Learning Perl, 5th Edition Reviews

• Good Intro to Perl for Unix hackers only

  
  By A2TER77G4B5OMJ on 1999-10-31
  There are 2 sets of reviewers rating this book. The first set, who compose the majority of reviewers, are experienced Unix programmers who have used sed, awk, grep and the various Unix shells. For those Unix hackers, this book is a great intro to Perl because it covers the basics of the language quickly and efficiently without belaboring the obvious (or I should say, the obvious to experienced Unix users).

  The second set of reviewers (of which I am one), who have just about universally panned this book, are Windows or Mac users who had no clue what sed, awk and grep were and then attempted to tackle Perl with this book. For those people, this book is a big mistake.

  When I was searching for a beginning Perl book, I flipped through the llama book and got confused not only by the first chapter, but with several of the succeeding chapters as well. I learned Perl with Laura LeMay's "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days" which is a much gentler intro to Perl and also covers Perl in Windows and the Mac. Now that I have some Perl and Linux experience, I went back to the bookstore and started flipping through the llama again, and this time I thought, "Hey this book is really good."

  Learn from my Jekyll and Hyde experience with the llama: if you are trying to learn Perl and you have previous Unix experience, buy the book. If you don't have previous Unix experence, get something else.

  I hope this explanation clears up why some people gave this book rave reviews while others ripped it.
  
  

• Buy the camel, but read the llama first

  
  By A1OG4W2BYGKOZQ on 1999-12-04
  Excellent.

  I came to this book knowing next to nothing about Perl, and with a few misconceptions to boot (that Perl's syntax is 'write-only', it's primarily a CGI tool, etc.), and now I am not sure that epiphany would cover it. In 12 years of learning and using programming languages, I don't think I have come across anything so enchanting.

  One of the best parts of the book: the authors. Add Schwartz & Christiansen to Elliotte Rusty Harold, Petzold, and a very few others who are truly effective technical writers. Classic O'Reilly easygoing style, never condescending, and eerily consistent in presenting just the right amount of information on the given topic.

  Every programmer (even non-Perl ones) should read 'Programming Perl' by Larry Wall. But to learn Perl, and take the first step down a long and magical road, buy this book.

  I had a few nits, but by the time I finished the book, I had forgotten most of them. As close to 5 stars as I will ever give for a technical book.
  
  

• Yes, it works for Windows 98 users too! =)

  
  By A2TJEL5E9T4FNO on 2000-08-14
  Before I buy this book, I was reading the reviews in this site and I was particularly concerned about the requirement of an UNIX-based OS. Since my only workstation is a PC running Windows, I was very uncertain about buying this book, despite the great review.

  Now, listen up.

  -I only know the basics of C++ programming;

  -I do not know anything about UNIX OS;

  -I create websites using HTML and JavaScripts;

  -This book help me understand enough about Perl to write my own CGI scripts and run them on the Internet!!! (I've got 3 forums running now and several voting sections!)

  If you are a pure Windows user, like myself, but would like to learn the basics of Perl, get this book, period!

  Now the cons: As mentioned with so many reviews, this book is very brief. Although I was stuck in chapter for 1 week (!!!), I "fly" through the rest of the chapters in 2-3 days! The biggest problem I find is the lack of adequate explanation for each operators, regular expressions, etc. When writing my own CGI, I have to continuously look for alternative sources of Perl references to clear up my queries and help me to understand a few particular properties of Perl.

  For example, I have to use the s///; and the tr///; many times in my scripts, but without extensive understanding of all their properties, I find it "crippling" to my work.

  Enough said. For an introduction to Perl, I would give this book 5 stars. If you hunger for much more information, like myself, get this book first, before trying out the lastest Programming Perl (3rd Edition).
  
  

• Excellent first step

  
  By A2W29CUWMDUSJR on 2000-01-18
  This book is an excellent way to ramp up on Perl quickly. It takes you through the in's and out's of Perl at a wonderful pace and covers most of what you need to know. This is the book to get if you're new to Perl and need to learn it quickly. The 200 or so pages are readable in less than a week.

  However, there are a few important things to note. This is not a standalone book. You will need to get the Programming in Perl book as well to serve as a reference guide. Also, this book assumes basic Unix knowledge. If you have no exposure to Unix, a couple of things (very minor though) might be a bit baffling. If you've played with Unix, then this book is a breeze.

  I managed to ramp myself up on Perl and start writing some sweet scripts within a week. I also bought the Programming in Perl book and now I turn to that book for the more heavy duty stuff.

  The long and short of it: this is the best beginners book around for Perl.
  
  

• Way overrated

  
  By on 2002-02-02
  I hate to slam a book that is considered such an essential book in the community. But I feel compelled.

