Rating: 
Summary: Covers 2 bases
Review: Book is excellent. I left programming 10 years back (I knew only BASIC and Cobol then) and this book made me very comfortable with Perl. Writing style is very smooth. Doesn't indimidate at all. You can buy this book cheaper in India (you may be surprised that it sells for US$8 in India).
Rating: 
Summary: this is not a beginners book
Review: first of all., my reason for giving this book a rating of 1 star isthat I bought it on the assumption that it was a beginners book. It may very well be a good book for intermediate/advanced, but since it has been marketed for beginners I give this a rating of 1 star.I have never been so compelled to rate any book, ever, until seeing the positive ratings. My final remark is, though, Eric C. Herrmann may know his PERL, his verbal/teaching skills are seriously limited.... Phil
Rating:
Summary: Great reference book for beginer to advanced programmers
Review: Great perl reference book. I keep in near me when writing perl code. I have asked author questions via email & he was always more than gracious in answering them fully. Previous complaint reviewer was too harsh on the code examples. With over 20,000 lines of code, there are going to be some errors after a publisher reformats listings. These errors were easily recognizable. I fully recommend this book to both new and advanced programmers. I had not written much perl code before buying this book, but have had over 15 years writing software programs. This book was easy for me to follow and learn. The reference and object oriented areas of this book were extremely understandable & easy to follow. I highly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: Actually makes sense to a dummy like me!
Review: I have no programming experience at all, NONE!, ZERO, ZILCH! I have tried other books (mostly C books) and they have lost me almost right away. But with MASTERING PERL 5, I am on my way to programming oneness =) I have had it for just over 1 week and I'm already typing up code on my own (be it simple code). I highly reccomend this book, especially if you are a newbie, like me. That's all, now stop reading these stupid reviews and buy the book!
Rating:
Summary: Terrible, just terrible
Review: I'm here to echo the comments of the August 18, 1999 entry here. This book is absolutely terrible, terrible, terrible. First and foremost, let me just say that I am an experienced C++, Objective-C, PHP, and MySQL developer. I am learning Perl for the purpose of undergraduate research relating to bioinformatics. My problems with this book lay not in my technical ignorance. The book is absolutely ridden with typos and errors. I'd say a good 40% of the examples don't work correctly. One of the more egregious errors is the repeated use of the decrement operator, -- (that's 2 minuses). Throughout the book, the author references it as being just - (that's one minus). I'm guessing the author typed this book up in MicroSoft Word or some other editor (double minuses followed by a character create an em dash) which screwed up all of the syntax. Furthermore, the book's website does not acknowledge these errors at all. Also, many of the coded examples are accompanied by screenshots giving you the expected output. Unfortunately, these screenshots oftentimes offer results far different from what the printed code outputs. To sum up problems with the book:
1) Lots of typos
2) Syntactical errors
3) Mismatched code and expected output
4) Lack of corrections on the book's website
5) There are better books out there
6) Don't buy this book
7) Overly repetitive and verbose
Rating:
Summary: Terrible, just terrible
Review: I'm here to echo the comments of the August 18, 1999 entry here. This book is absolutely terrible, terrible, terrible. First and foremost, let me just say that I am an experienced C++, Objective-C, PHP, and MySQL developer. I am learning Perl for the purpose of undergraduate research relating to bioinformatics. My problems with this book lay not in my technical ignorance. The book is absolutely ridden with typos and errors. I'd say a good 40% of the examples don't work correctly. One of the more egregious errors is the repeated use of the decrement operator, -- (that's 2 minuses). Throughout the book, the author references it as being just - (that's one minus). I'm guessing the author typed this book up in MicroSoft Word or some other editor (double minuses followed by a character create an em dash) which screwed up all of the syntax. Furthermore, the book's website does not acknowledge these errors at all. Also, many of the coded examples are accompanied by screenshots giving you the expected output. Unfortunately, these screenshots oftentimes offer results far different from what the printed code outputs. To sum up problems with the book:
1) Lots of typos
2) Syntactical errors
3) Mismatched code and expected output
4) Lack of corrections on the book's website
5) There are better books out there
6) Don't buy this book
7) Overly repetitive and verbose
Rating:
Summary: I highly recommend this book!
Review: If you are not familiar with UNIX and would like to develop a dynamic site running on a Windows based server this book will help you! A day before I bought this book, I thought that PERL is spelled PEARL. This should give you an idea of how much I knew about it. I also had no knowledge of programming. Since I started working with the Internet, I needed a set of tools. I always associated PERL with UNIX, but after hearing about PERL for Win32 I got interested. About 20 hours after buying this book I had my web site talk to my database. I did not copy examples from the book. I wrote the code to do what I needed it to do. It would be great to sit down and read the book cover to cover and then start development, but time is of the essence. I jumped to the section that interested me the most, which is the very last section in the book. When I needed more details I went back and found the details. The book works well as a "How To" as well as "Reference". When I needed additional information I emailed the author. To my surprise, I got a response next day! I highly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: This book has problems...
Review: Serious problems... The first example the author gives you is an auto-mall program... WITHOUT telling you what any of the syntax means... that is the most rediculous thing in the world! Someone who knows nothing about Perl would be turned off right then and there. That's what happened with me... I put the book down and said 'the hell with Perl!". Then I wanted to write something that would've been ideally suited for Perl. I told a couple of guys at work and they told me to pick up 'Programming Perl' and 'Learning Perl' by O'Reilly and am I GLAD I did! DON'T buy this book... you'll only be frustrated with it... get the O'Reilly books instead... you'll be glad you did!
Rating: 
Summary: Beginner book, yet hard to read
Review: This book is targeted to beginners, and in many cases this philosophy shows repeatedly. However, the layout of the book is not well-designed at all. Many a time you find yourself jumping back and forth between chapters searching for the answers to some language features used in the examples, yet at times you found yourself reading duplicate materials in different chapters. For example, the author taught you some scalar variable usages in chapter 3, then the (nearly) same topic was covered in chapter 5, leaving the rules for scalar variable naming conventions duplicated in both chapters (hash is another topic that was repeated in different chapters). Another example is that the author referred to appendix A repeatedly, yet either due to author's cryptic writing or negligence (or my lack of effort?), I was not able to find it. The author seems to be trying to give you an overall taste of Perl program flavor in the first few chapters then begin to lay down language foundations systematically, yet his intention and writing were confusing enough to turn me away from this book to "Programming Perl" from O'Reilly. I had learned a few interpreted or compiled languages before (though not Perl) so I was looking for finishing this book rather quickly. However it is the writing not the content that repeatedly got in my way. This book has the right content. Had this book been MUCH better orgnized, it'd been an excellent beginner book. For its current edition, though, it's pretty mediocre. If you have enough time to read it through, maybe you will find it helpful, or else you should find some other books that allow you learn the same thing faster.
Rating: 
Summary: Book for beginners confuses the beginner
Review: This is a great reference if you need to find out how a function is used in a context because of its numerous complete example programs and subroutines which you can also use as a base for your own programs. However, if you want to learn Perl from the ground up, I would recommend the slightly humorous and very well written "Programmering Perl" by Larry Wall (the inventor of the Perl programming language) et all. The latter is great as a study book and the instruction list it features answers every question you could possibly ask about Perl. "Programming Perl" is the book I always reach for, but I do not regret buying this one. They both have their pros and cons.
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