Rating: 
Summary: Not really for absolute beginners
Review: This book calls itself "Learning Perl," apparently because it is geared towards beginners. However, upon reading more and more of this book, it becomes increasingly clear that this book is not at all a learning tool, as it is a good reference for those who already learned the basics of Perl. The first chapter should be skipped over entirely if you're a beginner, because it will do nothing more than confuse you and turn you off to Perl. The subsequent chapters covers all relevant topics, but they skimp on providing descriptive key examples which would help you to better understand the concept. This book makes too many references to C and other languages, implying that you already know previous programming languages. The chapter on regular expressions is shamefully cursory and lacking in examples which can be adequately picked up by the Perl novice. The language of the text is not for the beginner user, as it throws around too many Perl-centric terms and definitions. For an intermediate, this may be sufficient, but it will not do for the beginner. I recommend Perl for Dummies as the ultimate beginner's tool. That book doesn't cover as many topics as this book, but it certainly explains conceps in a much more novice-friendly language than Learning Perl. Learning Perl makes the mistake of not keeping it simple. This is a very important teaching idea, when your expected audience are complete novices who need to have everything explained to them in basic layman's terms. This book is more of a sophisticated primer for already skilled programmers.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor choice for a beginner
Review: If you want to learn Perl I'd suugest Cozzens Beniing Perl from WROX Press. The Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 days or 24 hours are fair, but much better than this book.This book presents things in a disorganized and incomplete way. Important concepts aren't emphasized, and syntax is presented without going into detail, its easy to miss.
Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: I see a disturbing ternd by O'Reily of pumping out books that are not well done. I consider this a terrible book. Its poorly organized, skips over many important topics, and among the worst books on Perl Ive seen. My gut impression was it took them about a month to write it, just a rush job rip off of programming Perl. A beginner should avoid this book. Learn Perl from another book and use Programming Perl as a reference. The Cookbook is good too. Avoid this book, its a waste of money. Its the worst languages book Ive seen in a while.
Rating:
Summary: Only for absolute starters in programming
Review: Don't know about beginners, but for the experienced programmer who wants to learn perl, this book is a waste of time and money. It teaches far too little on too many pages. You'll read it once (diagonally as we say in german) and then never again. Get the reference and the Perl Cookbook instead and you'll be far better off.
Rating: 
Summary: Keep looking
Review: I don't understand why people rave about this book. Whenever I try to use it as a reference, I end up even more confused then when I started out. I find that I can usually guess the answer to a problem or else just "do it like they do it in C" rather than trying to find a good example to follow in this book. For example, after reading the section on doing formatted printing statements using "fprintf" I was thoroughly confused. I tried using the function just like C does and it worked, but I would have spent days trying to figure out the syntax from this book's explaination. I don't know of a better book, but I would suggest you keep looking for something else.
Rating:
Summary: Poor organization and inconsistent tone
Review: I'm surprised to see so many positive reviews for _Learning Perl_. As another reviewer said, I think these comments represent more enthusiasm for the language than for the book. Randal Schwartz has a great reputation in the open-source community, and I have no experience with him as a trainer or consultant, but judging from this book I wouldn't hire him. The book has a serious problem in that the tone is totally inconsistent. Difficult concepts are explained in terms that assume in-depth knowledge of C, C++, and UNIX; and simple concepts are run into the ground in page after page of trivial examples. The authors also make the serious mistake, all too common in technical books, of providing jokey examples that obscure the main point---identifiers that form puns on statements, irrelevant jokes in comments, and so on. To some people this comes across as a light, friendly tone; to me it smacks of condescension and clannishness. I made the mistake of trying to use this book as a textbook for an introductory Perl class of students with a variety of levels of programming experience. The C-savvy students were bored, and the beginners felt they were being teased and condescended to. Summary: This book isn't up to O'Reilly's usual high standards. If you want to learn Perl, and you already have some programming experience, start with _Programming Perl_ and _Perl Cookbook_ (the Camel Books). If you have no programming experience, start with Simon Cozens' _Beginning Perl_.
Rating: 
Summary: perfect starting book
Review: Any beginning through advanced programmer could pick this book up and be coding extremely practical Perl programs in minutes. It gives several good examples from basic "Hello World" stuff to CGI programs.. Includes the basics you need to know on regular expressions, system commands in a unix environment, and much more...
Rating:
Summary: Aaaarrrgggghhhhh!
Review: My main problem with this book is as follows: There are exercises at the end of each chapter that are oftentimes impossible to answer given the information presented to that point. For example, at the end of chapter 7, one exercise requires the use of an operator (&&) that is not even explained until chapter 9. I spent an entire day beating my head against this problem, only to give up and find out that I shouldn't have even known the answer to begin with! How frustrating!
Rating:
Summary: Easiest introduction to Perl
Review: If you're already familiar with programming, this book is the fastest way to learn the essentials of Perl. It does not covers all features but if you need more specific things in Perl it probably means you should use another programming language. Perl is very efficient for string processing and matching regular expressions but certainly not for low-level programing with tight operational requirements. However, for writing scripts very fast to analyze files or performing simple operations, Perl is best ! If you want more advanced Perl features go to the "Perl Cookbook" that contains dozens of tricks for almost every possible problem or "Mastering algorithms with Perl"...but first look at the many Perl sites before considering buying such a book because almost everything in on the web ! If you want to learn Perl whithin a couple of hours, buy this book !
Rating:
Summary: Not for the Beginning Programmer
Review: I'm a beginning programmer and find this book to be aimed at those with programming experience. I am required to continue with this book as it is being used as a textbook for my class, but I'm sure there are better books out there for beginners. Features I don't like, for example, are: 1.) The first chapter is a book overview as to what will be covered within the book, but it's so intense that you have to use other books to understand what's happening unless you have previous programming experience; 2.) Explaining Perl terms with C language terms, which is only usefully if you know C; 3.) Examples suddenly adding or taking away parenthesis without an explanation as to why; 4.) Giving an example of a while statement with braces, but not explaining what's really happening within those braces and why. This may very well be an excellent book for the ordained programmer, but if your just starting out I'd do some more searching.
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