  First, the good points: It has great reference sections. Very, very important for such a book. It is also reasonably comprehensive. Sure, you'll probably also want Perl Cookbook to really know what you are doing, but it's too much to ask for Learning Perl to contain such practical uses. It crams so much more in than most programming books.

  As for the bad, I could rant for a long time, but I will try to be brief. First, the book's organization leaves much to be desired. While the macro-organization is perhaps reasonable enough, a trial lawyer would have a field day with the objection, "Facts assumed not in evidence." There are numerous code snippets in this book that are only understandable at even the most basic level by flipping ahead 100 pages, then cross-referencing to the appendix and then flipping back to a different chapter. A novice programmer shouldn't have to deal with terms like "grep" or the like until the definition of "grep" is actually given since, after all, the last time I checked, "grep" was not a standard phrase in the English language that is understandable to all.

  The book is written for people with a broad background in programming. For example, the reference section, which is supposed to describe the functions in depth describes how the command "printf" works as follows: "This is similar to the C library's printf(3) and fprintf(3) functions." While there was some other gobbledygook in his listing, none of the gobbledygook explained how the function worked. Last time I checked, the book was titled Programming Perl, not Programming C, Volume II. Why its only description for how the function actually works is a reference to another language is typical of the breezy arrogance of the authors. This was more egregious than most other examples, but in general, the authors were telling their story to insiders who needed a refresher course, not people who wanted to hear the story from the beginning.

  In retrospect, after reading other books about programming, most horrifying to me is the utter lack of disregard for good programming standards at the most basic level. The authors seem to glorify the "Obfuscated Perl" approach, which is to write the language in as tightly wound and obfuscated a way as possible. This is simply bad programming, even it does take a very smart person to understand what's going on.

  Ideally, good code should be readable like a novel, if you have a basic understanding of the language. In a good novel, you don't flip back and forth between pages trying to remember who or what something was. Variables and subroutines should have clear, unambiguous names. Variables should be clearly spelled out, as opposed to the way the authors (and most Perl programmers) seem to think is best, which is to refer to such constructs as $_[1], requiring one to flip pages to where the subroutine was called to understand what information is being passed to the the subroutine.

  Rather than taking the attitude -- almost universally held in the Perl community -- that There Is More Than One Way To Do It, the authors should have emphasized, You Might Want To Think About The Option That Will Make It Easier For You And Others To Understand Your Code When You Look At It 3 Months From Now. Journalists don't score points for writing obscure text. Yes, they can write things any way they like, but they have professional standards - codified in the AP Style Guide, among other places - that say that certain ways of doing things are better for readers. Programmers should adopt a similar way of thinking - both about the readibility and workability of code -and this book does everything to undermine this notion.
  
  

• A retrospective from a Unix user and casual programmer
  By AAE0EHU21BP4H on 2000-05-30
  I've been a Unix user for seven+ years, and have some programming experience, although I am by no means really knowledgable about either. When I entered my most recent job, I needed to learn Perl fast, and so I used this book to help me get started.

  From a self-teaching perspective, I found this book to be exactly what I needed. I'll admit that the first chapter (a general description of the Perl language) was not very helpful, but I found the division of the rest of the book by small pieces of the syntax (scalars, arrays, hashes, regular functions, i/o, etc.) to suit my needs, which tended to be along the lines of: I need to do x right now. I learned the easy stuff really quickly, and I still use the book as a constant reference.

  Now, it is just a beginner's text, so it is not an ideal complete reference, and you won't learn anything particularly nifty. However, if you need to both learn how to program and actually do some programming at the same time (i.e. not in a class-room setting), Learning Perl can be a wonderful text.
  
  

• Poor organization and inconsistent tone
  By A2MPKE7P1DFYTK on 2001-03-02
  I'm surprised to see so many positive reviews for _Learning Perl_. As another reviewer said, I think these comments represent more enthusiasm for the language than for the book. Randal Schwartz has a great reputation in the open-source community, and I have no experience with him as a trainer or consultant, but judging from this book I wouldn't hire him.

  The book has a serious problem in that the tone is totally inconsistent. Difficult concepts are explained in terms that assume in-depth knowledge of C, C++, and UNIX; and simple concepts are run into the ground in page after page of trivial examples. The authors also make the serious mistake, all too common in technical books, of providing jokey examples that obscure the main point---identifiers that form puns on statements, irrelevant jokes in comments, and so on. To some people this comes across as a light, friendly tone; to me it smacks of condescension and clannishness.

  I made the mistake of trying to use this book as a textbook for an introductory Perl class of students with a variety of levels of programming experience. The C-savvy students were bored, and the beginners felt they were being teased and condescended to.

  Summary: This book isn't up to O'Reilly's usual high standards. If you want to learn Perl, and you already have some programming experience, start with _Programming Perl_ and _Perl Cookbook_ (the Camel Books). If you have no programming experience, start with Simon Cozens' _Beginning Perl_.
  
