, you should read it from cover to cover, once, hopefully never to touch it again.

  Perl is incredibly arcane, and carries a lot of mistakes from the past,. This book will explain each of them in detail. Read it, once, never to use those features again. There are CPAN modules to solve most problems with Perl, but this book won't tell you about them. It will, however, tell you why the exist. And it will give you an idea of how those CPAN modules work.

  Yes, it is badly written, yes it is hard to follow the authors enthusiasm for his own mistakes, but if you really want to know, it's here you'll find it. Sadly, this book is actually needed. You are better of with it than without it. But don't expect it to be the inspirational read people tell you it is.
  
  

• Programming Perl is exhaustive in detail
  By A1QVVRVMU4ZDVE on 2001-03-01
  Programing Perl is good book. Of course, it assumes that you already have a good knowledge of perl and it is an excellent reference. Each time I read a chapter, I learn a bit more about the "why" & "how" perl works.

  I would not recommend this book for a perl newbie UNLESS it was to be used a reference only AND as a compliment to the famous "Learning Perl" book. The first time I read the first edition of this book (programming perl), I nearly cried because I was bombarded with so much detail that it confused and baffled me and I nearly never picked up perl. However, after reading the "learning Perl" first, and then coming back to this book, I appreciated it soooo much more and loved the detail that had initially confused & frustrated me.

  I still have the first edition of the book and in comparing it the third edition (I have never bought or read the 2nd edition), I would say that the third edition is generally an improvement.

  I miss Randal Schwartz humorous style that made reading the first editon fun. Tom & Jon's style is different and they immediately drill down to the facts in a no-nonsense method that gives you a much better understanding of perl. If you have a background in programming "c", you will appreciated the details that they spill accross the page. I think I have improved my "c" programming skills just from reading their analysis.

  I would recommend this book to any harden perl coder who wants to take the time to study it throughly (it is not light reading unless you are already a perl genuis). However, to someone learning perl for the first time, the Llama book is a better place to start.
  
  

• Horrible Book
  By on 2002-12-12
  I own the 2nd Edition of this book. I am surprised by the number of good reviews I see here. Unless the 3rd edition is vastly improved, I cannot see how this book can be so highly regarded.

  I have many years of programming experience, yet I find this book difficult to read. In fact this book will actually impede someone from learning Perl! Many computer subjects are harder, yet it is easier to learn those than to learn Perl from this book. The book is poorly organized. The author talks about this and that, rather than keeping focus, giving clear outlines and demonstrating with good examples in a methodical way. Too much detail is given in disoriented fashion before a reader gets to become familiar with a topic. At times something is mentioned that is not covered until much later.

  There's no question the author is knowledgeable, but my time is valuable; it's just not worth it to have to read a sentence 3 times before comprehending it. A good book makes a difficult subject easy. A lousy book makes an easy subject seem hard. As a teaching tool this book doesn't cut it. Maybe this is why O'Reilly decided to publish another book on Perl.
  
  

• Hard to read
  By on 2003-03-15
  I am a foreigner, please bear my grammer.

  I read all chapters of learning perl before I read this book. I know C and some C++ and I am engineer and not programmer but I program by myself sometimes. This book is still hard to read for me. However, if you take the time and pain to read it, it will give a much better insight than any other perl book I have read.

  I really want the author to focus on one topic (not jumping around or even jumping ahead something couple chapters later. The examples are hard to read unless you know most perl 'in advance' (remember Perl is kind of 'magic', there is not much 'structure' like C or C++' and lot of implications make the examples hard to understand, especially the authors try to code the 'cool' or 'shorthand' way.) When I read it again second time, I can follow the book. When I read the first time, it was not easy (spent a lot of time to think what the author tries to say.

  All the important concepts are there. Instead of 'paragraphs after paragraphs' to talk about the concept, the author can just give one or two examples to illustrate the concept. It will be far better to write hundred words to talk about 'a few concepts'.

  We all have 'limited time.' I think if the author can make it easier to read, more people will buy this book. Anyway, it is a 'good book'. But it is 'not easy to read'.

  If you read through this book, you will get a much better insight.

  I strongly believe the author can make this book much easier to read. If he do so, he will reward with more audiences and more 'income'.
  
  

• Not for beginners, but an absolute necessity!
  By A38F1FVQV4AOYB on 2004-02-02
  I read the first edition of this book.

