Product Description

Perl is a powerful programming language that has grown in popularity since it first appeared in 1988. The first edition of this book, "Programming Perl", hit the shelves in 1990. Since then, Perl has grown with the times, and so has this book. The text provides an introduction to the language and its culture by authors including Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective on the evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language, and Jon Orwant is the editor of "The Perl Journal", which has brought together the Perl community as a common forum for new developments in Perl. Showing the syntax of Perl's functions, the text provides a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies of the language. It explains typeglobs, pseudohashes, and closures, and shows how they really work. It also goes on the explain why "my" is faster than "local". This third edition of Programming Perl has been expanded to cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other new features that have been added since the previous edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67855 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1092 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Larry Wall wrote Perl and he wrote Programming Perl. Better yet, he writes amusingly and well--all of which comes across in this latest edition of the definitive guide to the language.

Like Topsy, Perl just grew, and as a result so has Programming Perl. It's now over 1,000 pages but needs to be as it does several different jobs. Firstly, it's an introduction to the Perl language for those new to programming. It's a guide for those coming from other languages and it's a Perl language reference.

Larry Wall is a linguist, among his other interests, and perhaps for this reason Perl is a peculiarly flexible language with many routes to achieving the same ends, as the authors ably demonstrate. It's also extensible in several ways, designed to work with many other languages and, as it's largely interpreted, Perl programs tend to run unmodified on a variety of platforms--though platform-specific Perl modules and programming practices are also discussed.

A major strength of Programming Perl is the way subject areas are approached from several directions. This constant viewpoint-shifting eliminates blind spots in the reader's understanding as well as providing a pleasing echo of the way Perl itself can take many routes from here to there.

Because the Perl community is both knowledgeable and active the language covers a lot more ground than it did at the time the last edition of Programming Perl was published. Even if you have both previous editions you'll want this latest version--if only for the new jokes. --Steve Patient

Laurance, linuxdot.org, Oct 2001
Put simply; this book made me a better Perl coder, and is always by my side, waiting to be referred to for the umteenth time.

http://it-enquirer.com, May 2002
".....Perl programmers shouldn't be without this guide."

Customer Reviews

Indispensible reference.
If you want to learn perl, go buy O'Reilly's other book, "Learning Perl". I can recommend it.

If you program in perl regularly, I am sure you already have this book (else how can you have survived?), so I don't need to write this review for you.

For those who have learned perl, but feel the need for a reference on it, this is that reference.

It is well written, and I read all 600-plus pages of it from cover to cover (though not at one sitting!). This was the first time I'd found this in a computing book, and I have to say the experience converted me both to Perl and to O'Reilly.

If you are REALLY serious about perl programming, there are two other good books that fill complimentary niches: "Perl Cookbook" (solutions to common tasks in Perl), and "Advanced Perl Programming". But before you buy them, you need this book in order to be able to understand them.

The book is also an excellent insight into the eclectic mind of the author.

If I were to have a gripe about this book, it's that it has really handy one-liners scattered all over the place, but they are not collated into an accessible list anywhere, so until you get to know the book like the back of your hand, you have to flip through it, saying "I *know* I saw a really elegant way of doing that in a footnote somewhere here...".

also, a quickref card, like that in "HTML: the definitive guide" would be really handy. But then, that's what the perl 5 pocket reference is for.

Excellent
I dived straight into Perl with this book (rather than picking up Learning Perl - I'm a skint student!) and actually found it alright. The book itself is excellent and well written - it almost makes bedtime reading. If you are new to programming, find a learning book first. However, if you've got any experience with other languages, you should find this has enough to get you started. After that, the book is an amazing reference. It not only has all the gory details you could want but is packed with interesting snippets of code that fits with the Perl motto, "There's more than one way to do it". The authors frequently show you how TMTOWTDI and you come away from reading this book full of fresh ideas. I'm now totally hooked to Perl - it's one of those things where you keep thinking, "If only I'd learnt Perl earlier, it would have made that task far simpler"! I'm off to buy the cookbook...

Excellent Reference
Once again, O'Reilly have produced an excellent reference work.

This book is probably not a great book to buy if you don't know anything about Perl and have no programming experience. But, if you have previous programming experience or are already familiar with Perl, you'll find this book an invaluable reference source to keep close to hand.

Just about anything you'll need to look up while writing even the most complex of Perl scripts can be found quickly in this book.

I'm a Web Developer for a large UK ISP and this book is continually in use. It's the only Perl book in the office, and the only one needed! I'd highly recommend this book.