  

• Four stars if you know UNIX or are already a developer
  By A3W3U3WMJOXNOH on 2000-05-06
  This is not a bad book, but I'm still surprised by the generosity of the reader reviews. Perl is something of a cult, so I think in a lot of cases a positive review means "I like Perl" more than it means "I like 'Learning Perl.'" People hesitate (understandably, I think) to insult a book that's closely associated with a great open-source language.

  I myself think Perl is great, but I have some serious problems with the way this book was written and edited. The authors can't seem to decide whether this should be an easy book for programmers, a difficult book for non-programmers, or even (at times) an easy book for non-programmers. That is to say, the tone, style, and assumptions about the audience change throughout, sometimes from page to page. Key concepts are glossed over with a minimum of explanation (the chapter on hashes, particularly, is a disgrace); then, defying all reason, very simple concepts are overexplained for two or three pages. The authors have been too close to their subject for too long, and they seem to have forgotten what they learned and the order in which they learned it. Maybe a newbie co-author might have helped.

  If you are an experienced developer or are comfortable with UNIX, you'll get a lot of benefit from "llama." Otherwise, though, start with another book, or learn something about UNIX first. Then return to this book, and you should have an easier time of it.
  
  

• a must have for beginner
  By A38OL9PRXXREMO on 2000-07-17
  I look for a beginning perl book that teaches me Perl in a programmer to programmer tone, assuming I already have basic programming skills. After many books, finally, I got learning perl which helps me learn as well as appreciate Perl as a programming language.
  
  I always think that perl is only useful as a CGI scripting language. But it actually is a very good language to work with UNIX and to do text formatting. This book presents different topics of Perl, including Regular Expressions, Filehandles, Formats, Directory Access, Database Access, CGI. I particularly love the regular expression chapter, it's concise and simple. though you may find there are not enough details on some topics e.g. CGI, please remember this book is only 302 pages for beginners. If you want more specific details on a particular topics. you should go to another book. The examples in the book are not just naive and useless in the real programming world, but they are really useful and handy for you to cut and paste to your perl projects.
  
  One of the best features of the book is the exercises after each chapter. Those questions are really testing what you have learn in each chapters. From the questions, you will know whether you already master the chapter or not. the answers provided are not just answers, the authors explain the them too!
  
  As a beginner's book, "Learning Perl" does a good job to teach readers to write useful perl programs and scripts.
  
  
• Good book for every one who is programming in Perl
  By on 1999-12-29
  This book is perfect for what the title says: Learning Perl. I own this book, the Programming Perl book, and the Advanced Perl book. All three are great for different things. If you've never written a line of Perl before this is the book to get. It will show you how to do most things related to Perl, and will even get you started in CGI and Database access. The authors often point toward valuable web resources like CPAN. In addition, the book is fun to read- not drab and dull like other programming books (this seems to be an O'Reilly thing, and maybe why I buy so many of their books). I've written a lot of Perl code over the last year or so and I still often refer to this book for little things that I forget (like syntax for certain things, etc). This book sees the most use out of the three Perl books I own (although Programming Perl is pretty worn too).

  Definately a must-have for anyone serious about programming in Perl. Especially if you write in a lot of languages like I do and don't have the brain capacity to memorize every nuance of every language. This book is easy to find information in.
  
  

• I have some complaints
  By A3VP3EPCTWJLWU on 2004-09-12
  The back cover of the 3rd edition says (roughly), "Ask a perl expert today what book they used when they were learning perl, and they'll tell you it was the llama." Well, yeah; probably when they were learning perl it was literally the only introductory book on the subject. So that's not really an endorsement of quality.
  
  The llama is actually a decent companion on your perl voyage. Particularly if you already think of yourself as a programmer are at least acquainted with the unix way of thinking, it will show you much of what you want to know about perl. And if you're new to perl you'll want to have this book (there still aren't any better options for the newcomer). However,
  
  1. The nonstop Flintstones references are hard to stomach. (Yes, that's a trivial complaint. But it drives me nuts.)
  
  2. There aren't enough exercises. This is a nontrivial complaint. For example, the chapter on control structures has only ONE exercise (!), which you can solve by ignoring most of the material in the section. The chapter which introduces SPLIT and JOIN has no exercises that use them (there aren't any exercises anywhere in the book that use split and join, as far as I can tell.) It's a persistent problem; since most folks learn by doing, they'll be required to exercise some imagination in creating and testing their own exercises. An introductory text should be much stronger in this area.
  
  3. The 3rd edition rewrite moved some fundamental (and easy) stuff into a late-in-the-book "Advanced Perl Techniques" chapter. A few examples off the top of my head are the transliteration operator, slices, and sorting subroutines, which are meat and potatoes perl. They were better integrated into the body of the text in the 2nd edition.
  
