Advanced Perl Programming

Rating:
Summary: Best way to learn references
Review: This is one of the four critical books you need to learn Perl; Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Perl Cookbook and Advanced Perl Programming. This book provides a deep understanding of how references (pointers) can be used to increase performance. In addition the book gives you a deeper understanding about how to make better use of hash tables as data structures. The section on code generation using templates is great as well.

Rating:
Summary: A real outdated masterpiece that may not appeal to everyone
Review: This is, as the title implies, a book for advanced programmers. You are not supposed to be reading it until "Learning Perl" seems really basic to you and when you are ready to make the progression from browsing "Programming Perl" (the Camel book) -a reference guide to ALL of Perl- to writing a real & complex application. This book serves then as an introduction to several complex topics (DBI, data structures, Tk, OO, & Perl C internals) and gives a better explanation in some areas where the Camel book falls short or becomes too complex (here the explanations are better, but don't expect full tutorials from A to Z). I warn you. It is the perfect companion to introduce you to a new subject while reading the online docs or other. You also might want to browse thru it if you are an experienced programmer with other scripting languages like TCL, Java or Python, since the comparisons at the end of each chapter is really excellent. As anything that was once considered advanced (and therefore, cutting edge), the book has aged. Things like the persistent data manipulation module presented in the book have since been improved upon by newer ones. Some of the TCL comparisons are not entirely fair anymore (although mostly still correct). Tom Christiansen's perltoot for OO included with Perl is a much better and thorough introduction than the one offered here. Also, if you are the type of programmer that reads every single little piece of documentation that comes with Perl, then well, you won't find anything new here --but some concepts that could have been unclear might be clarified here (the ideas presented are still correct, even if some of the code is not anymore).

Rating:
Summary: Good technical coverage of PERL.
Review: Well written and useful. I didn't use it much as I would have liked to because I needed a book that was probably intermediate rather than Advanced.