Rating: 
Summary: Excellent tutorial/reference for those new to Perl!!!!!!!!!!
Review: For those new to Perl (or anyone else who seeking a scalable scripting language), this book is an excellent starting point. The first chapter provides a rather quick overview of what can be done with the language, so I wouldn't spend too much time mulling over the details within. Subsequent chapters are short and get right to the point. Plenty of examples, lots of code snipets. 6 months ago I opened this book, and today I'm working through "The Perl Cookbook",(which I highly recommend as well) in between I've written thousands of lines of Perl code. I make a point of promoting this book to any friends who mention the need for a scalable scripting language (if they don't already own it). If you're new to Perl, buy this book. If you're new to CGI script development, buy this book. You'll be glad you did!
Rating: 
Summary: Read, practice, use in conjuction with Camel
Review: Growing up with a C=64, then moving on to Q-Basic, Fortran, and ANSI C in college, I thought the "Camel Book" (Programming Perl, O'Reilly) would be fine, and so I chose to forego this book. I made a mistake... For all but the most experienced programmers, I would suggest this book -- in conjunction with -- the Camel. I found the prose easy to read and follow, and the examples illuminating, yet sparse. I would have doubled the number of examples and also questions at the end of each chapter. My method of success was to read the book through, re-reading occasionally for difficult sections. Read the chapters and do the examples. And finally, read the Camel book and when hitting a difficult topic or one covered very thinly in that book, to go back and read the relevant chapter in the Llama. Overall, an excellent book. Well written, good examples, and for the novice to mid-level programmer from other languages.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, it works for Windows 98 users too! =)
Review: 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).
Rating:
Summary: THE book for your 1st time
Review: After realizing that I needed to know something other than just HTML, I did a little research and decided on Perl. This was the book that taught me from scratch.
The biggest mistake I made was reading enough of the book to get me through a project that required me to write a couple of small scripts. I should have kept reading. Now I've decided to go back to the book and read it from start to finish, and I remember why I loved this book so much.
Everything is clearly explained. The authors assume that you've never programmed before. And even though the book is written from a Unix prospective, I (a Windows user) was able to follow along without any problems and get all my programs to work.
The book also contains exercises at the end of each chapter with answers and explainations in the back of the book. This was a huge help in learning the language.
The book is not overwhelmingly thick, so it's not intimidating. In fact, I moved through the boo!k rather quickly.
This isn't the only book you'll want for mastering Perl, but it's probably the best book to get you started.
Rating:
Summary: Clear, and comprehensible
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Beginners Guide to Perl
Review: If you are new to Perl this is the book for you. The syntax and usage examples were great and timely! You actually get to apply what the authors are trying to convey with the exercises at the end of each chapter. The authors are also nice enough to throw in some basic cgi programming material. However, this book is designed just for what it says "Learning". This is by no means a reference book for Perl nor is it a place to learn basic Unix commands. It will be a while before I auction this one off.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Beginner's Guide to Perl
Review: I manage a crew of 20 people who do intrusion detection analysis. I read Randal Schwartz's excellent book about a year ago and have since used it to write a number of useful Perl scripts. Some examples: I modified the script we use to parse connection information from Cisco's NetRanger to show context information as well, created a script to strip out protected networks from log files, wrote a script to strip out warning values and other unneeded fields from connection log data. While Learning Perl didn't provide me with all the information I needed to write everything I wanted to, it did give me the necessary background for ways to construct useful tools with Perl. It continues to serve as a useful reference tool.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginners of PERL with C/C++ experience.
Review: This book is awesome. It explains the concepts at the perfect pace for the intermediate programmer. I have only read this book for 1 day so far, but the first 'intro' chapter has already walked me through concepts such as Hash tables, arrays, and all the loops and many string functions. This book is excellent and makes PERL easy to learn if you have already done C or C++. If you are an absolute beginner (never programmed before), this will not be easy to follow. I suggest learning C or C++ first, as it is the building block of many languages and has similar commands.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to learn perl this is where to start
Review: As a hobby web developer and Linux user, I have looked at and installed many programs written in perl. I never really thought about learning perl because their are so many free resources on the 'Net and it just seemed complicated. The only problem is that you can never seem to find the exact program with the exact function you desire. I have paid programmers to make programs for me and purchased pre-written programs for my web sites, but I still always wish for one more function. I bought this book only in hopes that I would be able to hack existing programs to fine tune them more to my needs not to write my own. Guess what... It's not as hard as I thought. This book starts you off building a fun little script in the first chapter and by the end of the second you are writing three of your own. Each chapter brings you painlessly closer to understanding the basic principals of perl. By the end of the book I was able to write some simple, but very functional scripts on my own. While this book does NOT claim to teach you to be a programmer and only covers the basics, it sure teaches you to think and read in perl. If you are thinking about it yourself don't look any further.
Rating:
Summary: One word: EXCELLENT
Review: A very, very good book for beginners. Extremely helpful, detailed explanations of what's going on and more. It says UNIX on the cover but I am using a Windows NT platform and almost everything works as is. If you want to learn Perl, start here.
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