  4. The authors actually warn you away from trying things out in some cases! I'm thinking, for instance, of the offhand "CSV files are too hard, don't try splitting them" and "Don't try to work with HTML, it's too hard" comments. That is not in the spirit of perl at all. A few exercises that show what the difficulties are and give a few tricks for handling them would be better. And you'll be in a much better position to used and appreciate a prewritten module if you understand the difficulties it's supposed to be taking care of.
  
  The biggest improvement in the 3rd edition is the reorganization of the regular expression material (into three chapters). They still need more exercises, but the presentation is good. On the whole, though, I liked the organization in the old editions better and probably recommend using one of them if you can find it.
  
  
  
• This should be your first book on Perl
  By A2E3F04ZK7FG66 on 2006-08-29
  I first tried to learn Perl by using the other O'Reilly book, "Programming Perl". I was completely lost. Then I found this book and my second attempt was much more successful. This book is great for self-teaching, and the book chapters should be read in order as each chapter builds on previous ones. Each chapter has plenty of good programming exercises with answers in the back of the book. I review this book in the context of the table of contents.
  
  Chapter 1. Introduction
  This chapter answers basic questions such as how to get and install Perl, how to construct a basic Perl program, and then takes you on a whirlwind tour of Perl.
  
  Chapter 2. Scalar Data
  As a general rule, when Perl has just one of something, that's a scalar, which is the topic of this chapter.
  
  Chapter 3. Lists and Arrays
  If a scalar is the "singular" in Perl, as described at the beginning of Chapter 2, the "plural" in Perl is represented by lists and arrays. A list is an ordered collection of scalars. An array is a variable that contains a list. In Perl, the two terms are often used as if they're interchangeable. But, to be accurate, the list is the data, and the array is the variable. You learn about these differences through practical code examples in this chapter.
  
  Chapter 4. Subroutines
  You've now seen and used some of the built-in system functions, such as chomp, reverse, and print. But, as other languages do, Perl has the ability to make subroutines. The name of a subroutine is another Perl identifier occasionally with an optional ampersand in front. There's a rule about when you can omit the ampersand and when you cannot, and that rule is discussed.
  
  Chapter 5. Input and Output
  This chapter covers the 80% of the I/O you'll need for most programs. If you're familiar with the workings of standard input, output, and error streams, you're ahead of the game. If not, you get you caught up by the end of this chapter.
  
  Chapter 6. Hashes
  In this chapter, you will see a feature that makes Perl one of the world's great programming languages--hashes. Though hashes are a powerful and useful feature, you may have used other powerful languages for years without ever hearing of hashes. But you'll use hashes in nearly every Perl program you'll write from now on; they're that important.
  
  A hash is a data structure like an array, in that it can hold any number of values and retrieve these values at will. However, instead of indexing the values by number, as in arrays, you look up the values by name. That is, the indices aren't numbers but are arbitrary unique strings.
  
  Chapter 7. In the World of Regular Expressions
  Perl has many features that set it apart from other languages. Of all those features, one of the most important is its strong support for regular expressions. These allow fast, flexible, and reliable string handling. But that power comes at a price. Regular expressions are tiny programs in their own special language, built inside Perl. This means that you're about to learn another programming language, although, fortunately, it's a simple one. In this chapter, you'll visit the world of regular expressions, where, for the most part, you can forget about the world of Perl.
  
  Chapter 8. Matching with Regular Expressions
  In the previous chapter, you visited the world of regular expressions. Now you'll see how that world fits into the world of Perl.
  
  Chapter 9. Processing Text with Regular Expressions
  You can use regular expressions to change text, too. So far, the book has only shown you how to match a pattern. Now, you'll learn how to use patterns to locate the parts of strings that you want to change.
  
  Chapter 10. More Control Structures
  In this chapter, you'll see some alternative ways to write Perl code. For the most part, these techniques don't make the language more powerful, but they make it easier or more convenient to get the job done. You don't have to use these techniques in your own code, but don't skip this chapter. You're certain to see these control structures in other people's code, sooner or later.
  
  Chapter 11. File Tests
  Earlier, this book showed how to open a filehandle for output. Normally, that will create a new file, wiping out any existing file with the same name. Perhaps you want to check that there isn't a file by that name. Perhaps you need to know how old a given file is, or perhaps you want to go through a list of files to find which ones are larger than a certain number of bytes and not accessed for a certain amount of time. Perl has a complete set of tests you can use to find information about files, and that is the topic of this chapter.
  
  Chapter 12. Directory Operations
  The files created in the previous chapter were generally in the same place as your program. But modern operating systems let you organize files into directories, allowing you to keep your MP3 files away from your important work files so you don't accidentally send an MP3 file to your boss. In this chapter you'll see how Perl lets you manipulate these directories directly, in ways that are even fairly portable from one operating system to another.
  
