Rating: 
Summary: This book will get you started!
Review: If your'e absolutely foreign to the language - this book will get you to the point where you can program easily and comfortably with it.
I won't turn you into an expert though. Perl is a complex language, and if you really want to become an expert, you better read another book such as "Professional Perl Programming".
The value of this book is that it's easy to understand, that you can do great this with Perl right after finishing the book.
There is a great extra of introducing you to CGI scripts. I started doing nice things with CGI in my company based almost entirely on what was introduced to me in this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Introduction to Perl
Review: Before reading this book I had no programming experience. I had been working in Unix for a few months and wanted to find a better/quicker way to accomplish tasks I kept running across, I could not find solutions to on the command-line (,and scripting would not have proved as elegant a solution).
After reading the first half of this book I was able to write useful programs to address these minor issues. Some of the book seems a little out of order, and it is a little work coming from no background, but worth any difficulty encountered.
Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction to Perl
Review: I did not have any previous programming experience before reading this book, just a bit of dealing with Unix. After reading it I was able to create useful programs which I had been wishing for. Some topics seem a little out of place, I do not understand why the chapter on subroutines is so early. Learning is a bit rough with no programming experience, but worth the work. I think of this as the language introdution by which all others are measured.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Intermediate Book
Review: I am a java developer who needs to debug a perl program. This book is not designed for the beginner. Although the concepts are not difficult, the author does not not give clear instructions on how to get started. This is a well written, clear guide to using and learning perl. You have to be able to get your environment set up yourself. The first chapter is a summary of the book and should absolutely be skipped as it summarizes the whole book which one has not read yet. I found this very initimidating and a waste of time. Skip it.... The rest of the book is excellent overall.
Rating:
Summary: Much improved
Review: I have the CD version (Perl CD Bookshelf).
The biggest hurtle of the second edition seemed to me to be the first few chapters. The newest version of this book (3rd ed.) is much clearer than the prior version. You should be able to do simple tasks in the first few chapters working into regex stuff and modules later on. It helps a lot to be a Linux user as most distributions (if not all) include this by default. Use the example questions at the end of the book! you should be able co code fairly well in a couple of weeks. Programming Python and The Perl Cookbook may be what you need then. All of these books are on the Perl CD Bookshelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent learning book
Review: I have seen Perl before, but never could understand other people's code. I got this book to help me get a leg up on Perl. Generally I liked to book. I think the author went way overboard on footnotes. Footnotes should give more detailed info or where to look for more info. He used his for editorial comments. Also, I thought some of the topics got fired at you in odd places. For instance, the introduction of 'my' to define a local variable, got shoved in way late in a place not really relevant.Generally, I found the book useful on understanding Perl and how it works. I will need the Perl book now for a reference.
Rating:
Summary: Teaches Perl Syntax, not how to program
Review: This book is excellent for the experienced programmer that wants to learn Perl. Like other reviewers said, it assumes prior knowledge from the reader. I see this as a strength, not a weakness. I already know what data structures are and how to use them, this book goes to the point, how to do what I need to do in Perl. Recently we had a process at work that generated some text files with some shorter than expected lines, this text files were used as input for another process, this second process was choking when getting to the short lines. I wrote a program to identify those short lines, being an experienced Java programmer, I did this in Java, but I was aware that Perl was good at this kind of thing. I decided to get the Llama book after that, to take the plunge and learn Perl. After reading only a couple of chapters, I was able to reimplement the process to identify short lines as a Perl script with 1/5 of the code (just as an exercise, the process that was generating the short lines was successfully debugged before this). If you are an experienced programmer looking to learn Perl, this is the book for you, if you don't have much programming experience, I would look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for beginner who has some programming background.
Review: Although this is a good book, it is not for the beginner programmer. Unless you are extremely bright, or a programmer in another language, or familiar with computing concepts, you may find this book difficult, confusing and not very intuitive. It seems to me that it assumes somewhat familiarity of programming concepts and terms, although it does it's best to explain them at a beginner's level. Having said that, what you WILL find is tons of excellent, real-life examples and tricks that you will find yourself using. I would recommend buying a book like Sam's "Teaching yourself Perl in 24 hours" or "Elements of programming with PERL" first, then this one. I also think you will find that after understanding Perl conceptually, you will use this book as a reference through your Perl growing pains.
Rating:
Summary: my favorite teaching book
Review: Learning Perl is a great reference text, not just for learning. Of course, if you already know Perl inside and out, you won't want this book. However, if you are a beginner, you can use this book to teach yourself Perl and then keep using it after you are experienced. The writing style is far from dry, and at times is downright witty. The examples are short and sweet, no piling on of so much code that you forget what the example is supposed to show. There are a few reasons why this book is always on my desk. I code in several languages, so I often need a reminder of syntax. Rather than open a thick reference book, I just go to one of Learning Perl’s dog-eared pages on the subject. The authors seem to anticipate common questions that you might have asked if you were just reading a language definition. You can easily carry with you this small, manageable book. I use this book in conjunction with the Perl Cookbook, also by O’Reilly.
Rating:
Summary: For the beginner only?
Review: Some reviewers have said that this book is for newbies only, and I have made that assertion myself. I've recently rethought that assertion. I would recommend this book for any programmer coming from another language to perl. Learning Perl takes common programming idioms and expresses them in "perlish" terms. I've learned when training folks to use perl, to send them to the llama book first, then the camel, then the ram. (Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Perl Cookbook). The book is full of examples, but unlike most programming books, it's readable. In true O'Reilly style the book is informative and fun. It's great, and I highly recommend it for anyone learning programming, or learning perl for the first time.
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