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Summary: Fantastic Book for idiomatic Perl
Review: Once you've gained some knowledge of Perl, this is the book that will step you up to the major leagues. Effective Perl Programming helped me make the transition from Perl Programmer to Perl Hacker. I highly recommend it for anyone with a basic or greater understanding of Perl. There are many, many useful nuggets of information and you can really just open up to any page and learn something, no matter how advanced your knowledge of Perl
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Summary: code with style . . .
Review: One beauty of perl is that there are so many ways to do any given task. This can also make life hell when you have to maintain other people's code, or even your own code several months later. While this book doesn't tell you 'one right way' to do things, it does show you how to do things with style. Not only will you feel cool for writing pretty code, you'll be much happier with it in the long run.
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Summary: essential reading for the serious perl programmer
Review: Perl starts out as a world unto its own, full of strange symbols, it is shrouded in a world of mystery and obfusaction (or not :) ).Admit it, part of the charm of perl is writing some obscure JAPH one-liner, being able to get 'shebang' jokes, and knowing what the heck $$->a->razzle()->dazzle might actually accomplish. But how to get there? You've probably read the Llama and the Camel. You've probably got some bigh honkin scripts out there doing some heavy lifting. Heck, you may have cobbled a RegEx together that unravels the Necronmicon. All this and yet.... Odds are you came from a C-ish or similar background and you realize that you're still writing C or Java, but in Perl. This book is the Emerillian kick to the next level. Realizing that languages, Perl especially, have idioms, best practices, standards, Hall acquanints you with them. Just as children are baffled by "a fork in the road" you may find handy idioms like my ($b) = ($a=~m,(^\w+?),) something you have to look up, or memorize -- but later you'll realize that you *needed that* phrase in order to round out your vocabulary (just like a 'fork in tho road'). Hall also makes good suggestions that will help make your code tighter, helping your banish overuse of globals (impossible for someone else to maintain). He teaches you to document and follow standards. this book was critical in my development form perl-plateaud and stymied, to perl-proficient. Thanks Hall!
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Summary: Outstanding!
Review: Precise and concise. Well written. Useful itemized table of content. Packed with excellent examples of do's and dont's. Indispensable. Recommended for all serious Perl programmers.
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Summary: A joy and an inspiration
Review: Reading this book was both a joy and an inspiration. So much packed into just 250 pages! Not wordy, gets right to the point, ideal for the busy programmer. This is the best second book on Perl; it especially helps a Perl programmer make the transition from writing Perl in C style to writing native idiomatic Perl.
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Summary: A must have for every serious perl programmer...
Review: Reading this book will make the difference between you writing code in perl and writing perl code. The only thing better than this book is Joseph's 'live' training. He does have the best shirts of any instructor I've ever seen ;^) And yes, he WILL sign your book there.
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Summary: Essential stuff you won't find in manuals
Review: The authors are long-time professional Perl trainers and it clearly shows: the selection of material, organization and presentation style are honed and distilled to be worth paying for hourly. The book is well-balanced beteween theory and practice being divided into several thematical chapters each starting with a short intoduction followed by concrete receipes, accompanied with examples. It's also very usable as a reference as receipes are clearly named and easy to find. If you got a basic hang of Perl and are starting to love it, get this book now. This is a rare one, teaching Perl beyond syntax and common module usage.
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Summary: Pearls of wisdom for the Perl progammer
Review: The day I got this book, I turned to page 1 and started reading. Two hours later, I had made it only to page 80. Why? Because this book is DENSE and FULL of tips and tricks that will expand the horizons of the intermediate programmer. I spent a lot of time studying the numerous examples in order to soak up all the information that was being presented. I've been programming with Perl since 1992 and teach it at a community college. And yet with every turn of the page, I learned something new. Examples: Making regular expressions more efficient Using map() and grep() How to call a subroutine from inside a string Great stuff! The techniques I've learned from this book have been incorporated into my new Perl scripts and they are shorter and faster than ever before. I can't lavish enough praise on this book. Authors Joseph Hall and Randal Schwartz should be commended. If you have been using Perl for some time and want to hone your skills, get this book now.
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Summary: Just couldn't get into it
Review: There isn't realy anything wrong with this book per se. It does have some good ideas for Perl programming. I just didn't find it very interesting or even that useful. I stopped reading half way through.
Rating:
Summary: Just couldn't get into it
Review: There isn't realy anything wrong with this book per se. It does have some good ideas for Perl programming. I just didn't find it very interesting or even that useful. I stopped reading half way through.
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