  After reading some of the reviews here, I am reminded of when I first picked up this book and didn't have the background to fully appreciate it.

  After using Perl for several years doing Internet programming, and being exposed to all the languages it's possible to use, I still remain devoted to the work of this man, Larry Wall for what I believe to be the greatest contribution of all to humanity and to computer science.

  I stopped here to reaffirm that the third edition will cover Object Oriented programming. Although nobody mentions this, I'm sure he will, and another book I have said it would.

  Before brushing up on Object Oriented programming for Perl, I decided to re-read Learning Perl and Programming Perl (though I only had the first editions). Unlike the first times I attempted to read these two books, this time I was dumbfounded at how much info they (Larry and Randal) could cram into such a short place. One thing builds upon another. Everything written, the examples and all, took on new meaning. This was exciting reading because all the problems that it took me years to even identify were spelled out before me with examples I could immediately understand. There are many ways to do things in Perl, and my way, the obvious way, usually turns out to be the long way. Reading these books and adopting some new techniques they mention could literally save me years of time!

  It's a lot like learning music. Unless someone tells you why you have to learn scales, you won't enjoy doing it and unless you stick with it long enough, you'll never learn why you need to know them.

  I guess I'd have to say that sooner or later you will need these two books to be truly effective as a Perl programmer, but if you are a beginner, you won't know enough about Perl to realize why these are really great books. If you have several years of Perl experience, then these books will show you how to be incredibly effective, incredibly organized, and best of all, incredibly lazy!

  One thing that makes Perl so strong, is that anything that has ever been done with Unix can be done with Perl. If you're operating equipment with Microsoft software, you're missing half the fun.

  This book really shines if you already love Perl and worship those who spent enormous amounts of time making their priceless contributions.

  This is probably not a good book if you're new to Perl, in a hurry, and are trying to debug some broken code.

  I found "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days" by Sams Publishing to be all I needed in my early days. I only wish I had the ability to appreciate the information in these other two books then.

  I am convinced that Perl is the highest level programming language there is and there is absolutely nothing that can't be done with it in less time and with less code than any other language.

  Now I'm going to buy a brand new Programming Perl 3rd edition and I think I'll even have it shipped overnight!
  
  

• Simple put - the best Perl book just got better!
  By A2G0S2PIZCJK3Z on 2000-08-21
  This book is more comprehensive and even better than the 2nd edition. Why bother wasting time say more, this is the best Perl book yet! :)

  PS: Wish other computer books are written as well as this one.
  
  

• Overall, it's a disappointment
  By on 2001-07-01
  Being a software engineer for 10 years, I have read many programming books. This book is surprisingly verbose and critical information is scattered all over the place. You need to read it multiple times just to gather the information from many different places. A very exhausting and frustrating exercise. Pages and pages are spent/wasted on things that are remotely related to Perl at best.

  There is no doubt that the authors know Perl inside out but they really overkill when they try to make the reading easy for the beginners. They end up making it more confusing instead. You will encounter many instances where the authors start to explain certain things and suddenly stop and conclude it with "more on that later."

  Contrasting it with good books that are to-the-point and give very revealing examples for illustration, this book is a disappointment.

  I have talked to a few people who also own this book. They all have the same feelings. It just doesn't match the high rating I see in the reviews.
  
  

• A good book to make one frustrated
  By A3VX1UB1C9THUR on 2003-03-29
  Hello Everyone,
  I dont have any good comments to make about this book. I read this book and at the end couldn't summarize what I learnt. It only left me with confusion and questions. The language seems cryptic and sentences are convolved. I guess this is the book for Perl experts and not for someone who truly wants to learn the language. And I bet, its gonna create some confusions in an expert mind as well. To summarize, dont waste your money.
  
  
• Excellent introduction and reference
  By ANNXLNPDNSVNN on 2002-04-26
  I just started programming in Perl only 4 months or so ago. I had previously picked up some very CGI-oriented Perl books and these turned me off to the language. But _Programming Perl_ is wonderfully different, for a number of reasons:

  First, it is about the language in general, not just about CGI programming. It has an excellent little introduction to the CGI:: module, but of course it also introduces you to hundreds of other useful CPAN modules.

  Second, it isn't a "for dummies" book. You have to understand programs and files and loops. That said, it doesn't fall into the trap of teaching you how to translate C to Perl - it shows you the "easy" way of doing things (via hashes, OO, grep and map, etc.) without getting too caught up in the things that make other programming languages such an amazing sink of time.