  Chapter 13. Strings and Sorting
  Perl is designed to be good at solving programming problems that are about 90% working with text and 10% everything else. So it's no surprise that Perl has strong text-processing abilities, including all that can be done with regular expressions. But sometimes the regular expression engine is too fancy, and you need a simpler way of working with a string, as you'll see in this chapter.
  
  Chapter 14. Process Management
  One of the best parts of being a programmer is launching someone else's code so you don't have to write it yourself. This chapter shows how to manage your child processes by launching other programs directly from Perl. The examples in this chapter are primarily Unix-based; if you have a non-Unix system, expect to see some differences.
  
  Chapter 15. Perl Modules
  There is a lot more to Perl than what is in this book, and there are a lot of people doing a lot of interesting things with Perl. If there is a problem to solve, then somebody has probably already solved it and made their solution available on the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN), which is a worldwide collection of servers and mirrors containing thousands of modules of reusable Perl code. If you want to learn how to write modules, consult the "Alpaca book". In this chapter, you learn how to use modules that already exist.
  
  Chapter 16. Some Advanced Perl Techniques
  The techniques in this chapter are only "advanced" in the sense that they aren't necessary for beginners. The first time you read this book, you may want to either skip or skim this chapter so you can get right to using Perl. Then come back to it later when you're ready to get more out of Perl.
  
  Appendix A - Exercise Answers
  Appendix B - Beyond the Llama
  
  
• Great for aspiring Perl programmers
  By ACIW8J8AQI2RI on 2000-02-23
  If you are new to Perl, this is the book you should go for. It provides an entertaining and thorough stroll through the language. If you are quite familiar with this type of language (like C, C++, or scripting languages) then you should acquire Programming Perl (but then, you should buy that book in any case). I bought both Learning Perl and Programming Perl, and I have not regretted Learning Perl at all, because of its great tutorial ability.
  
  
• Great first Perl book
  By on 1999-12-08
  This book is perfect for what the title says: Learning Perl. I own this book, the Programming Perl book, and the Advanced Perl book. All three are great for different things. If you've never written a line of Perl before this is the book to get. It will show you how to do most things related to Perl, and will even get you started in CGI and Database access. The authors often point toward valuable web resources like CPAN. In addition, the book is fun to read- not drab and dull like other programming books (this seems to be an O'Reilly thing, and maybe why I buy so many of their books).

  I've written a lot of Perl code over the last year or so and I still often refer to this book for little things that I forget (like syntax for certain things, etc). This book sees the most use out of the three Perl books I own (although Programming Perl is pretty worn too).

  Definately a must-have for anyone serious about programming in Perl. Especially if you write in a lot of languages like I do and don't have the brain capacity to memorize every nuance of every language. This book is easy to find information in.
  
  

• Not for experienced computer scientists or programmers
  By ATKPXQXU00J64 on 2001-06-13
  I highly recommend learning Perl to anyone working in computer science, but I can't in good faith recommend Learning Perl to anyone who considers him or herself an experienced programmer. The book proceeds very slowly and is pretty short, meaning that in the end you'll know only the very basics of Perl. In fact, many of the footnotes refer the reader to Programming Perl or to the perl manpages to get the "real story" on some issue that Learning Perl glosses over.

  If you intend to learn Perl (and more than the very basics), you will probably end up reading through Programming Perl or many of the Perl manpages. I would consider Learning Perl only as an optional primer for those not already fluent in one or more languages like C. Otherwise you will spend some time reviewing the semantics of while loops, what a file handle is, etc. You will have learned the basics of pattern matching and Perl's syntax and idioms, but you may as well cut to the chase and learn from Programming Perl.

  On the other hand, I am coming from a theoretical computer science background (the CS program at Carnegie Mellon University); Learning Perl may very well be appropriate for have never used anything more sophisticated than a scripting language. However, even beginning programmers should be aware that Learning Perl assumes familiarity with a Unix environment. (But see also: Learning Perl on Win32 Systems).

  If you have doubts, at least take a look at the perl manpages. They come free with every distribution of perl.
  
  

• Excellent Introduction to Perl for Experienced Programmers
  By A17QUVRB3LLHIC on 2003-04-24
  I learned Perl 4 from the first edition of this book years ago. I recently read the third edition to get up to speed with Perl 5 and found this book covers nearly every aspect of Perl I've used over the years. Perl is a complex language, and any introductory book on Perl needs to restrict itself to a subset of the language to prevent the reader from becoming overwhelmed. The authors did an excellent job of presenting a subset that is large enough to cover most everyday Perl tasks, yet small enough to remain accessible to the Perl novice. The exercises at the end of each chapter solidify most of the core concepts and syntax of each chapter.

