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Summary: Excellent first step
Review: 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.
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Summary: This book rocks! I know, a funny thing to say about...
Review: such a subject, but it was perfect introduction to Perl. For a non-tech hack like me it really gave me a basic understanding and the ability to write some scripts. I've got a lot more to learn but now I have a foundation.
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Summary: can be read on a long weekend!
Review: 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.
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Summary: A reader
Review: Well what did you expect, they wrote the damn language! This book is nice. If you don't however: know some unix, have some programming background and have at least moderate intelligence (I'm sure you do) and patience, then this book may not be for you. Bottom line: this book is hard, but if you can get through it, you're getting somewhere.
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Summary: Good book for every one who is programming in Perl
Review: 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.
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Summary: Best book for beginners
Review: This book is very good for beginners. As all O'Reilly books it has a very good index.
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Summary: A good introduction to Perl that starts from the basics
Review: This is a good introduction to Perl, but it is for the novice programmer. I come from a C++ background, and it seemed that half of this book was about half theory that I already know (the syntax is a bit different, but that's no big deal). However, if you have not programmed before, this would be an excellent start. One other point to note is that this book assumes some basic knowledge of UNIX. I work with Macs mostly, so I did not always understand the UNIX references.
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Summary: Very Good Book !
Review: A very good book as your first contact with Perl. And the best foreword I've ever read in a technical book ! Certainly a must have item.
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Summary: A very good perl beginner book
Review: If you just start learning Perl, this is definitely a good book to start with. You can build a solid foundation of Perl skills with this book. However, if you are serious with Perl, you will need more advanced books like "programming with Perl".
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Summary: This is for people who have NEVER written code
Review: 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.
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