  Third, it teaches the idioms of Perl programming. Follow the idioms, and you'll generate readable and maintainable code.

  It's not the only Perl book I own - I can also recommend Christiansen's _Perl Cookbook_ and Conway's _Object-Oriented Perl_ - but it is far and away the one I refer to the most.
  
  

• Good, but could be better
  By A1VREX3E0G5FP5 on 2002-05-22
  The book definitely is EVERYTHING you need to know about Perl. But that's as much of a weakness as it is a strength. Don't get me wrong, I think being comprehensive is a good thing. However, by being comprehensive, sometimes the "basics" get lost in the shuffle.

  Also, I believe one of the authors must have a PHD in Linguistics. They go into painstaking detail to compare the perl programming language to the english language, which takes away from learning the programming language (the intent of the book). They also use very uncommon (large) words that aren't known to the majority of the target audience which also complicates learning.

  Another criticism is they don't explore the windows piece of programming perl enough. I believe windows probably has 90% of the desktop OS market share so I would think they should include a little more info for that segment of the population.

  One last criticism is that they introduce topics without explaining them. For instance, they use code for some "sample" programs and in that code is reserved words that haven't been explained yet which makes understanding the sample code very difficult.

  I'm not saying it's a bad book, I'm just saying it has some areas it could definitely improve.

  Have I found a better book? Not yet, but I'm still looking.
  
  

• Legendary for no reason, this book is WAY overrated
  By AIRU1WAD7JHQ4 on 2006-07-23
  Definitely THE most overrated programming book I've ever read.
  Why?
  Well, it's not great for beginners because it's difficult to follow - I read large chunks of this book when I first learned Perl - the Learning Perl book was much better.
  Also, the writing is so geeky-cutesy. In every other paragraph, you can feel the authors chuckling at their own stupid Star Trek/Monty Python/Lord of the Rings jokes and references. We get it already, time to watch some new movies/tv shows and read some new books fer chrissakes.
  Most of all though, the book is so disorganized. Have a question about a regexp metacharacter? Good luck finding it in this haystack. I know it's not pitched as a pure reference manual, but you would think it would be easy to find out what the difference between * and *? is. It's not.
  Perl is incredibly powerful but somewhat painful to learn, which is compounded by the fact that many people rave at how quick and easy it is to become productive with it.
  Googling your Perl questions is a lot better than reading the Camel book (the nickname of this book in case you don't know).
  The Perl Cookbook rocks though, that's another excellent Perl title.
  This is all coming from a devoted Python fan who learned Perl first and respects Perl for its impact on web programming and the newer scripting languages like Python and Ruby.
  
  
• Good introduction
  By AUTBHG6070SL4 on 2004-07-02
  This isn't the book for a first-time programmer. Outside of that, it's a great reference. Maybe the more advanced language features need more clarification, but it's plenty to get you going on your first few Perl programs.

  Perl is a pleasant oddity among programming langauges. It has lots of features that make it great as a "glue" language, for holding other programs together and for doing those irksome little translations between incompatible formats. Those are the things that shell scripts used to do: setting up files, command lines, and environment variables, checking results, preparing reports. Perl does all that, better, and gives you the full power of a programming language on top of it all. That means the transformations aren't at the mercy of available filters, and don't count on the dozen different syntaxes of the dozen different filter programs. It's a great language for all those little one-off tasks that crop up, especially in system and web admin.

  That's my problem with Perl, though - the free-wheeling, never-look-back, whatever-works spirit of the people who use Perl. I know there are disciplined, competent software engineers who develop and use Perl, and I don't mean to disparage them at all. Still, the gonzo style that's so common and the revival tent spirit of books like this put me off a bit.

  The language is very useful, and make lots of hard jobs easy. This book, despite its true-believer style, gives a thorough introduction to the language and its core APIs.
  
  

• The Perl programming bible
  By A2N786KHIFCKJ8 on 2004-07-07
  This is the Perl programming bible. It's all in here. However there is a caveat, it's a bible so it has some religion in it. The style is somewhat ambling at times and occasionally obtuse. So if you are trying to learn Perl from scratch, read the aptly named Learning Perl book first (as I did). This book will then serve as an excellent guide to the more advanced features and a reference.
  
  

• Learning Perl, 5th Edition
• Perl Cookbook, Second Edition
• Mastering Regular Expressions
• Intermediate Perl
• Perl Best Practices