  There were some shortcomings to the book, however. The book is oriented heavily towards Unix systems, and programmers working on Windows systems will have a hard time getting started and completing some of the exercises. The authors should have provided instructions for downloading ActiveState Perl, a free professional Windows port of Perl, and provided more assistance on the Unix-oriented exercises.

  Additionally, some basic language features were not covered, such as the peculiarities of do blocks and using chr and ord to convert between characters and their numeric codes. Most importantly, the book does not cover two-dimensional arrays. They are mentioned only in two paragraphs in Appendix B, which refer the reader to four different perldoc sections. This topic is complicated and important enough to warrant its own chapter.

  In summary, this book is an excellent introduction to Perl for programmers who are experienced in other languages already. It's not so good for beginning programmers because basic programming concepts are not explained. The major shortcoming is that readers, especially those using Windows, will be frustrated at not being able to easily do what they want to do and will too often need to wade through the documentation.
  
  

• Is Perl the right language for your task? Start Here!
  By A21K36WWMWM87J on 2000-09-06
  Wow - one hundred and forty six reviews already, the vast majority of them overwhelmingly positive. What could I possibly have to add? Probably not much, to be honest, but that has never stopped me before. Let me offer a few observations.

  1. This book seems like THE place to get enough of a sense of Perl to decide whether it is worth learning.

  2. In particular the first chapter - a broad walkthrough of the language - gives a great overview without unneccessary detail, and is itself worth the price of admission. You can read it in a couple of hours, and by the time you're finished, you'll know whether Perl is the right tool for whatever job you have in mind.

  3. Much of the power of Perl lies in its use of Regular Expressions. One weakness of this book is the cursory treatment (chapter 7) of this topic. If you know you want to learn to work with Perl, buy a copy of Jeffrey Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions (also in the O'Reilly series) right away.

  4. The book is not particularly practical as a reference. If you are going be doing any serious programming in Perl, get yourself a reference manual. Again I like the O'Reilly offerings; your tastes may vary.

  5. Nor is it particularly heavy on the theory side. Again, another text may be useful here.

  6. Despite those limitations (or perhaps because of them) the book makes an excellent starting place for one looking to learn Perl. It's a fast, well-written, pleasurable read, and one familiar with other procedural languages (C,Pascal,Basic,Fortran, etc.) should be able to get through it in as little as a weekend.

  7. Oh, and one more thing. If you need to do a fair bit of string processing, data extraction, etc., Perl is indeed worth a look. It may not be elegant, but Perl sure is useful. And in my opinion, it's fun as well.
  
  

• Really good book, but..
  By ABX3Y7GC8907S on 2000-02-17
  I would reccomend going with Programming Perl if you already have some knowledge of other programming languages. Go with Learning Perl if perl is your first programming language (which it shouldn't be). Over all, I'd reccomend that you buy both Programming Perl and Learning Perl to get your perl book collection started :), but Programming Perl if you can only get one book right now.
  
  
• Not great for people unfamiliar with UNIX/C/awk
  By A111F41THS0L44 on 2000-01-20
  I found this book to be extremely easy and useful reading. I taught myself the basics of Perl using this book in only a few days and wrote a substantial program immediately afterwards. It is not, however, a great book unless one already has a certain familiarity with UNIX and scripting, like shell scripts or awk or ANSI C itself. This book has elevated me to a higher level but only I think because I was already at a point where I could take in the material. Even so, there may not be a better introductory level Perl book out there. It may merely take more than a few days to wade through the book.
  
  
• This is for people who have NEVER written code
  By A9K1KCPU6R94D on 1999-12-15
  I followed the advice from other reviews and bought the book since I am completely new to Perl. The foreword and the odd attempt at humor are terrible, but that is a small detail. What really bugged me is that the author spends so much time on the simplest stuff. You learn that functions that take arguments can do more interesting stuff than functions with no arguments, and you learn what if/else is about. Wow! For anybody who can understand the following:

  while (i-->0) array[i] = 1;

  this book is a waste of time. I did learn about Perl, but it could all have been summed up in 30 pages, not 200+. If you have programmed in C before, go for "Programming Perl" instead.
  
  

• Get the Llama
  By A1SVJGCSM13WA4 on 2001-11-09
  If you have previous procedural programming experience (C for example) and/or have a STRONG desire to learn Perl (but don't have Perl experience), this book is for you.

  If you do read the foreword, keep in mind that it's soley for your amusement. Beyond the foreword, the book takes a more serious approach to learning the basics of Perl but is still a far cry from the books that give you the feeling your mouth is full of sawdust.

  After reading through this book, expect to be comfortable with

  variables & literals (incl. strings)
  arrays & hashes (associative arrays)
  control structures (if/else, for, while, etc.) & functions(procedures)
  simple I/O
  basic regular expressions
  file handling
  and more...

