Learn Perl In a Weekend

Rating:
Summary: Where was the proof reader?
Review: It might be possible to learn the basics of Perl in a weekend by studying this book, IF there weren't so many mistakes and typos in the code examples to slow you down. The author keeps referring to a companion web site from which to download the code if you have problems running the examples. Apparently, it was known early on that much of the code in the book wouldn't work. Frustrating.

Rating:
Summary: Not what you'd hope
Review: Learn Perl in a weekend ? Yes if all perl consists of is writing a print statement n different ways.
Many of the examples do not work or are poorly edited.
Page 56 for example has an example of the split command that shows two quotes rather than two slashes.
It may sound trivial but it is important when the student has no other frame of reference.
The flock command does not work on win2000/nt the author acknowledges this but offers no other example a student could learn from.
After this the only this the rest of the book consists of is print statements with differing contents.
By the way. The game the cover refers to.. You guessed it... More print statements.
My advice is not to waste your money. Purchase another book such as one from O'Reilly

Rating:
Summary: There's only *one* saving grace for this book.
Review: Since the code samples in this book are positively rife with typos, it forces the reader (if truly interested) to seek out the correct answers from other sources, and to experiment until something actually works. So I suppose that's intensive, but certainly not my favorite way to learn. *Why* didn't I keep my receipt? The code samples on the companion web site are also wrong. Incidentally, I sent an email to customer service. As expected. No response. AVOID!