Rating: 
Summary: The only Perl book you'll need for awhile!
Review: I worked with Perl for 2 years armed with only this book and perl.org, and I did just fine! It's short and to the point, and it is the most worn book in my slew of technical manuals to date. I own most of the other O'Reilly Perl books, but the rest are barely even cracked.I had to buy a second copy for work, I even have page numbers memorized. Thank you O'Reilly!
Rating:
Summary: Most used Perl book on my shelf
Review: This book covers all the important core constructs in Perl and gets you started writing real programs very quickly. The chapters are concise and easily readable. It took me about two weeks to work through Chapters 1-13 and 19. After that, I knew enough Perl to hack around my Windows NT box. Each chapter ends with a few appropriate exercises. Although the exercises are brief and easily accomplished, they demonstate the important concepts covered in the chapter. After working through the exercises, you will have working examples (that you coded) illustrating common control structures, I/O, regular expression use, file and directory manipulation, and so on. I learn coding best by doing, not by reading. It's only after working through some code that you really will begin to understand how Perl, or any other language, works. I have a handful of Perl books on my shelf, but I use Learning Perl and the Perl Cookbook most often. I hardly ever find myself in the camel.
Rating: 
Summary: Does just what it says
Review: This book is not intended for intermediate Perl programmers, or people just starting to code. But if you know another language, preferrably rudimentary C or C++, this book will be a great help to you. It gives you confidence while helping you to learn many of the wide variety of items Perl has to offer. It even covers basic CGI and databases. I would have given it a five stars, but there are a couple of faults: 1. Not adequate coverage of regular expressions (guess they want you to buy that other O'reilly book- The Owls) 2. I had difficulty getting Perl for my Windows 98 system-the information they give to help is for Unix or Linux systems. For the record, I use a shareware Perl Editor for Windows 98 that also does CGI, but can do normal Perl as well (Remember to include a <STDIN> at the end of your program and tell people to press enter if you use Windows 98) But these faults can be overcome, and overall, this book does exactly what it intends-to teach you basic Perl. Once you are done here, you can move onto the Camel with ease.
Rating:
Summary: Invaluable
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book. I didn't know anything about perl before this book. I read it straight through, trying out a couple of the examples, and it really taught me a good amount of Perl. Even now that I've been using it for a while I still refer to it as my first point of reference. Definately a must for any Perl programmer.
Rating:
Summary: Great Writing Style
Review: The writing style of this book actually keeps you interested in reading the book, while providing a very good start into the world of Perl. I've was guilty before (like most) of scratching around for Perl solutions, but this book actually starts at a low enough level to build the foundation which must be present before solid construction of of a Perl program begins. I highly recommend this book to anyone starting to learn Perl. There are other worthy books to continue learning the world of Perl and Perl CGI, but this is my top pick for a starter!
Rating:
Summary: A valuable introduction to Perl and a good read, too!
Review: I found this to be a very well-written book: a page-turner, even. The book flows very nicely and there's a very logical & sensible progression to the explanations. The language isn't overly complicated, and there's enough humor to keep it interesting. Whenever I'd skim a section ("I already know this stuff"), invariably I'd find myself going back and reading the entire passage. Since I'm already familiar with C and Unix, I found the subject matter explained in a very straightforward manner. The chapter on CGI programming got me so anxious to learn more that I ordered "Programming Perl" when I was only halfway through! This is a great book for learning Perl, especially if you're already a C/Unix programmer. I recommend it unconditionally.
Rating:
Summary: A great start to learning the Perl language
Review: I found this to be a much better text to learn Perl than "Programming Perl". The book starts out with a simple example and then quickly, and I do mean quickly, turns it into a very functional fairly complex example. If your interested in learning Perl this is the book to start with.
Rating:
Summary: A book you will use again and again
Review: We have several copies of this book at our workplace, and they get passed around often. An excellent learning book, but is also great for a reference later on when you need a "refresher" on syntax. All of the O'Reilly books on Perl I can recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to Follow Introduction to Perl
Review: This book is great for anyone who wants to get started with Perl programming quickly. The early chapters build a nice example program that shows many of the commonly used elements of Perl in a practical way so that you can quickly get a grasp of how Perl works. The book is not intended to be a complete Perl reference. For that you will probably want to get "Programming Perl." But, by not attempting to write a complete Perl reference, the authors were able to keep the focus on practical examples which help the reader get a reasonable understanding of the language without getting bogged down by too many details at once.
Rating:
Summary: Perfection
Review: The world of Perl awaits you. With this book you will be learning the basics and some advance functions of Perl. It is very well written, what else would you expect from 0'Reilly. The examples and step by step structure of the book is extremely easy to assimulate.
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