  At the end you get a nice introductory treatment of CGI programming using Perl...an incentive to buy the Camel to learn
  more advanced Perl incantations. =)

  The book is very professionally written-I didn't find many of those bugs/typos that so many books are infested with.

  Thanks Randal & Editors!
  
  

• A great book if you are familiar with coding.
  By ABKJ06L4QBYUG on 2005-09-19
  Luckily I am familiar with how to code, and so this book turned out to be a fabulous resource. To be fair, the authors state that you should really have done some sort of programming before or this book will not be as much value to you. But with that pre-requisite covered 'Learning Perl' is a fun and information dense learning tool. Not to say that you can't do it if you have never coded before, but it will be more of a struggle.
  
  Coming in at under 275 pages, the book doesn't waste time in getting down to what you need to know. I am a self-learner, and I was constantly amazed at the end of each chapter at how much we had covered. Given such information rich text, you might imagine it to be a little dry. Not so. The book exhibits a quirky, geeky sense of humor. And be warned; it uses footnotes extensively. While that may not be your bag, I found the footnotes made the book more like an internet browsing experience. You use the footnote like a link to more detailed and in-depth information.
  
  I would give the book 5 stars but for one small beef. The authors assume that you are a UNIX programmer. There are numerous references to UNIX arcana, which you are supposed to just know. Phrases like 'If you want to make a Perl program [..] like the utilities cat, sed, awk, [..] and many others..' mean nothing to me. Furthermore there is little (a couple of paragraphs) to explain how to get Perl up and running on a Windows box. Now, I can easily overlook the little Microsoft digs, but I think more of an effort could have been made to reach out to the 'other side'.
  
  So now, I am building my own Perl library. And I love the functionality it gives me. Once I figured out how to call programs from other web platforms I was one happy camper. All in all the time spent with this book was well worth it. Mainly the book provided a quick and comprehensive introduction to a powerful and flexible language. Thankfully the authors took a difficult subject and made it easier with their light in tone / heavy on the info style. Check it out.
  
  
• Great book for beginning programming on a *NIX platform.
  By ALNY7UXHCP5F5 on 2000-02-20
  If you haven't done much programming on a *NIX box, then this book is for you. If you have, but just need an intro to Perl, it's still pretty good, but very light reading - you might as well buy a copy of Programming Perl at the same time, so you can just shift over when you're done. Especially good if you have no programming experience whatsoever, but don't fault the book for not teaching you *NIX - it's not meant to do that.
  
  
• can be read on a long weekend!
  By A3146JE5HK0FJY on 2000-01-03
  I had no previous exposure to perl and I have read more than half of the book and absorbed it very quickly. I would say this book is sufficient for 90 percent of the needs of 90 percent of the people who want to learn perl. It is concise and that helps you glance through chapters quickly and learn the basics without getting slowed down by details that may come to use rarely. There are two minor negative things that come to my mind. The examples are rather boring and some useful tips which I think belong to the text are casually mentioned in the footnote, e.g. use of & before the name of a function.
  
  
• Not really for absolute beginners
  By A228UM7ANVD8NP on 2001-04-08
  This book calls itself "Learning Perl," apparently because it is geared towards beginners. However, upon reading more and more of this book, it becomes increasingly clear that this book is not at all a learning tool, as it is a good reference for those who already learned the basics of Perl. The first chapter should be skipped over entirely if you're a beginner, because it will do nothing more than confuse you and turn you off to Perl. The subsequent chapters covers all relevant topics, but they skimp on providing descriptive key examples which would help you to better understand the concept. This book makes too many references to C and other languages, implying that you already know previous programming languages. The chapter on regular expressions is shamefully cursory and lacking in examples which can be adequately picked up by the Perl novice. The language of the text is not for the beginner user, as it throws around too many Perl-centric terms and definitions. For an intermediate, this may be sufficient, but it will not do for the beginner. I recommend Perl for Dummies as the ultimate beginner's tool. That book doesn't cover as many topics as this book, but it certainly explains conceps in a much more novice-friendly language than Learning Perl. Learning Perl makes the mistake of not keeping it simple. This is a very important teaching idea, when your expected audience are complete novices who need to have everything explained to them in basic layman's terms. This book is more of a sophisticated primer for already skilled programmers.
  
  
• Good Book, Bad Revision
  By A3IAK9BH1S0YBO on 2002-06-28
  I gave the 2nd edition of this book 5 stars for its readability and concise coverage of the Perl basics. Unfortunately, the 3rd edition adds very little and takes away many of the best parts of the 2nd edition. The chapter on report formatting was completely removed in this edition. I guess we will have to call it Pel instead of Perl. (The "r" in the name stands for "reporting," but reporting is no longer covered at all in this book).

  The second edition also had an excellent chapter on CGI programming with Perl. This was also sent to the dumpster. Another casualty was chapter one which previously contained a well crafted introduction to the language called a "stroll through Perl." It has been replaced by a boring and traditional introduction chapter.

