Rating: 
Summary: My well worn copy of Learning Perl
Review: I bought Learning Perl when it was first published. It went around the office and everyone read it. I now go back to the highlighted, notated (by many different hands) pages once a while when I need a fresh idea for a solution in perl. This may be a "beginners book" to show the perl coder wannabe in a quick way all that can be done with perl, but I feel that the code examples are too sparse and don't comletely solve problems in programming perl as they arise. I also feel that it was not thorough enough in explaining the very basics of the language which to the uninitiated reader can seem like contradictions and lead to confusion. Everyone in the office wanted to write a real-world perl script once they finished the book. Even as a newbie perl coder I had to go to other resources to complete the simple script I was working on. But that can be said about most all programming languages... Use the examples for ideas, go back to it for explanations of syntax, but hold out for better books if you want complete results in perl scripts.
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Summary: Second Edition is Better
Review: This is a complete rewrite of the second edition, plus the addition of another author. The format is good for reference, if that's how you learn. But it takes away from the rather eloquent writing and by-example approach that Randal Schwartz has been doing. Randal is a wonderful writer, and the Second Edition is much more suitable, as it provides a follow-by-example method, building more complex issues as the book progresses. It's clear that Randal is a good teacher.I recommend anyone that really wants to learn perl, do so by using the Second Edition. While it may not have all the reference material available in the third, it does a wonderful job and will prepare you for more advanced learning, plus you can probably purchase the Second Edition now at a good discount.
Rating: 
Summary: Text, text and more text
Review: I think I've finally found the right scripting language. After mucking around with korn and bourne and bourneagain shells, perl seems to offer the right tools for what I'm after. Though other scripting languages certainly must have their uses (both in scripting AND as a command shell) perl seems to be more suited for straight forward text processing. Mr. Schwartz' examples plainly are cartoonish, but just change fred, barney and wilma into members of your immediate family and you should have no problem with the examples. Yep, if you're in need of a way to plough through mega and giga bytes of text, here is the scripting solution. Here is (as far as I can tell) as good a way to learn the basics as any. Of course your mileage may vary. Thanks for an introductory book that doesn't treat me like the "For Dummies" kind of person that I probably am!
Rating: 
Summary: a well-written, essential learning tool
Review: 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.
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Summary: Is Perl the right language for your task? Start Here!
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated because there are no competing books
Review: I've think I've owned every edition of this book and each time I return it after unsuccessfully trying to get anything useful out of it. Lately I've wanted to really get scripting under my hands to expand my skills as a sysadmin. So I bought this book again (erroneously thinking I'd not tried hard enough the first 2-3 times I used this book to try and learn Perl). While I'm no developer, I'm no stranger to the concepts of coding. I wouldn't exactly call myself a beginner. Nevertheless, this book seems bent on confusing the reader by introducing concept after concept with absolutely no hands on application of the material covered. How exactly are you going to remember all the ways you can list the contents of an arrray without some practical examples? Reading this book this time (and hopefully for the last time), I keep getting the feeling that these authors wrote the book to appease Perl gurus, not to help people who are new to Perl and who are not senior developers in other programming languages. The constant bombardment of superfluous footnotes also serves to distract the frustrated Perl student from learning the language in any useful fashion. And what gives with the first exercise in the book (!) being about finding the circumference of a circle and the square root of such-and-such? Sadly I never took those math courses, does that mean I can't learn Perl? Or does it just mean that the authors assume all who read this book are math wizzes with years of programming experience? I noticed another reviewer said that this book is not a reference. I do agree him that a book about learning Perl shouldn't be a reference. But I have to say that this book reads like a reference book....too many concepts thrown in the Perl student's lap without showing him/her at least a couple ways in which the concept(s) might be used. My opinion is the book is probably good for advanced programmers who want a quick-and-dirty overview of Perl. But to be truly useful (and to live up to the name "learning perl" not "learning perl for math geeks and programming gurus") the book should be bigger, allowing for useful examples that the less-experienced student can run that teach how to actually use these concepts.
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Summary: This is _the_ book with which to learn Perl.
Review: There's a reason why this book has a nickname, like the Camel: just like Perl, and just like every true UNIX utility, it's small and it does one thing well. That one thing is teach Perl. Beginners and experienced programmers alike have found _Learning Perl_ to be simply the best book with which to learn this pathlogically eclectic language. And the reasons why _Learning Perl_ have become so popular are obvious upon inspection of the authors' personalities. Laced with humor and a general light-hearted attitude, this book lends a gentle aura to the process of learning one of the most rewarding computer languages available. Contrary to some opinions, the subject isn't dry -- unless you approach it with all of the enthusiasm and spirit of a piece of granite. Indeed, the beauty and freedom of Perl is made readily apparent herein. On the subject of this book not making a good reference: since when is a tutorial a reference? When you forget the capital of Colorado or how many provinces there are in Canada, do you go to a school to help you remember? No, you go to a library (or, if you've learned anything from this book, your Perl interface to a local DICT server). The same holds true for _Learning Perl_. It never set out to be a reference, so judging it as one just isn't fair. Besides -- if you need a reference, you have both the Perl electronic documentation (freely available both on the web and on any machine with Perl properly installed) and at least one book that covers the subject: _Programming Perl_, the title that I and many others have affectionately deemed "the Camel" (a suitably pathologically eclectic name for the definitive reference for a wonderfully pathologically eclectic language and philosophy).
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Summary: Good introduction to Perl
Review: My group at work has been writing a number of scripts in Perl for our most recent project. So I wanted to familiarize myself with reading their code, as well as write some of my own. I found this book easy and fun to read, and it helped me get familiar with basic Perl features. I recommend this book to others who also would like to get a quick and easy introduction to writing Perl code.
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Summary: a bit simplistic
Review: If you know how to program (even a little bit) this is a quick and easy read. It introduces perl very well and is great if you are just starting perl. However, it's not one of those book that you refer to all the time. (That would be Programming Perl by Larry Wall) If you know someone with this book, as them to borrow it for the weekend and then if you like perl go buy "Programming Perl" by Larry Wall and give them back this book. It's not that it's bad, it's just not something you will refer to after reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to Perl
Review: If you are having trouble getting into Perl this book provides a very smooth ramp to understanding the fundamentals. You won't become a Perl guru with it but you will be able to grasp the essentials and move on from there. If you are a full time programmer you should have Perl as part of your bag of tricks and this is a good way to learn it.
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