Perl Core Language Little Black Book, Second Edition
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 4.94Customer Rating: 4
Summary: Good Book for Perl. Lots of Example Code
Comment: I think this is a great reference book for perl. It covers all the major topics with examples on each of the minor details. Chapters are divided by topics such as hashs,arrays,cgi. Excellent reference. Biggest draw back is sometimes the examples are too short so that it becomes difficult to figure out how it would operate in a large program.
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: PERL for programmers only
Comment: This is a combination of reference and learning. I would not advise this for a person trying to learn PERL as their first language, but if you already have a grasp of C++, Java, VB, Python or some other complex scripting language then this is ideal. So we do not have the first three chapters explaining what a program is. There is a useful rip-out card with most of the syntax. PERL is full of obscure symbols and patterns such as $_[0] or $] or even /^((\((\d{3}\))? ?\d{3}-\d{4},? *)+$/ (which locates a telephone number). The book explains them concisely and provides reference tables which are useful after you have mastered the fundamentals. If you want a more gentle entry then something like "PERL and CGI for the World Wide Web" by Castro will lead you in a more 'human' way. It's excellent, but after you have been through it it will be placed on the shelf - it's not a reference document. If you want lots of complex examples so you can play round with pre-existing code then look at "Mastering PERL 5".
PCLLBB (plus the rip-out card) is the book I keep within arm's length. The blank pages at the back I have written in as a secondary index to the tables. Incidentally the index is good. The only problem (as with all indexes) is if you do not know what you are looking for. For example, to remove a line feed you use chomp() and you can look up truncate, line feed, substring etc and not find it. This is where you need your own index!
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: So handy and terse! How rare in most computer books
Comment: Truly a gift that this book is only 6"x9" and one inch thick. Clearly the author and publisher didn't see the need to fluff this book out. I've hated Perl for ten years and this book has made me a convert. I was able to hack out a token parser with hash table lookup and I didn't even understand those terms until I read this book. It's a complete reference and makes perl accessible to human beings and geeks alike. Though Coriolis is no more, this book is worth finding and keeping if you like to keep a tight stash of essential references on your shelf. (I'd bought it years ago figuring someday I'd have to use it, and it paid off.)