  So, what were the additions that warranted the creation of a new edition in the first place? The chapter on regular expressions was spilt into three chapters. A good idea, but the coverage is almost identical to that of the previous edition. A little more explanation is added in various chapters here and there, which is good. But, this edition also contains many more footnotes, which is bad! The authors seem obsessed with footnoting the most obscure and bizarre details in footnotes, and there are footnotes on almost every page. (Of course you don't have to read them, but like looking at a bad car accident, I just can't resist).

  This is still a good tutorial on Perl, but the second edition is so much better I would recommend buying it instead of the third edition. Unfortunately, newer does not always mean better.
  
  

• Clear, and comprehensible
  By A2YYXZHUSDYKRO on 2000-08-12
  I found it very suitable for beginners provided that you have some background in Unix, C, sed, awk and shell programming languages but even if you don't, it is still pretty easy to grasp if you put enough effort into it i.e. at least type in the examples on a Unix terminal and try to understand what's going on. By the way, if you don't know anything about Unix, I suggest trying Harley Han's "Student Guide to UNIX", a very good book with introduction to Unix commands and editors.

  The author did a great job of providing examples along with every new concepts he was trying to explain. I have to admit that the first chapter looks kinda scary for somebody without any background in computer programming but if you can figure out the 'big picture' and spend enough time trying to follow the logic, the following chapters until almost the last chapter are easy.

  All the exercises on the back of the chapters are of reasonable difficulty, enough to try your understanding of the material presented in the chapter. If you can do the exercises by yourself, you can be sure that you already grasp the material. The best part is, all the answers are available in the appendix to let you see how the author implemented it (since they are Perl experts, I always ended up writing solutions that were longer than necessary compared to theirs).

  However, to reap the maximum benefit, it's recommended that you also have "Programming Perl" by Larry Wall besides you as this book makes a lot of references to "Programming Perl" reference book. Buy this book, and learn how to code in Perl, an investment that you'll not regret.
  
  

• Does just what it says
  By A2TD4S84EB1QTY on 2000-12-10
  This book is not intended for intermediate Perl programmers, or people just starting to code. But if you know another language, preferrably rudimentary C or C++, this book will be a great help to you. It gives you confidence while helping you to learn many of the wide variety of items Perl has to offer. It even covers basic CGI and databases. I would have given it a five stars, but there are a couple of faults:

  1. Not adequate coverage of regular expressions (guess they want you to buy that other O'reilly book- The Owls)

  2. I had difficulty getting Perl for my Windows 98 system-the information they give to help is for Unix or Linux systems.

  For the record, I use a shareware Perl Editor for Windows 98 that also does CGI, but can do normal Perl as well (Remember to include a at the end of your program and tell people to press enter if you use Windows 98) But these faults can be overcome, and overall, this book does exactly what it intends-to teach you basic Perl. Once you are done here, you can move onto the Camel with ease.
  
  

• Good book, but lots of patience required
  By A1PRZY9391ES5F on 2002-09-19
  Randal Schwartz's "Learning Perl" is an excellent book for those who want to learn the Perl language. "Learning Perl" covers the basics of programming in Perl through 17 chapters, each averaging 20 or so pages with practice exercises at the end of each chapter. While Schwartz claims a novice could learn from the book, I had to re-read several passages and chapters before I fully comprehended his ideas. Tinkering with some Perl code and writing some experimental programs with the book in hand is a must.

  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about learning Perl and who has some experience in Unix and/or another programming language. I was a complete novice to both Unix and the basic concepts of programming when I bought the book. It took me the whole night to figure out how to execute a simple "Hello, world!" program on Mac OS X. After nailing down the basics of Unix through trial and error, however, I was able to execute more programs flawlessly. Assess your abilities and your commitment honestly before making the purchase. Good luck!
  
  

• a well-written, essential learning tool
  By on 2003-01-12
  Before beginning this book, I knew what Perl is and what it's good for. However, looking at some Perl code, I was too intimidated to make a serious attempt at learning the language. I had a good foundation in programming concepts, as well as some experience writing simple C programs, so I decided to make the effort to learn Perl.

  This book is very well-written, and even entertaining at times. I agree with other reviewers who suggest that this book is not for the programming neophyte, although a dedicated student will certainly be able to work through the book and come out knowing not only the foundation of Perl, but of programming as well. Those somewhat familiar with C will have no trouble at all, and will be particularly amused by the ease with which Perl handles things such as arrays and strings (read: in a much easier and more common-sense way than C does).

  I highly recommend this book for anyone desiring to implement Perl in their daily computing lives.
  
  

• Programming Perl (3rd Edition)
• Intermediate Perl
• Perl Cookbook, Second Edition
• Mastering Regular Expressions
• Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition