Product Description

Customer Reviews (10)

Like a collection of really good blog posts
Imagine that chromatic were to write a professional once-a-week blog for the span of about two years, with edits and ideas from Damian Conway and Curtis "Ovid" Poe, focusing on cool Perl tricks.The result would look very similar to the Perl Hacks book.

The book is filled with lots of small, self-contained gems.I've put a few of these ideas into immediate practice, like Smart::Comments.Other ideas solve problems that I didn't think had any simple solutions, like reading files backwards, which I'll use the next time I need it.Many of their ideas are curriosities, the sorts of things that are kinda cool but I never think I'll need like vi and emacs hacks, or database stuff; still, knowing that they are there and where to read more makes me much more likely to use those tools if ever the need arises.

In all I'm very pleased with my purchase and I would recommend it to others.You're almost certain to find a few ideas that you can put into immediate use and many ideas that you'll bookmark mentally so you can use them in the future.

An excellent way to get more out of Perl than you ever realized
Perl is my workhorse language. I've written more Perl code, both personally and professionally, than any other language I've learned. Whenever I receive a new project, I immediately think of how I would accomplish it quickly in Perl. I've also been a fan of O'Reilly's "Hacks" series of books. When I heard of the marriage of Perl and O'Reilly's "Hacks" series in the book Perl Hacks, I knew I had to pick up a copy. It was a match made in heaven. The nature of Perl for terse, yet powerful constructs, and the hackish nature of the "Hacks" series makes for one of my favorite books in this series. The collection of articles in Perl Hacks are great for putting more productivity into your programming experience.

Those of you not familiar with O'Reilly's "Hacks" Series may need an introduction. The "Hacks" Series is an ever-growing set of books with focused attention on a particular topic, like Astronomy, Mental Improvement, or even Halo 2. The books are generally short, and contain article-length "hacks" of varying difficulty, noted by a thermometer next to the hack number and description. These "hacks" fall into several categories; the non-obvious solution to a problem, the performance improvement, and the "gee, I didn't know it could do that" oddity. What makes this series special compared with other books is the willingness to "void the warranty" on a particular product, and get straight to the internals, whether they lay in hardware or software. If something can be made better by opening the covers, or twiddling with the program layout, then its eligible for inclusion in these books. The series lends itself to a wide range of topics, and the format is great for a quick read, or for (my favorite) just randomly opening the book and reading what's there.

Perl Hacks is not a book that you'd find yourself reading straight through (although you do want to make sure you visit every hack in the book at least once). The book is divided into nine chapters: Productivity Hacks, User Interaction, Data Munging, Working with Modules, Object Hacks, Debugging, Developer Tricks, Know Thy Code, and Expand Your Perl Foo. There are 101 hacks in this book, ranging from the simple (Reading files backward, or managing your module paths) to the truly perverse (Replacing bad code without touching it by substituting the system-wide exit call with your own[...]. Each hack title is listed in the table of contents, with both the page number and the hack number. Each hack contains a graphic of a thermometer next to the number to show the relative difficulty of the hack (higher temperatures = more difficult hacks). There quite a variety of hacks placed throughout the book. Not once did I feel that the book was padded with something that really didn't belong in the book. If anything Perl Hacks opened my eyes to things that I would never have thought to do, but could easily see as being useful. I wouldn't have thought to create my own personal module bundles for moving my Perl programs between machines (I've always done it the old fashioned way: run, cpan install, repeat), but hack #31 makes it so "of course" that I'm thinking of including this in all of my Perl code that I ship. Hack #74 shows how to trace all of the modules your program uses (and all of their modules, too). Hack #52 is a simple hack ("Make Invisible Characters Apparent") but I can see this saving a developer or two some time when figuring out why their code isn't behaving properly. Of course, not all hacks in the book are productive (at least, not while you're programming). Hack #37, "Drink to the CPAN" is a drinking game you and your Perl buddies may want to try.

Perl Hacks is a short book, at less than 300 pages, but it's loaded with incredibly useful information. Much like the "Perl Cookbook" (also from O'Reilly) you'll find lots of useful items hidden in their pages. Many times I started with one hack, and finished the chapter reading the rest of the hacks because there were just that interesting. Perl Hacks is highly recommended for any Perl programmer to have on their programmer book shelf. Sure, you might be able to find some of the hacks out there on the net, but I think you'll find as I have that this is more of a go-to reference for finding out some of the more interesting corners of Perl.

Super-advanced Perl
From the title, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Perl Hacks. Was it going to be about rummaging around in Perl's internals? Making Perl do clever, yet ultimately dumb and pointless tricks? It turns out that, while there is some fairly voodooish material here, some of it quite playful, on the whole it's a very practical book. Aimed firmly at the advanced Perl programmer who knows when it's appropriate to mess about with the symbol table, temporarily turn off warnings, or crack out one of the B:: modules, this is a collection of 101 suggestions to improve your productivity, boggle your mind about what Perl can do, or both.

The content reminds me a little of the likes of Exceptional C++ Style, a mixture of advanced best practices, and things which you may not need to know, but you'll probably still be interested in finding out how it works. For instance, have you ever considered tieing an array or hash variable to a function? Ever wanted to name a supposed anonymous subroutine? Print out the source code as well as the line number of a syntax error? Nor me, but Perl Hacks shows how it could be useful. These are illustrative of the spirit of the book.

My favourite material was probably the chapter on modules. Included are how-tos for outputting all the modules used in a package, automatically reloading modules in running code, shortening long package names with the CPAN 'aliased' module, and making up your own bundle of modules for easy installation. There's also an interesting object chapter with subjects such as: inside out objects, using YAML for serialisation, using traits and autogeneration of accessors.

Additionally, there's a little on using those scary B:: packages, using modules which use the B:: packages or other dark magic (e.g. peeking inside closures), some fairly hardcore tracing and profiling, that touches on some Perl VM internals. Also worth mentioning is the hack that hijacks the angle bracket glob operator to create Haskell/Python-style list comprehensions.

You are going to have to be one scarily gifted Perl hacker not to find something useful or at least thought-provoking at regular intervals throughout this book. My only complaint is that the hack format, which the blurb on the back of the book describes as a "short lesson", does not lend itself equally well to all hacks. While I liked the chapter on objects, some of the hacks (in particular the traits hack, some of the testing material) were too short.

If you like the sound of a book that's somewhere between Perl Cookbook, Perl Best Practices and the second edition of Advanced Perl Programming, you're going to love this.

A Great Collection of Perl Tricks
I received this book as a token of appreciation for my contributions to
the 2006 Perl Advent Calendar. It's the first book I read as part of the
O'Reilly Hacks' series of books, and it proved to be a light yet informative and entertaining
read.

The book covers various useful "hacks" or small tricks that allow one to
achieve a lot of cool tasks when working with Perl. These tricks are unorthodox
and stretch the limit of one's Perl knowledge. Since they require an advanced
knowledge and understanding of Perl, I would recommend this book only for Perl
experts. Some of the B:: using modules were even too high-level for me to
understand how they worked internally. However, I understood the purpose of the
code in all cases, even if I didn't understand the code itself.

So it is a recommended read for people who've worked with Perl a lot,
and wish to learn many new and useful tricks. Perl Hacks for Perl hackers,
indeed!

Excellent Compendium of Perl Tricks
To be completely honest, this isn't the book I thought it was going to be. Most O'Reilly Hacks books start off pretty simply and in a few chapters take you to the further reaches of their subject area. Whilst this is a great way to quickly get a good taste of a particular topic, it has the occasional disadvantage that for subjects that you know well, the first couple of chapters can seem a bit basic. As I know Perl pretty well, I thought I would be on familiar ground for at least half of the book.

I was wrong.

Oh, it started off easily enough. Making use of various browser and command line tools to get easy access to Perl documentation, creating some useful shell aliases to cut down typing for your most common tasks. "Oh yes", I thought smugly to myself, "I know all that". But by about Hack 5 I was reading about little tweaks that I didn't know about. I'd start a hack thinking that I knew everything that the authors were going to cover and end up frustrated that I was on the tube and couldn't immediately try out the new trick I had just learnt.

It's really that kind of book. Pretty much everyone who reads it will pick up something that will it easier for them to get their job done (well, assuming that their job involves writing Perl code!) And, of course, looking at the list of authors, that's only to be expected. The three authors listed on the cover are three of the Perl communities most respected members. And the list of other contributers reads like a who's who of people who are doing interesting things with Perl - people whose use.perl journals are always interesting or whose posts on Perl Monks are worth reading before other people's. Luckily, it turns out that all these excellent programmers can also explain what they are doing (and why they are doing it) very clearly.

Like all books in the Hacks series, it's a little bitty. The hacks are organised into nine broad chapters, but the connections between hacks in the same chapter can sometimes be a bit hard to see. But I enjoyed that. In places it made the book a bit of a rollercoaster ride. You're never quite sure what is coming next, but you know it's going to be fun.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more apt the fairground analogy seems. When you ask Perl programmers what they like about Perl, you'll often hear "fun" mentioned near the top of the list. People use Perl because they enjoy it. And the authors' enjoyment of Perl really comes through in the book. It's obvious that they really wanted to show people the things that they thought were really cool.

Although I did learn useful tips from the earlier part of the book, it was really the last three chapters that were the most useful for me. Chapter 7, Developer Tricks, had a lot of useful things to say about testing, Chapter 8, Know Thy Code, contains a lot of information on using Perl to examine your Perl code and Chapter 9, Expand Your Perl Foo was a grab-bag of obscure (but still useful) Perl tricks.

So where does this book fit in to O'Reilly's Perl canon? I can't recommend it for beginners. But if you're a working Perl programmer with a couple of years' experience then I'd be very surprised if you didn't pick up something that will be useful to you. And don't worry about it overlapping with other books in your Perl library - offhand I can't think of anything in the book that has been covered in any previous Perl book.

All in all, this would make a very useful addition to your Perl library. ... Read more

Product Description

Beginning Perl Web Development: From Novice to Professional introduces you to the world of Perl Internet application development. This book tackles all areas crucial to developing your first web applications and includes a powerful combination of real-world examples coupled with advice. Topics range from serving and consuming RSS feeds, to monitoring Internet servers, to interfacing with e-mail. You'll learn how to use Perl with ancillary packages like Mason and Nagios.

Though not version specific, this book is an ideal read if you have had some grounding in Perl basics and now want to move into the world of web application development. Author Steve Suehring emphasizes the security implications of Perl, drawing on years of experience teaching readers how to "think safe," avoid common pitfalls, and produce well-planned, secure code.

Customer Reviews (3)

A Sampler of What Perl Can Do on the Web
My warning with "Beginning Perl Web Development: From Novice to Professional" is to understand what author Steve Suehring means by the word "novice." He does not mean it as a synonym for "beginner". If you don't have some degree of skill in Perl, you will be overwhelmed.

That being said, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has worked through a beginning Perl book, or several. (I've found that the best way to learn any computer language is to work through several introductory books, getting most of the examples to work on my computer.) Do like I did and read through the appendix, "Perl Basics," first. I'll admit I learned a few things, and I'd bet that you will, too. This appendix is worth the price of the book.

I don't think that anyone will become an expert (or professional) in the areas Suehring covers by reading this book. However, this is an excellent book for seeing what is out there and getting your feet wet. His section on databases led me to read a book on SQL, and I'm about halfway through another. I'm grateful for his push in that direction!

Next for me will probably be a book on LWP, a Perl module to automate web surfing. Suehring gave me a start, but I need more.

I already had some background in CGI using Perl. I enjoyed the review, though. CGI, Common Gateway Interface, is a way to go beyond HTML. For instance, I use it to read and write files on my website in response to user input.

I don't at this time have a great deal of interest in Net::Tools, that is such skills as sending e-mail from web-sites and pinging them. Nor do I see myself studying XML and RSS, Perl templates and Mason, or learning about the Apache server. However, I'm glad I read through the whole book to get an idea of what is involved.

I should include a comment that "Beginning Perl Web Development: From Novice to Professional" is a bit Unix-centric, like so many Perl books.I should also share that the source-code on the web-site for the examples is all in .tar.gz format, rather than the .zip format we Windows users are accustomed to dealing with. So if you are a Windows user, plan to do a lot of typing. Or to figure out that .tar.gz thing.

Read the whole book, appendix first. (Either now, or when you have a couple Perl tutorials under your belt.) My guess is "Beginning Perl Web Development: From Novice to Professional" will lead you to find a new area of interest or two, too, and probably different ones from mine.

The Perl Handbook for Internet Development
Perl and the Internet, especially the web, are nothing new.CGI programming and Perl were part of the early wild, wild west days of the World Wide Web.However, Perl is more than just a CGI processor relegated to handling simple email forms and other mundane web tasks.In this book the author will take you through several examples and topics dealing with using Perl for database development, XML and RSS feeds, performance monitoring of your web server, and advanced CGI tasks such as how to handle uploaded files on the web with Perl, and much more.

Each section goes over a concept, introduces the module you will be using to accomplish the task, shows you the source code and walk you through it.In addition, tips as well as things to avoid are listed throughout each example for things to watch out for, or for common programming pitfalls to avoid with Perl.Sections themselves are broken down into topics that group concepts such as separate topics on XML and RSS feeds, CGI, Performance Monitoring and Web Templates.

This is a good book for the Perl programmer with some skills beneath his or her belt.It helps you take the simple Perl you may be using on your website today and help develop it to use all the power and functionality of Perl.

Perl programming for your Internet needs
The focus of this book is on interacting with the Internet using Perl.It assumes some very basic knowledge of programming such as the concepts of scalar variables, arrays, if/then/else, and similar items.If you are not familiar with these items in a Perl environment then it is still all covered pretty well in the Appendix.The first section of the book contains information on working with CGI modules, databases, and interacting with the operating system for directory information, file uploads, etc.The second section discusses working with the LWP and Net::Tools.The LWP is the Library of WWW modules in Perl.This collection of modules allows you to write Perl programs that include the most common web tasks built in including retrieving web pages and submitting web-based forms.While the LWP supports various web protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and NNTP the book concentrates primarily on using the LWP with HTTP and HTTPS.The NET::Tools primarily look at working with POP3 and SMTP services.The third section of the book is about using Perl with XML, SOAP, and RSS.The following section focuses on using mod_perl to enhance performance.As a module embedded in the Apache server this allows Perl to execute faster and allows the Perl programs to access the Apache request object.The fifth and final section focuses on working with templates, and building perl based web sites with Mason.Mason is used to insert Perl code directly into an HTML page.This in turn allows for a dynamic web site with elements common to all pages but still allowing some changes based on the page being accessed.Beginning Perl Web Development is highly recommended to anyone who wants to use Perl for added functionality with your web site or to allow interaction with other web sites. ... Read more

Product Description

Learn Perl programming quickly and easily with 24 one-hour lessons in Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours. The book's step-by-step lessons teach you the basics of Perl and how to apply it in web development and system administration. Plus, the third edition has been updated to include five chapters on new technologies, information on the latest version of Perl, and a look ahead to Perl 6. Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours focuses on real-world development, teaching you how to:

Customer Reviews (30)

24 does not really equal 24
You have to really be a fast reader and typist and be able to absorb info fast to imagine that you can run through this book in 24 hours.There are 24 chapters, each of which is supposed to take an hour.

Aside from that, it is pretty good information and well organized. But don't set your stopwatch.

Great book. Great price. Quick service.
I found this book in a local library and enjoyed reading the first chapter or so there.I decided it was one that I needed, so I ordered it while sitting in the library.I haven't been disappointed.The book arrived quickly, and was in wonderful condition for a used book.

Great book
This was my first introductory programming book.Since then I have branced off into C++.What I like about this book is that it teaches perl in a logical method.I found that the programs that showed syntax of perl were very useful for any programming language.It started on a bit of history of Perl then how to use Perl then to the basic concepts of the language.Each program was intersting to write and I did learn how to actually accomplish basic programming tasks.The book does not go into more advanced concpets but is a great resource for beginners.It has all the software and instruction to begin designing basic programs.

typos, typos..everywhere typos
This books is filled with typos, which is extremely frustrating when you are a beginner and have to rely on the teacher's skills.

I give this book two stars because it does EXPLAIN the topics quite understandably for novices, but fails to give the user much practice because of all the typos...at least for Windows users.

I have found better practice material freely available on the web than are in this book.

So if it is knowledge ABOUT Perl, this is a decent book to get, if you are looking for a way to PRACTICE it, look elsewhere.

Awesome book, awesome language.
Perl is probably one of the best languages to learn if you just want to have a programming language in your toolkit and this book is a great resource for learning Perl.
If you're new to programming Perl introduces many of the concepts that you'll need to master while allowing a lot of flexibility.
I don't know if 24 hours is quite enough to complete this book, but the short focused lessons make learning fun. ... Read more

Product Description
Perl & XML is aimed at Perl programmers who need to work with XML documents and data. The book covers all the major modules for XML processing in Perl.But this book is more than just a listing of modules; it gives a complete, comprehensive tour of the landscape of Perl and XML, making sense of the myriad of modules, terminology, and techniques.This book covers:

parsing XML documents and writing them out againworking with event streams and SAXtree processing and the Document Object Modeladvanced tree processing with XPath and XSLT

Customer Reviews (7)

An Archetypical O'Reilly Book
This is the sort of book that put O'Reilly on the map. Concise, practical, step-by-step, the kind of book that allows you to get significant amounts of actual work done by the time you finish the third chapter or so. The introduction to XML in chapter two is one of the best I've ever seen, and I've often recommended it for people as an XML Executive Summary, even those who will never write a line of Perl.

Like that late 2006 early 2007 meme says: "It does just what it says on the tin."

Review of Perl & XML--XML for Perl Programmers
XML has begun to appear everywhere. XML has long served in hidden roles on servers and in configuration files. Microsoft Word 2003 for Windows now supports reading and writing XML to in it's wordprocessingML format. Unlike MS Word's horrible "Save As Web Page" feature, wordprocessingML, or wordML for short, is a clean usable format. The adoption of XML in a user space as common as MS Word in an accessible format means that developers have a rich opportunity in XML.

The book Perl and XML focuses on the where Perl and XML meet. In asking the questions "Why Perl?", the authors Erik Ray and Jason McIntosh point to Perl's ability to handle text, strings, and regular expressions. The authors also point out in a clear and concise manner the strengths of XML as a means for structuring data.

The book focuses on working with XML using Perl. Tutorials of the basics of either language are best found in another book. The author of the book recommends Learning Perl for those people starting out in Perl. The book does not assume much knowledge of XML, so it's really an XML book for Perl programmers. If you'd like a more in depth discussion of XML, you might check out Erik Ray's Learning XML.

Surveying many conventional XML tools and applications, the book addresses big picture items such as tree processing and streams as well as specific items such as RSS and SOAP. Approaching XML from both a practical point of view and strategic point of view, the author provides detailed examples and observes which strategies work well for handling XML in Perl.

Originally, I picked up Perl and XML to address a couple of small projects where I had to deal with XML. The examples in Perl and XML were well written and provided the information I needed to try out common Perl tools for handling XML. Unfortunately, I found that XML processing in Perl was unacceptably slow for the two projects I had at hand. In a short amount of time, I hacked together a faster solution without relying on an XML parser. That said, I gleaned a great deal from Perl and XML which I imagine I will be putting to use soon.

If you're not currently working with XML, you may find yourself working sooner than you think. I couldn't more highly recommend Perl and XML for thorough treatment of the subject even if you end up hacking your own solution.

Good book, but lots of errors in the code
I liked the way this book was structured - it was a quick read over a thanksgiving family visit, and it gave a good overview of what XML is and what XML isn't, and what tools are available already in Perl to use it. I particularly liked the middle of the book, and how it dealt with trees and event streams. First there was in short intro chapter on why you'd want to parse XML as an event stream, and some simple modules that give back event streams. Then the next chapter would be a longer one on SAX - the definitive way to do event streams. Same thing with trees and DOM. It ends with some examples of real-life XML processing, such as consuming and producing RSS feeds. The book also has the best description of Unicode I've ever read, and did it with just a few pages.

What ticked me off about this book were the egregious errors in the sampe code. The very first piece of code they show in chapter 3 is a 100-line XML parser that doesn't need any support modules. The problem is that it doesn't recognize any XML because the regular expressions are wrong, which was pretty confusing for me (I'm relatively new to Perl, so I figured they were just "another way of doing it" that I didn't understand). I downloaded the examples frm the O'Reily website, and they're wrong there too - so it's not just a printing error. Worse, the example XML file I tried to test the parser on was also from the tarfile I downloaded - but it was invalid XML! (example 3.4). So I was trying to learn XML with a sample parser that didn't work, on invalid XML! This is not the quality I am expecting from O'Reilly!
(In fairness, both of these errors were in the online errata, but I'm not sure if they were corrected in the 7/04 reprint)

There are other errors in the code too - so be sure and check back with the errata page if you're going to seriously use the code. If they'd run their sample code beforeprinting, I'd probably give this book a better rating.

Good Overview Of XML And Supporting Perl Modules
I have wanted to learn about XML, but I found the pure XML books dry and too theoretical.However, putting XML in the context of something familiar, i.e. Perl, made it much more accessible.This book gives a nice overview of XML parsing using event based and tree based parsers that are available as Perl modules.The book presents SAX and DOM standards compliant modules as well as modules with more Perlish interfaces, e.g. XML::Grove and XML::Twig.It discusses the pros and cons of event vs. tree parsing of XML as well as a few advanced technologies such as database integration and SOAP.The only knock I have on the book is that the examples are a bit contrived and do not show how to solve meaningful problems.

Nice overview but lacks in useful examples
Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same affliction that most programming books suffer from. There are absolutely no useful code examples in the book. Yes, as an experienced engineer, I can substitute my own code where the book prints to the screen or searches for monkeys, but hey, I paid for my ticket, sometimes I'd like to be told exactly what to do. If I wanted to figure out everything on my own, I wouldn't have purchased a book in the first place. ... Read more

Product Description
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is one of the most powerful methods of providing dynamic content on the Web. CGI is a generic interface for calling external programs to crunch numbers, query databases, generate customized graphics, or perform any other server-side task. CGI programs can be written in any programming language, but Perl is by far the most popular language for CGI. CGI programmers appreciatePerl's text manipulation features and its CGI.pm module, which givesan well-integrated object-oriented interface to practically allCGI-related tasks. Based on the best-selling CGI Programmingon the World Wide Web, this edition has been completely rewrittento demonstrate current techniques available with the CGI.pm moduleand the latest versions of Perl. Topics include incorporating JavaScript for form validation,controlling browser caching, making CGI scripts secure in Perl,working with databases, creating simple search engines,maintaining state between multiple sessions, generatinggraphics dynamically, and improving performance of CGI scripts.Amazon.com Review
The appearance of the second edition of CGI Programming with Perl heralds the beginning of the neoclassical era of Web service. CGI--or common gateway interface--is the original back end for client-driven, dynamic Web-page service and deserves consideration as the Romulus of the Internet Empire. But, where first-edition author Gundavaram described the lonely Romulus laying the brick foundation of dynamic Web-page service in 1996, second-edition collaborators Guelich and Birznieks have pitched in to resurrect Romulus amid the crowded streets of modern Rome. Why bother? Surely four years have brought technological revolutions (Java, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion) that render CGI's original brick-by-brick approach as obsolete as, say, Roman mythology--or bricks and mortar.

And yet not. It is an ambiguous blessing that the original CGI persists, adhering to the underside of Web service by the duct tape that is Perl. This point is not missed by Guelich, Gundavaram, and Birznieks, whose advocacy of CGI is both bolstered by the growing applications module base of Perl and tempered by their awareness of CGI's structural limitations. Both new and returning readers of CGI Programming with Perl should browse the last chapter first in order to appreciate the proposed solutions to CGI's greatest sin: its impractical slowness in a world of a million-hits-per-day Web service. The chapter describes CGI-compatible FastCGI and mod_perl technologies that circumvent the process-spawning slowness of the simple CGI. Advanced users might want to skip directly to O'Reilly's fine mod_perl tome, Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C, by Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern.

The authors' second pass at CGI pedagogy is a lucid, honest, and expanded account that develops functionality of dynamic Web pages in a rational progression--from HTML client-server and CGI syntax basics to general input/output, forms, e-mail, graphics, and simple database applications, including maintaining client state and data persistence under the otherwise stateless HTTP protocol. The authors offer synopses of cookies, JavaScripting, server security, and XML, all of which are described in detail in other books.

Whether or not neoclassical CGI is fast enough for your purposes--perhaps for guarded intranets--bear in mind that CGI is the standard to which every other Web server has had to respond. The second edition of CGI Programming with Perl is still the best introduction to the classics. --Peter Leopold ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Write an outline before you start writing a book
Fairly good content, but hideously organized.The book jumps all over the place and really lacks the coherence I've come to expect from O'Reilly books.I used "Learning Perl" to get pretty good with Perl in two weeks.The book on HTML is terrific as well.A good "Learning CGI" book to lead into this one would be nice I think.

Great in it's day
When the first edition came out, it was an atypical O'Reilly book; they were known for publishing guides for working programmers, but this was more of an introduction to a topic instead of a reference.

The problem is that it's not 1998 anymore.The technology this book explains (quite clearly!) really isn't used that much anymore, save by people who already know Perl quite well and want to leverage that skill to simple web scripts.

PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby all come to mind as a few of the modern approaches to the same topic.

After the errata, then what . . .
I've got the July 2000 printing and was amazed at the errata and the errata items yet to be "confirmed"!As an example of the latter, just beyond half-way through the book there's an address book cgi script some 10 pages in length of which only the first page or so is explained.The script is an attempt to use the Perl DBI along with the DBD::CSV modules (utilizing SQL statements) to explain the database role in "Data Persistance"!The problem is that the "getQueryResults" subroutine in the script doesn't return any records when searching for particular field values (and returns every record in the database if no values are entered in the "search" form).In addition the "doUpdate" module reports that an update has been completed when in reality there has been no change to the database!If you're planning on using the book to learn some CGI with Perl, then you're going to be set back by this and other code malfunctions scattered throughout the book!

Even though it's a step up from the CGI Primer Plus for Windows book (and gets a 4 star rating), it still leaves much to be desired for the person who learns by coding!

A good place to start
I purchased "CGI Programming with Perl" thinking it was, like many O'Reilly books, a bible of programming how-to for the working programmer. It's not. What it is, in fact, is a pretty good introduction to writing CGIs with Perl for someone who has some basic knowledge of Perl and HTTP, but who has never done any CGI programming. And that's just the position I was in when I bought it.

The first third of the book is introductory in nature, with an introduction to how forms and CGI scripts work, some discussion of parsing forms in other languages, and some simple examples. The bulk of the book contains more complex examples of tasks like writing questionaires, interfacing with relational databases, maintaining state, graphics and so forth. I did glean a lot of useful information there.

The biggest problem with this book is a problem that's really common to all book on Internet programming: Standards are changing so fast that a year old book is likely to contain chapter upon chapter illustrating obsolete techniques and libraries. In "CGI Programming" there are a lot of examples using Perl modules that haven't really caught on, while some of the newer modules (obviously) aren't meantioned. Another problem is that the book is kind of scattershot in the attention it gives different topics.

Still, I think this is one of the better books for someone with basic Perl skills looking to get started with CGIs. There's enough detail here to start writing CGIs, and enough information out there on the web to go on learning.

Okay, but not much there.
This is an okay book, but there's not much there. If you already know Perl and a little about CGI, there's not much to be had from this book. Learning Perl, Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook (The O'Reilly one) will complete everything you need to know. This doesn't do much for you. ... Read more

Product Description
The book on Perl that experienced Perl programmers have been looking for, Effective Perl Programming explains idiomatic Perl, covering the latest release (Version 5). It includes information and useful examples about the structure, functions, and latest capabilities of the language, such as self-documenting object-oriented modules.Learn from Hall's answers to "real life" questions and problems he receives from newsgroups and his Perl seminars.Amazon.com Review
Effective Perl Programming is a gem of a Perl book. Itsauthor, Joseph Hall, is a well-known Perl instructor and frequentposter on the seminal comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup. The book'stechnical editor is none other than Randal Schwartz, noted Netpersonality, enigmatic author of Learning Perl, andcontributor to Programming Perl.

Hall has distilled his years of Perl experience into a book for Perlprogrammers that is both fluid and fun to read. It's somewhat likereading the Perl FAQ; even when you think you know everything, there'sso much you don't know.

Effective Perl Programming has aclear layout: the text is easy on the eyes and the monospaced fontmakes a clear distinction between backticks and single quotes. Halluses his PEGS (PErl Graphical Structures) notation to show thedifference between Perl's different types of data structures and howeverything ties together.

Packed with great examples and codesnippets, this book is an excellent source of tips and tricks to makeyour Perl programs faster and easier to read. You'll also find astrong section on using the Perl debugger to improve your Perlprogramming skills. In yet another section, Hall walks the readerthrough the creation of a complete XS module that can boost theperformance of array shuffling eight-fold. All in all, this is a greatbook for programmers who want to move beyond plain, verbose Perltoward a more succinct and powerful coding style. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

Right ways to write Perl
A language reference book that's a page-turner? Yes, it can happen, and Hall and Schwartz have done it. At least one right way to almost anything in Perl that you might want to do, and then some. Clear, concise, no-nonsense guidance and explanations. What else can I say -- I wish I had a book like this for C!

great book
this book is "MUST HAVE" Perl book!
It gives you great idea to simply your code and algorithm.

A fast track to idiomatic Perl
This is a good book for getting a handle on intermediate level Perl and its idiomatic uses, arranged as a series of 60 'items' -- the debt to Effective C++ is obvious. This is not a tutorial on Perl, you should at least be at the level of The Llama and ideally be somewhat acquainted with the material covered in The Alpaca, too. Although similar ground is covered in this book to the latter, I would treat this book as a way to shore up your previous knowledge, rather than learning it for the first time.

The content holds up surprisingly well for 1997. The opening chapters cover a lot of the oddities and gotchas of life with Perl, such as slicing, the various connotations of undef, a persuasive defence of $_ and where + is necessary to disambiguate. The final 'miscellany' chapter also contains useful information in a similar vein. And this also appears to be one of the first books to detail the now famous Schwartzian transform and the Orcish manoeuvre for sorting, so it has a certain historical appeal.

Equally, the chapters on debugging, references, regular expressions and object oriented programming are also pretty good. It's just that there are now several other books that cover these topics. If you only want one book in this style, Perl Best Practices bestrides the field like a colossus, being more comprehensive, and better written. Not that there's anything wrong with the writing here, it's never boring as such, but it does feel flat.

Nonetheless, Effective Perl Programming does the job it sets out to do fairly well, and I find you can never have too much help in explaining the nooks and crannies of idiomatic Perl, so this is still worth getting hold of, particularly because you can find it at an extremely reasonable price.

Terrific Book
I'm fairly new to Perl (but not to programming) and this book is great.I really like the format of the code examples, and there's a lot of wisdom here on writing good, idiomatic Perl.

Great Perl Book
This book shows you some efficient and interesting ways of using Perl.It is very informative and I often use it when I want to see if there is a better way of doing something. ... Read more

Product Description
Perl Core Language Little Black Book, Second Edition, provides insightful tips and techniques to programming with Perl. Immediate solutions are provided with field tested examples to help programmers and Web Developers quickly solve problems and exploit the power and flexibility of Perl. The updated edition covers the current version of Perl (5.8) as well as highlighting critical features of the upcoming 6.0 version. Some of the highlights of the new edition include how to create programs and scripts that integrate both Perl and XML, how to use Perl¡¦s newest object-oriented features, how to use Perl¡¦s newer built-in functions, working with Perl¡¦s latest data types, using security features, and mastering the new database modules. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

Non-Fiction
A good reference to the PERL language.

As opposed to the O'Reilly publications, this book does not assume as much reading between the lines as what is written at times in those.

So, this may be useful for people to clarify what is being talked about in entries there, or just as a more clear starting point to begin with for the areas of PERL programming that it covers.

Great Reference
This book is a great reference if you just want to quickly look up a syntax.The index is very good and makes it easy to find answers to problems quickly, and it almost always beats trolling through google search results!While it would not be useful as the only text for beginners, I think it would make a good supplemental text.It also might be a good choice for people who already have experience in other languages, and are switching to perl, or intermediate perl programmers who cannot remember where every comma and semicolon should go!

Book in good shape
I am extremely impressed by this merchant. The shipping was on time and the book was in great condition

My Defacto Perl Reference
As a new programmer and new Perl programmer this is an invaluable reference. For the ambitious newbie this book can serve as a great starter guide to the Perl language. As a reference and supplement to another beginner book, this book really soars.

I was able to quickly expand my understanding of Perl and started writing real perl programs (albeit very simple ones as a beginning perl programmer) by using this book. You'll become well versed in Perl using this as your constant guide.

When a programming reference can be distilled is such a highly useful and pragmatic way, you've got to add it to your library. Brilliant job on this one.

I highly recommend this work and I'm confident you won't leave home without it. Or perhaps you'll buy one for home and work. I also highly recommend 'Perl Power' by John Flynt and 'Beginning Perl, Second Edition' by James Lee (Apress) as companion beginner books to this one.

Great Perl Book
This is a great reference book for perl. It doesn't try to teach the reader perl, which after you already know it is really nice. This is more like a collection of all the perlmod/man pages put together in an organized manner. I reference this book all the time for different syntax structures and many other reasons. ... Read more

Product Description
(Pearson Education) A text focusing on the methods and alternatives for designed TCP/IP-based client/server systems and advanced techniques for specialized applications with Perl. A guide examining a collection of the best third party modules in the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network Softcover. DLC: Perl (Computer program language).Amazon.com Review
"Network programming"--the term had a distinct meaning once, but now it begs the question, "Is there another kind?" That's why Lincoln Stein's Network Programming with Perl is valuable. It shows how one of the world's top Perl authorities brings the language to bear on problems that require communication among computers, showing that you may not have to resort to Java as soon as you may have thought to meet a networking requirement. What's more, Stein doesn't assume you have a lot of Perl expertise. An intermediate-level familiarity with the language should enable you to understand the examples in the book and follow its classic code-and-commentary structure.

Stein presents full, working scripts, calling attention to particularly interesting lines and passages by repeating them in the text. If a program makes use of an unusual or previously undiscussed function (and lots of them do, because one of the author's missions is to introduce the contents of specialized libraries), its syntax and legal parameters will be documented and a concise statement of its behavior provided. The example programs are the best part of this book, though. As the problems get more complicated, it's fun to watch Stein solve them with efficient, attractive code. Unless you're a really experienced professional, you'll be able to study the examples in this book and learn a lot. --David Wall

Topics covered:

• Perl function libraries and techniques that allow programs to interact with resources over a network
• IO::Socket library
• Net::FTP library
• Net::Telnet library
• Net::SMTP library
• Chat problems
• Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) issues
• Markup-language parsing
• Internet Protocol (IP) broadcasting and multicasting

Customer Reviews (15)

Must have for any network engineer
As a network engineer, there are certain things I need to get out of the network quickly, without buying loads of software packages. This book gives you all the tools necessary to create your own scripts for managing, gathering information from, and tweaking your network. I never let this book leave my side. Couple the scripts in this book with some PHP/Java/HTML knowledge and you can write your own internal tools (as I have) or add more functionality to open source tools that are out there (as I also have).

I am happy with this book
I recently took a perl programming class as part of a masters degree program in software engineering. We used the standard camel book (that I also bought through Amazon). Since the course did not really do much with general network programming and since I wanted this type of capability around the office, I purchased this book. In combination with the skills I picked up in the course, I have been using the information in this book for putting together scripts for testing web and ftp capabilities of the product that I support. I have been making good use of it.

I would recommend this book, along with the camel book, if you are creating perl scripts for testing/using network connected products.

Excellent book
If you write a lot of network utilities in Perl this book is a must-have.

It's very well-written, with lots of sample code and a detailed explanation of how it all works. More importantly, Stein goes into great detail on the concepts the network programmer needs to understand, and why things need to be done a certain way. There is really a lot of valuable information here, and it's all quite well-organized and readable.

A very good computer book.

Excellent
This book is excellent. This is one of very few books that the author really takes time, has a good plan to write a book and have good understanding of the subject.

I read many computer books that are just repetitive so it can make the books thick enough to look like a 'good book' (May be this is what US raaders like). I try my best to avoid those books. Those books do not say much in hundreds of pages.

But this book is not that kind of book. Every pages are worth to read. It is quite easy to follow. (I do know a bit of TCP/IP from reading other books before I read this book.) E.g. Stevens TCP/IP books. Unfortunately he died and he won't be able to update those great books.

Some authors are not professional, they just copy here and there. Then they put everything together. Those are terrible books to read. Those terrible books explain some simple concept again and again and take up hundreds of pages that can be done in half of volume. It is not just wasting the readers time (time is money) but also wasting the resource (trees)! Even most college textbooks are that way. Sometimes it is even worst since they know you won't haave much choices!

I seldom to give 5 stars. This book does deserve 5 stars.

You will enjoy this one if you like networking.

One of my favorite Perl books.
This is one of my favorite Perl books. It really serves what it says it will. It covers a great amount of Perl coding, but like the title says, goes into a lot of networking code, functions and so on. For Perl network programming, you really should have and use this book. ... Read more

Product Description
The Perl Pocket Reference provides a complete overview of the Perl programming language, all packed into a convenient, carry-around booklet.It is updated for Perl 5.8, and covers a summary of Perl syntax rules, a complete list of operators, built-in functions, and standard library modules, all with brief descriptions.Also included are the newest Perl features, such as enhanced regular expressions, multithreading, the Perl compiler, and Unicode support. The Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition, is the perfect companion to the authoritative books on Perl published by O'Reilly & Associates: Programming Perl, Learning Perl, and the Perl Cookbook. This pocket reference will never make it to the bookshelf--dog-eared and well worn, it will remain within arms reach of the keyboard or tucked in a back pocket, where it will be referred to on a daily basis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Handy to have.
Handy to have around the office for when you need a quick reference, but not essential given the ubiquitous documentation of Perl. Still, worth the money.

I was new to Perl
This was neat as I was learning scripting.Still a nub at it but great for me who doesnt use it daily.

Out of 5 Perl books, my most-used reference
Out of my fairly extensive Perl library, this is the book that sits next to my keyboard - the one that I keep "at-hand".Simple, concise, easy to find the data you are looking for .... it just "works" as a reference book.

No, you're not going to find the syntax for building and manipulating a hash of hashes, but you've got the full list of special variables, a good list of common functions, and great starting points for things like Network programming, Win32 programming, regular expressions, and more.

Definitely worth the price of entry if you are a beginner to moderate Perl programmer who doesn't code every day and frequently needs a reference.

Good Quick Reference
This book is a good quick reference.If I can't find previous code I always reach for this book when I need to get a quick syntax reference.

Very Terse
Perl Pocket Reference only gives lists and tables.No explanation of how to use the various functions, variables, etc.Definitely not for new-comers.

I was very disappointed by this pocket reference.I was expecting something more like the very high quality "Python Pocket Reference", which manages to give complete description of the language, all functions, standard modules, etc, ALONG WITH EXAMPLES FOR EACH; The Python Pocket Reference is able to be used as a standalone reference.This is definitely not true for the Perl Pocket Reference; You will need other books to make this pocket reference make sense... what a pain! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (10)

Great reference to have on your bookshelf
This is a great reference book for Perl.Combine this with the Perl Cookbook and you have your tools to tackle your Perl coding tasks. Great book.

Intermediate Perl has good code, good examples
This book has good perl examples and good perl code. It is a good choice if you have an intermediate understanding of the perl language.

A worthy (as expected) successor
Successors are not always as expected. In this case you do get from this trio of authors, who are classics in their own right, just what you expect.In my own case, I needed to get good at OO Perl and fast. In three days, I covered the major chapters thoroughly, went off to my interview and in the end was told, "hey, you really know your stuff". This book intends and does indeed follow well the Learning Perl classic. If you finished the meat of the classic, this is the dessert.You'll recognize the writing style and flavour. There are no surprises. In my opinion, another classic.

Good follow up to the The Llama, but poorly organised
If you've mastered The Llama, make haste to read this one. Even if you only want to do scripting with Perl, you'll eventually find you need data structures slightly more complicated than just flat arrays and hashes, and you need to know about references for that. While The Camel does contain a fair chunk of material on just this subject, it was a bit too much for me to digest after The Llama. If Intermediate Perl (aka The Alpaca) had been around for me to read, I would have had a much easier time.

Written in the same style as The Llama, this breeze through most of the rest of Perl, in particular: references, objects, packages and modules. These are the bits that you need to use Perl as a general purpose programming language, not just for scripting. In a similar pragmatic vein, it also covers how to use tools to build your own packages in the CPAN style, and there's a good chunk of material on using Test::More for unit tests. Probably the only thing missing is material on type globs and symbol tables, although hopefully, brian d foy's forthcoming Mastering Perl will fill in these gaps.

The bottom line is this is Llama part 2, and you need to read it if you want to have any hope of understanding anyone else's Perl. But I can't give it five stars. The major problem is that the material is not very well organised. At the chapter level, objects are sandwiched between modules and packages. It would have been far preferable to keep the module and package information together. As a result, the distinction between modules and packages is rather muddied, and the introduction of objects in the middle just makes things worse. Overall, I found the explanations to lack the clarity of the Llama.

A more minor complaint is that, while there are mercifully fewer annoying footnotes, the Gilligan's Island theme (if, like me, you had no exposure to this growing up, you might want to read the Wikipedia article first!) grates far sooner than the Flintstones flavour of the Llama.

That said, make this your second book on Perl. Then, _still_ don't read The Camel yet. Avail yourself of Perl Best Practices first.

Good Book For Classroom Setting
I picked up this book for a class that I was teaching at my office.The goal of the class was to train HTML/CSS/JavaScript and/or Java programmers to code in Perl since a large portion of our code base is written in Perl.Overall, I think that the book was a good choice for the class for a number of reasons.

First of all, the book is already written with a classroom setting in mind.The authors have used previous versions of the book, titled "Learning Perl Objects, References and Modules", for their own courses.This updated version benefits from all of the hours of empirical testing that it has received in the classroom.There are many thoughtful additions like having all of the chapters close to the same size.This allowed for me to assign a single chapter per session and know that I could comfortably fit the lecture and discussion of the chapter into a two-hour session.There are also exercises at the end of each chapter and answers for those exercises (with discussion) in an appendix.

This book is good for getting people just learning the language ready for the TMTOWTDI/TIMTOWTDI aspect of Perl.Take something simple like opening files... there are at least four 'standard' ways to do it.The book prepares you for all of the different versions of annoyances/features like this that show up in Perl code by walking through the evolution of the feature.

Another reason that I like this selection of book is that data files and code examples are actually available for download.I've been shocked that some of the programming books that I've gotten lately actually don't have this addition.

Finally, the course that I'm teaching is for people who probably already know how to program, at least a little, but they don't know Perl.I didn't want to drag them through all of the picky details of the language by starting with "Learning Perl" or something equivalent.This book has been a good choice for introducing programmers to Perl.I do have to stop occasionally and explain some fundamentals of the language, but not too often... maybe I just work with smart (or shy) people :)

Of course, the book isn't perfect.As odd as it seems, one of the biggest complaints that I get is over the Gilligan references that are used in all of the examples in the book.There is also some coverage of packaging modules for CPAN.This is useful, just not for the particular class that I'm teaching, so we skipped that chapter.Of course, both of these complaints are pretty weak.

In short, this is a good book, especially if you are doing a training session about Perl. ... Read more

Product Description
The primary interface for database programming in Perl is DBI, a database-independent package that provides aconsistent set of routines regardless of what database productyou use--Oracle, Sybase, Ingres, Informix, you name it.Programming the Perl DBI is coauthored by AlligatorDescartes, one of the most active members of the DBI community,and by Tim Bunce, the inventor of DBI. For the uninitiated, the bookexplains the architecture of DBI and shows you how to write DBI-based programs.For the experienced DBI dabbler, this book explains DBI's nuances andthe peculiarities of each individual DBD. This is the definitive book fordatabase programming in Perl.Amazon.com Review
The birth of new modules for the Perl scripting language is a regular occurrence, and the publication of an O'Reilly book about one of these modules is a sign of coming of age. Perl's DBI module, which facilitates the database-independent operation of Perl, achieves its rite of passage this month with the arrival of Alligator Descartes and Tim Bunce's excellent Programming Perl's DBI. Perl's DBI interface is maintained by Bunce and includes submodule interfaces to Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, Microsoft ODBC, and many other smaller databases. O'Reilly Perl book aficionados take note: this is the cheetah book, named for the animal that graces its cover.

Far from being a formalized how-to or man page, Programming Perl's DBI is a mini textbook in database programming,ideal for CPAN-savvy Perl programmers with little or no experience in database programming. Descartes and Bunce develop primitive notions of databases by using flat files, and they introduce relational databases with careful didactic motivation. The example database used throughout the book contains ancient sacred monolithic sites in the UK and elsewhere, of which Stonehenge is the most famous. Readers will learn about these primitive places while storing, updating, deleting, sorting, and locking their descriptors using flat files, nonrelational and relational databases, and a tutorial on SQL. The last chapters describe the peculiarities of interacting with ODBC and introduce DBI's Perl-less diagnostic shell and database proxying.

The authors use many modules--including DBI itself--that are not part of the vanilla Perl distribution, and Descartes and Bunce introduce them without explaining where to find or build them. Perl newbies with no CPAN experience may find themselves derailed early. The Storage module seems not to be available on CPAN at all (at the time of this writing). Fortunately, DBI and friends build, test, and install seamlessly under Linux/Red Hat 6.1.

At 350 pages, Programming the Perl DBI is 60 percent text--filled with highly annotated Perl code--and 40 percent appendices covering a detailed specification of DBI and 3-to-5-page descriptions of each of the 14 supported databases. Brevity is a large component of this book's wit. Clarity is the rest of it. --Peter Leopold ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

Not so relevant now
I think, what is covered in the book is more theory. No practical examples on how to connect to various databases (ex: MySQL, Oracle). I would rather say, it is outdated and more useful information can be found on the web. I shouldn't have bought it although it just costed me [...].

The standard for Peral Database Programming
If you are serious about using Perl to interface with any database, then this is the only book will will ever need.Amazon was the only place I could find a copy, since the book is currently out-of-print.

pretty good book, but so is the CPAN documentation
This is a (the definitive) book on Perl DBI.I swapped book-for-book with a former co-worker for this.I keep it in the office for the newbies.

If you're already a pro at PERL, you should be able to get by with just the CPAN documentation.However, if your employer is footing the bill, get it. :-)

However if you're new to PERL and need to use DBI, get it.

Very nice tips and tricks you can pick up, even a few for the pros.

An alright book for the DBI beginner
The database-oriented view of programming has become increasingly popular, and it is of great importance for all serious programmers to understand how to use their favorite language to manipulate the database systems.With the variety of database systems out there, it can be a real challenge to learn what there is to know.For the Perl programmer, however, there is this book on the matter, and it will probably be all you'll need to get started working with database programming in no time.Other reviewers have stated that this is a regurgitation of the docs.This is partially true.But the docs are very bland, and this book presents the information in a much more informative, and easy to read manner.With it, you can begin programming the DBI within a week (a day if you already know SQL and skip the chapter on the Berkley DB system).Recommended for anyone interested in learning how to use Databases with Perl.If you already know the DBI, the book wont be of much help, maybe as a reference, but I'd only pick it up if you don't know it, or are still inexperienced at it.

still a valuable reference for multiple databases
This book has been a valuable reference of mine for several years for web database programming projects. I bought the book soon after it was released and continue to use it - sometimes on a daily basis depending upon the project I am currently developing. I realized from the beginning that much of the material in this book came from the online documentation and have still found the book to be useful enough to stay on my A-list of reference materials. Applications like CGIScripter need to utilize up to half a dozen different databases so I have found the reference section on each database be the section I often turn to first. I have not found this info available anywhere in the online documentation. When you program and debug on multiple computers with multiple windows open simultaneously, having a reference book is often more manageable than opening another window on the computer. And for those times when I am struggling with an especially troublesome programming issue, I have found it very helpful to sit in my easy chair with a reference book like the Perl DBI book in order to research the problem. The only reason I am not giving the book 5 stars is that it hasn't been updated in a few years so it doesn't include info on some of the new DBI supported databases like SQLite. ... Read more

Product Description
An essential technical programming reference for Web sites. Inconcise, clear language, this book explains how to write CGI programsto implement dynamic documents that provide interactivity andmultimedia features for Web sites using UNIX-based HTTP servers.Amazon.com Review
Nicely balanced treatment of CGI programming in both C, whichhas distinct performance advantages, and Perl, currently the mostpopular language for CGI. Written by the long-time maintainer of theUsenet comp.infosystems.www FAQ (and fellow Seattleite), ThomasBoutell. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

The seller was awesome.
The product got here in an efficient amount of time.

Unfortunately, this is one of those common cases of the teacher having the students get a book that turns out to be useless. The homework, projects, and tests aren't even based on this book. In fact, because of that, I hate this book.

Still, probably a great product for people that need it. Especially for those that know C language. It provides the PERFECT transition from C to Perl. There wasn't as much as I need in there, but this seems more like an introductory book.

Summary: Good intro book, especially for those that know C. Teachers suck.

Awesome book
I tried for a long time to get a handle on C.My background is PERL, and then later PHP, so i figured it might make sense for me to come at this from a web-based perspective.By chapter 4 I knew enough to start writing simple programs on my own (not using samples in the book).By the end of chapter 7 I was well versed enough to start more complex programs using PATH_INFO variables.Extremely good book.If you write web-based apps, and are thinking about learning C this is *the* book.

One reviewer mentioned something about screenshots looking old, which is true, they are obviously Netscape 1, running on Unix's now ancient Motif window manager, but the concepts are all still exactly the same.The cgi's you write will look the same on Netscape 1, as they do on Seamonkey, or IE, or Safari so that's no big deal.

I gave it a 5 because the concepts contained inside are very well written easy to understand and this is the only book that has given me a decent base on which to learn C.

If I could change my rating now, I'd give it a 3 or 4.I wrote some more complex CGI's based on some of the ones in this book that didn't work.So for kicks I copied the source from the cd and tried to just compile those...gcc refused saying I hadn't declared strcmp().:-/

Indeed, I did a 'gcc *' in the SOURCE/C dir and didn't end up with a single a.out file.They all gave errors either on strcmp, feof, fgets, fprintf, in, isspace, fclose, and numerous others.

Still an excellent book but things have changed a lot since it was written.

Hey Thomas!How 'bout a Second Edition?:-)

A very good book
I bought this book around 1998.It was the only book that cover
CGI and C, the rest talked about PERL which I hadnt learned yet.

Once the reader learns the basics (assuming they already know 1 of the 2 languages and have a webserver to play with), they should be able to construct any CGI program in almost any language.

CGI Programming in C & Perl
An EXCELLENT buy -- you don't have to be a "Pro" to use the programs here -- but you can't be a rookie either... Get it "New" or "Used"--the price difference is insignificant--compared to what's inside the book....I bought this book a few months ago--here on AMAZON--and was delighted to find this book contained entire (web)-C-programs that ACTUALLY WORKED! If your web-server(CGI-scripts) are runnning at a crawl...it's probably because you are running a "convenient-scripting-language" -- instead of a C-program!! This book is NOT long-winded, but very practical. I have seen (repackaged???-or-similar)-versions of this code running on a few of the "higher-profile" web-sites. Over the years, I have acquired a STACK of other C-Programming Books--and I am afraid to buy any more of them--because I am tired of EXPERIMENTING to see which ones are PRACTICAL to READ, and I'm tired of reading GOBS of POINTLESS-and/or-BLOATED text--I am very happy with this book. I am a self-taught (Linux) C Programmer, and the C-and-PERL-programs from this book run well on Linux(kernels 2.2 thru 2.4)... This book is a great start in getting you up and running--but the rest is up to you--since you'll REALLY NEED to UNDERSTAND MODERN WEB SERVERS !!!...and... ONE LAST NOTE-- this code may be considered "old" (written in 1996?) --it's NOT obsolete--but it still runs perfectly-and-flawlessly "as is" --on a modern-day Apache Web Server(Linux). This code has stood it's test of time.After you use these programs--it may become more obvious as to the "updates-additions-or-deletions" you'll want to make.Be sure to get Boutell's UPDATED CODE (from his web-site).

The Truth
With many years of experience under my belt, i found this book to be easy.I'd written many complex cgi scripts using perl and c previous to this book, for many fortune 500 companies.They are much more complex than the ones "Dennis Chang" clamis to have written.The conepts in the book are sound but a little outdated.One major complaint is that there aren't enough code examples to look at while you are reading along.The bottom line, its a easy book to read that teaches sound principles for programming cgi in c, but remember you pay for what you get.So i recommend getting a more advanced book for when you master this one. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

Perl How to program
It is advertised for 2 book set, but I only received 1 book part A. However, after contact the seller, i get half of the cost refund.

Perl - How To Program
I like software program book written by Dietel. It has an excellence of illustration and easy to understand step-by-step.

This book was not written by Perl programmers
A Perl novice picking this book up will be impressed. It's big, the prose is good, and it seems to have a command of the subject.

This is all misleading. The book was written by professional authors who pick up a language as they write a book. Perl isn't like other langauges - the mindset and featureset are completely different. Writing effective Perl means getting a grasp on ideas taken from awk, sed, Lisp, C++, sh, and a dozen other places. This book teaches Perl as if it were another C dielect with a funny syntax. This certainly makes it easy to "leaern Perl", but after reading over 800 pages, you'll actually learn very little Perl. And no wonder - large amounts of this book were cut and paste verbatum from other books Dietel wrote about C++ and Visual Basic! Nothing unique to Perl is discussed, such as Perl's excellent date manipulation fascilities, object serialization, or indeed any module beyond the CGI module (on which a thousand books have been written).

Descriptions of features are vague and half hearted showing lack of a clear understanding. To someone who knows Perl, this book sounds like a homework assignment where someone read about Perl and then wrote about their findings, uncertainties and all.

Throughout the book, code listings basically work (I worked hard on that as a paid technical reviewer - my name is in the credits - and this was no small task) but they too completely miss the style, spirit, and indeed the point of programming Perl. They're riddled with security holes. They don't leverage modules, and Perl's CPAN repository is probably it's greatest strength.

I don't like writing bad reviews. I don't like having failed to have persuaded the authors to address security. I wanted to like this book since it was the first I've worked on. With lots of help from people who truly grasp Perl this book could have been medicore but Dietel's production-line like business model doesn't allow for this. Books need to be written by experts or at least senior members of the community. Rank novices cannot just read other books and repeat back their findings and call it a book. Or perhaps you honestly believe that Dietel has mastered every language on the sun and had plenty of time left over to write an 800 page book about the language they learned last month.

As with any bad review, you should be asking what motivated the bad review. Often it's a frustrated novice. Sometimes it's pure snobbery. Other times it's religion or a burnt employee. I'm not a Perl novice; I've been programming for 21 years now and I've been programming in Perl quite heavily for about 6 of those. I'm a bit of a Perl snob but only because there are so many really excellent books like Programming Perl, Learning Perl, Beginning Perl, CGI Programming with Perl, and scores of others. Dietel treated me very well and paid me fairly (again, I wish I could give an average review). I'm just writing this review to temper the initial impressions of those first learning Perl with a slightly more educated assessment.

If you want one massive book with loads and loads of Perl knowledge, Computer Science & Perl Programming was collectively written by about 20 of the best known Perl hackers who have developed the most important modules, worked on the core, and spoke and written more often than anyone else. And while CS&PP has nearly the same page count, it costs half as much. Besides being more thorough, more insightful, more interesting, and in better style, it's a heck of a lot of fun.

In short, Perl: How to Program is just another in-it-for-the-money amaturely written Perl+CGI book with a lot of padding and little insight.

Poor CD installation ...dies in the middle
I have only read the first chapter. Looks okay. However, I bought it with CD rom at original price (not from amazon) and I have such a hard time installing it. The Damn thing doesn't install on either of my win2k machines nor on Red hat 9 which I dual boot with one of my win2k.

I am really frustrated.

I'm falling asleep
Because of my school, I own 4 of these hideous beasts. While the books contain a rich assortment of information on their particular subjects, they can be verbose in the extreme. Additionally, they seem to be poorly organized as some other reviewers have mentioned. It is very difficult to pick up these books and stay interested for more than 5 minutes. I've had to purchase other books to actually learn the languages and utilize the Deitel books as references. Some people may find these books to be fine; I suspect we all learn differently. If you enjoy books that get right to the point and with better organization, look elsewhere. ... Read more

Product Description
Author is an experienced Perl user who maintains the Perl area of Dr. Dobb's Journal Website.
* The first book to cover the full range of Perl database programming topics.
* Discusses practical applications such as online catalogs, Web-based photo databases, and Palm-powered applications. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Perl Database Programming
Libro muy bien estructurado y muy didactico. Imprescindible para manejo de bases de datos mediante Perl

totally misleading title
I bought this book to learn some advance database programming specifically with Oracle which the book claims it does cover. However, what I found was a perl mysql programming book that has devoted half its contents to web site development (which I'm not interested in). I think this book should be renamed to "website development using perl and mysql". If you really just want to learn database programming using perl read "programming DBI"

Perl and MySQL database ... best for title.
This book will be called Perl and MySQL database programming, the book comment say that this include access to many databases, including Oracle and PostgreSQL, when you read this, you can see that the only database that Brent use is MySQL. MySQL is good database but not the best, I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL, and my book is now archived.

Regards

Shame it wasn't proof read...
I bought this book simply because it had a section on Session Management, so I went straight to that section (chapter 9).When I tried to get the code working, it became obvious that there was something missing, notably an HTML template. No problem I thought - there's probably an addendum on-line.Unfortunatelynot - a search led to Michalski's home page with nothing more useful than a statement saying it is his intention to get addenda for all his books up online at some point (but no indication as to when).The publishers, Wiley, have all the files from the book available for download, but unfortunately not the missing template.

Now I realise the pressure to get books into print in this fast moving field must be intense, but if your willing to let errors slip through then you must take your after sales service very seriously, and get an online addendum up and running when that book hits the shelves.This book has been available for over a year now, come on!

I did email Michalski direct 2 weeks ago but so far no response.I expect my email was lost in a torrent of spam.

I will persevere and try to work out what the missing html should look like - I guess it could be worse - it could have been the Perl code that was missing - but quite frankly I haven't got time to fill in gaps left by someone else's lack of professionalism - especially when I'm paying for it!

Thumbs down to support - I'll be avoiding Michalski and Wiley in future.

so easy to read with a lot of information
I really enjoyed reading this book. The whole book is like a big piece of source code with line-by-line explaination. If you are like me, knowing perl but not so familiar with it, sometime perl can be hard to decipher. This book solves this by going though a lot of source codes line by line and explain the details. I wish every book on perl can be written this way. ... Read more

Product Description
With the LWP (Library for WWW in Perl) suite of modules, your programs can download and extract information from the Web.Written by a contributor to LWP, and with a foreword by one of LWP's creators, Perl & LWP is the authoritative guide to using this powerful and popular toolkit.You'll learn how to navigate the Web with LWP, fetching web pages, submitting forms, managing cookies, and accessing authenticated web sites.The book also demonstrates using three different techniques, regular expressions, tokens, and tress, to extract information from HTML.The many detailed case studies show you how to apply this knowledge to real world situations, from downloading news stories to e-commerce. Perl & LWP is a must have for Perl programmers who want to automate and mine the Web.Amazon.com Review
Perl & LWP sets out to unwrap the Library for the Web in Perl (LWP), which is a collection of modules that make it easier to access and pick apart Web pages (and FTP-accessible files, and outgoing e-mail messages) from within your Perl programs. The book succeeds wonderfully, not only in conveying the technical aspects of LWP programming, but in making clear the fun of doing work that's very well suited to Perl. Sean Burke assumes that his readers know something about Perl, albeit not much, and a similar amount about HTML. He does a great job of explaining how LWP functions fit into Perl programs, and how you can use them to make reference to Internet resources far more easily than before.

Burke's narrative takes the form of a guided tour in which he introduces his readers to aspects of the LWP modules one by one. His tone is generally straightforward (sharp commentary alternates with brief code listings, with occasional passages of reference material), but there's sometimes an undercurrent of exuberance that makes the reader want to get going with his or her own programming right away. Overall, the emphasis is on teaching both LWP and Perl itself to the extent necessary to do LWP work. Because of the concise and nicely indexed code modules, though, you'll find this book useful as a reference after you're under way with LWP. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to program with LWP and Perl itself. All of LWP's strong points--including HTML parsing (with tokens and trees as well as with regular expressions), HTML generation and modification, manipulation of HTML forms, and the operation of spiders--are covered. This book has more of a tutorial tone than any similar reference material on the Internet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Honest Assessment of Burke's Perl & LWP
This is not your typical clunker with endless pages of filler material. It gets right to the point. If you want to learn about using Perl to interact with the internet, this would be a good book to help you get there. I have purchased several Perl books that supposedly teach you how to write code for use with the internet, but they are difficult to understand, and most of the examples just don't work. This book is an exception to that trend. It is the only one I have found so far that has useable, workable examples. The subject matter is still challenging, but Burke is able to explain it enough to give you a clue. If you are looking for help in handling HTTP programmatically, then here is your book.

A Wonderful Book
I bought this book to get information automatically on japanese stocks(for example, charts, price, volume, PER, PBR, ROE, ROA, News, messages on Yahoo! Japan BBS for stocks) from the WEB every day.

Somehow this book has not yet translated into Japanese language.
I think this book would sell very well if translated into Japanese. Many demands.

This book is self-contained about the WEB, so you need little Perl programming rules and don't have to have knowledge on the Internet Protocols(HTTP) at all.

In most cases, all you need to do is to modify an example program on this book for your use very little.

This book can teach you expert-level web scraping/munging.
If you aren't yet comfortable using object-oriented Perl modules, the multitude of examples will at least allow you see how it's done even if you're a bit fuzzy on what's happening 'underneath' when you call object methods. If you're comfortable learning how to do something without knowing exactly why it works, then the author's clear step-by-step explantions and numerous progressively more powerful examples should make this book accessible even to relatively innexperienced Perl programmers.

More experienced programmers will understand better why things work, but any Perl programmer will set this book down feeling empowered to turn the web into their own valet. No longer do you need to check multiple sites looking for interesting information. Instead, you can readily author code to do that for you and alert you when items of interest are found. You can use these tools to free up personal time, to harvest information to inform business decisions, to automate tedious web application testing, and a zillion other things.

The author's clear exploration of the relevant Perl modules leaves the reader with a good depth of understanding of what these modules do, when you might want to use which module, and how to use them for real world tasks. Before reading the book, I knew of these modules, but they were a rather intimidating pile. I'd used a few of them on occasion for rather limited projects, but was reluctant to invest the time required to read all of the documentation from the whole collection. Mountains of method-level documentation do not a tutorial make. This book takes all of that information, selects the most important parts, and ensures that those parts are covered in progressively more powerful and/or flexible examples.

If you know Perl and you're sick of 'working the web' to get information and you want the web to work for you instead, then you need this book. I had a personal project that was on the back burner for a couple of years because it just sounded too hard. The weekend after I finished this book, I wrote what I had previously thought to be the hard part of that project and it was both easy and fun. This book makes hard things not just possible, but actually easy.

-matt

Great book!
If you are unfamiliar with LWP and web scraping, or HTML parsing using tokens and trees, I strongly recommend this book.It's the best *introduction* to these topics I've been able to find.Sean's style is clear and concise-just what I expect from an O'Reilly book.

To get the most out of this book, you'll want to be familiar with Object Oriented programming in Perl, because (with the exception of LWP::Simple) all the modules discussed in this book use objects.

Also, don't expect the LWP sample code in the book to work correctly.Many of the sites that the scripts try to "scrape" have changed their layout since this book was published, braking the scripts.This isn't a problem though, because the samples Sean provides are very short and clear, so it's not necessary to run them in order to figure out how they work.

Terrible, bug-infested book...
I really don't know how the previous 5 reviews gave this book 5 stars.I was really excited about this book when I first read the reviews, and now here I am only a few chapters in and already thinking about dumping it altogether.This book has so many flaws for its size, the biggest of which was the codes.I am no Perl expert, but could find my way around in a decent size program.However, no examples I have tried so far in the book actually worked, and some of these are just 10-20 lines long.I am completely new to LWP, I guess like anyone who would buy this book, so it's hard for me to see what the author is doing.The explanation of the code didn't help much either.As oppose to explaining the steps, he just said "the code below does this".And it's pretty obvious little or no editing has gone into this book.If you do buy this book, you'll probably want to make a trip to the Errata page at the Oreilly website.The amount of typos, printing errors, warnings and grammatical mistakes found by readers and editors listed on this page rivals the usuable content of the book itself.You know what, I have spent way too much on this book already..... ... Read more

Product Description
Written for biomedical professionals and hospital practitioners interested in creating their own programs, Perl Programming for Medicine and Biology, discusses and reviews biomedical data resources, data standards, data organization, medicolegal and ethical conduct for data miners, and grants-related data sharing responsibilities. It teaches readers the basic Perl programming skills necessary for collecting, analyzing, and distributing biomedical data and provides solutions to in-depth problems that face researchers and healthcare professionals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Review of Berman's Perl Programming
I reviewed an early draft of this book for the publisher, for which I received no compensation. I was interested to see whether the author responded to some of my suggestions. He did.

The book begins with a preface, which compares biomedical professionals of the 1970s, who couldn't touch-type, against biomedical professionals today, who lack computer programming skills. In the modern biomedical world, every biomedical professional should be able to do some computer programming. It's not enough to leave this skill to information technology professionals, just as keyboard typing is no longer left to clerks. If you are responsible for a large biomedical database, then you must be able to explore it yourself, both to get a first-hand overview of the data, and to better understand how to benefit from the information technologists with whom you work.

Three computer languages satisfy the minimum requirements for biomedical programming: Perl, Python, and Ruby. These languages are: free; fast; and easy to learn. Each provides a large user community; easy environment for correcting errors; large, available library of specialized modules; built-in pattern recognition commands; and yet are capable of large-scale data-analysis for advanced programmers. This list, enumerated by Dr. Berman and many others, should be chiseled in granite, published everywhere, and yelled from the rooftops. Greater compliance with this list would clear out much of the clutter in the chaotic world of biomedical informatics.

"Perl Programming for Medicine and Biology" covers all the areas of major interest to biomedical researchers, clinical scientists, and healthcare students: (1) how to download a cost-free copy of Perl for personal use; (2) simple Perl programs and troubleshooting; (3) file conversions; (4) file reading, one line at-a-time; (5) pattern-matching; (6) assigning data-arrays; (7) building an index; (8) regular expressions (regex); (9) biomedical nomenclatures; (10) searching and sorting; (11) data management; (12) internet and network protocols and data transfer; (13) cryptography, privacy, and data-scrubbing; and (14) related metadata languages (HTML, XML and RDF). For each data analysis area, the book includes sample problems that are accompanied by complete explanations, and by Perl source code that the reader can copy into his/her own computer and try out. The book makes generous use of publicly available datasets and other resources in these examples, so that the reader can perform his/her own computing experiments on data of genuine biomedical interest.

Several features of this book are particularly valuable for the busy professional reader. First, every chapter begins with a Background section, so that the reader gets an immediate overview of the material to be covered. These Background sections are inviting and insightful: why should the average biomedical professional care about a particular area, and what tasks can be carried out in Perl? Second, the Glossary is one of the highlights of the book. The glossary is reminiscent of Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, or Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary: included for each term is both a solid definition of what it is, and a personal opinion of why one should know or care about the term. Third, the Reference section isn't just a list of citations; each reference is accompanied by a useful commentary. Finally, the Resource section lists copious on-line resources available to the reader for further, in-depth study.

Some impatient readers, like myself, read the beginnings of a few chapters in a technical book, and then go quickly to the last chapter of the book, to see where it all ends, and whether it seems worthwhile to slog through the whole thing. Such readers are in for a pleasant surprise: the background sections, glossary, and references are reasonably comprehensive, and separate the wheat from the chaff among concepts in Information Technology. You can get a good overview of the whole book in a few hours.

The book is written in a breezy style that cuts through all the usual verbal chatter of more academic publications. This is an easy book to pick up and start reading, and hard to put down.
... Read more

Product Description
Coauthored by Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, this book is theauthoritative guide to Perl version 5, the scripting utility nowestablished as the programming tool of choice for the World Wide Web,UNIX system administration, and a vast range of other applications.Learn how to use this versatile cross-platform programming language to solve unique programming challenges.This heavily revised second edition of Programming Perl contains a fullexplanation of Perl version 5.003 features.It covers Perl language andsyntax, functions, library modules, references, and object-oriented features. It also explores invocation options for Perl and the utilities that come with it, debugging, common mistakes, efficiency, programming style, distributionand installation of Perl, and much more.Reviewers have called this booksplendid, definitive, and well worth the price.Amazon.com Review
The second edition of the Camel Book is more than 600 pageslong and full of excellent instruction and sound advice. Topicsinclude all the good stuff from the first edition plus Perl 5 featuressuch as nested data structures (ever made a hash of arrays ofhashes?), modules, and objects. From "HowdyWorld" to making your own modules, this book has it all. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (127)

Awesome learning tool
This informal "bible" of Perl programming is an easy read for experienced programmers AND has a great index for reference.Walls and Christiansen team up well for us advanced beginners by welcoming us into the Club and giving us the straight scoop in a coherent structure.

Programming Perl (2nd Edition) review
This is the 4th book that I have purchased on the subject, and this book really should have been the first book that I bought.It breaks down many of the Perl concepts into simple-plan-english that are easy to understand.It provides more information on the principles that are briefly touched upon in the other books.I have only began reading/referencing this book; therefore I can only give it a 3 star rating at this point.As the book states, Perl is an ever-evolving language that would be hard to totally document in a single book, but I can appreciate the extents that the contributors have made to this publication.

Good book to have
I haven't actually used this book in some time, but never got the last copy back from the person who borrowed it off my bookshelf. When it did see use, it was mostly to quickly look up things in the back.

Larry Wall is a genius.
Larry Wall (the father of Perl) is a genius. This book is essential for anyone who loves PERL. You might also want to consider "PERL: Essential Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith.

Buy the 3rd edition, not the 2nd edition
I have owned every edition of this book.The 2nd edition was a lot better than the 1st edition, but it is not nearly as good as the 3rd edition.The 3rd edition is the best perl reference book that you can buy.Period. ... Read more

Product Description
Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days covers the basics of Perl in the first few chapters, and then moves on to practical issues of Perl and in-depth discussions of more advanced topics. Later chapters also delve into software engineering topics, with discussions of modular code and object-oriented programming. CGI is covered in one chapter, but it is not the focus on the book.The book relies heavily on longer working examples and code, as opposed to small snippets and code fragments, and each chapter includes two to three smaller complete examples and one major one that illustrates most of the concepts for that chapter and builds on the chapters before it. Written by Laura Lemay, this is her third major book after Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in 21 Days and Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days.Amazon.com Review
A great book for beginning programmers who want to learnPerl. Filled with concrete examples and, yes, by using this book youwill be able to write good Perl code on your own in 21 days. But noperlson is an island, and there is no single book that covers Perlcompletely, so we recommend that you also get Programming Perl, which isbetter at providing the language specifications, and, in fact, waswritten by the author of Perl. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (77)

Good introductory Perl Tutorial
A basic, but well written book. I have only gotten to the 3rd chapter but satisfied with this purchase. I also use the net for additional information.

Why you should buy another book
The bad:


1. It has many typos and mistakes. Mistakes in a "teach yourself" book are particularly unacceptable.

2. The explanations are very tedious to read and not very good. If you have never programmed then these tedious explanations may be of some help to you, although better quality explanations of the language are available elsewhere. But if you're an experienced programmer looking to learn Perl then reading an explanation of how a while loop works over and over again will, to say the least, not be your cup of Java. This is especially strange since, as it said in the book, this book is written for readers with at least some programming experience. Furthermore, many of the explanations are so vague that they're practically useless. For instance, instead of giving an explanation about the local scope of a foreach loop variable, the author says "if it [the iterating variable in the foreach loop] doesn't exist prior to the loop, it'll stop existing after the loop. If it does exist prior to the loop, the foreach will just use it as a temporary variable, and then restore its original value when you're done looping. You can think of the foreach variable as a sort of scratch variable used solely to store elements, which is then thrown away when the loop's done." And I consider this to be a representative example of most of the explanations in this book.

3. This book is a bad reference. Many people buy programming books so that they can quickly read a few pages and learn some detail about some language feature. For this, the book is useless. There are many features that do NOT have a full explanation, only a partial one, and even these are often times strewn around the book so that you'll have to search for them. And personally, I can not use this book as a reference since I have doubts about the correctness of many of its explanations.

4. The author will MANY times give a vague description of a feature and then tell you to look at the Perl documentation for more details. This makes the book useless for a beginner (since they're just learning the language) and useless for someone who already knows the language and is using it as a reference (since then they may as well have just gone to the Perl documentation from the outset).

5. The example programs are not that well written. The quality of the example programs reminds me of something that I would have written when I had just a few years of programming experience.

6. The book tells you many times about what you're going to learn about later in the book, which gets annoying.

7. The author includes useless programming examples for some reason. Ex: "For example, here's a somewhat pointless for loop that creates an array, and then destroys it, backwards, printing the number of remaining (sic) and the array itself as it goes: [shows the code] I can't image what sort of Perl program would need this kind of loop, and because it iterates over a list it would probably make more sense as a foreach."

8. Mistakes such as not knowing when to use "that" or "which" are unacceptable for any author.



The good:


1. If you're a beginner and if you can stand reading through all of it then you will learn something about the Perl language and you will learn how to create a quick script (although as a word of caution, if you emulate this book's examples then your scripts likely won't be very good).



This programming book is among the worst that I have seen.
Overall, I wish that I had bought another book.

Not bad...
This isn't bad.I think it moves kinda fast, but that may just be me.This is seriously the only presentation of the subject matter that I'd consider reading to completion.This is a good introduction to Perl and a good reference for the future.

Great book - clear and easy to read
I find myself using this book as a refernce almost every day.It is well written and easy to follow.I highly recommend it.

I haven't even finished the book and I am already feeling like a perl programmer
I bought this book after trying to learn Perl through another book (Perl for Bioinformatics). This book is definitely a better introduction to Perl than any other book I've seen. It is clear and concise enough and although it might be hard to finish it in 21 days, you can start coding your own scripts much before the end of the book. I am still on chapter 11 and I can program most of what I need with it (i.e parsers and simple bioinformatics applications). I recognize that there are a few typos on the book but if even Knuth's Art of Computer Programming have them why shouldn't Lemay's Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days do the same?

Given what I said above, I must warn begginer programmers (like me) that Perl is not the best language for you to learn as your first one. It is a dirty scripting language which does the job and is most suitable for parsing files and formatting data but it has a lot of things which make it quite confusing initially (its context dependency for instance). If you want to learn something that will give a solid programming base you should start with something else (i.e. Java, Pascal, Ruby etc) which will probably be a little bit harder but will payoff later. ... Read more

Product Description

Too often, healthcare workers are led to believe that medical informatics is a complex field that can only be mastered by teams of professional programmers. This is simply not the case. With just a few dozen simple algorithms, easily implemented with open source programming languages, you can fully utilize the medical information contained in clinical and research datasets. The common computational tasks of medical informatics are accessible to anyone willing to learn the basics.

Methods in Medical Informatics: Fundamentals of Healthcare Programming in Perl, Python, and Ruby demonstrates that biomedical professionals with fundamental programming knowledge can master any kind of data collection. Providing you with access to data, nomenclatures, and programming scripts and languages that are all free and publicly available, this book —

• Describes the structure of data sources used, with instructions for downloading
• Includes a clearly written explanation of each algorithm
• Offers equivalent scripts in Perl, Python, and Ruby, for each algorithm
• Shows how to write short, quickly learned scripts, using a minimal selection of commands
• Teaches basic informatics methods for retrieving, organizing, merging, and analyzing data sources
• Provides case studies that detail the kinds of questions that biomedical scientists can ask and answer with public data and an open source programming language

Requiring no more than a working knowledge of Perl, Python, or Ruby, Methods in Medical Informatics will have you writing powerful programs in just a few minutes. Within its chapters, you will find descriptions of the basic methods and implementations needed to complete many of the projects you will encounter in your biomedical career.

Product Description

Customer Reviews (38)

The only Perl style guide you'll probably ever need
The book is essentially a standard definition for modern high-quality Perl code. Despite having learned very little from it, I regard is as one of the most useful Perl books to come out in recent times, because it spares teams from the lengthy and sometimes painful effort of defining a common coding style. Being very common-sensical and backed with the authority of Damian Conway, this is an excellent and much-needed next step from "perlstyle." I would recommend this book as coding style guide for any Perl team or individual developer.

Overrated
The recommendations from this book seem to fall into one of the following categories:

* Nitpicky stylistic issues (such as whether to cuddle an else, or whether to follow the last item of a list with a comma)
* Common sense practices that everyone with a little experience in Perl ought to know (use whitespace around operators, etc)
* Controversial and not uniformly-accepted or universally-appropriate practices (such as to always use the /xms set of switches in your regexes, or never to use the "unless" statement)
* Genuine best practices that are sound advice, but not followed frequently enough (such as never to use bareword file handles).

Obviously, only the final category is particular useful, but too much of the advice seems to fall in the other three categories.

I would much prefer it if there were a community-maintained "best practices" document, which more closely followed general consensus, and a "perlcritic"-like tool that worked based off of that (and especially, working off a publicly-accessible, open document, rather than pointing one at page numbers within Perl Best Practices, forcing you to purchase this book in order to understand the reason perlcritic is warning you about something).

good habits distilled from professional experience
Perl can be cryptic by nature. Writing Perl code that is easy/easier to read and understand is possible. This book describes several hundred ways to do this, ranging from code layout topics of line length and tab spacing up to 'professional coder' topics of class hierarchies, testing, and debugging. The book encapsulates professional coding experience into an extensive set of good practices otherwise known as good habits.

The book does not teach Perl coding. Its focus is on writing code in a way that is understandable by you today, you in six months, and code maintainers who come along after you. Many of the practices are aimed at avoiding inadvertent coding errors, some of which would be devilishly hard to recognize.

This book will benefit the beginning Perl coder as well as the professional coding team. Beginners will benefit by learning good habits and the reasoning for each recommendation, aka mentoring. Professional coding teams can use this book to review and update their established practices.

See A. Williams 4-star review for a nice summary of the book.

Perl Salvation!
I came to perl from a C++ background, and was initially horrified by the aspects of perl that control-freak-language developers usually are. However, after using it on and off for a couple of years it became my language of choice because it's so quick and easy to do things that just take too much coding in other languages. (As a friend of mine said who kept pushing me to get used to perl, "Yes, Dave, perl *is* the dark side, but once you go there you'll never want to go back...")

Being A Good Developer I have purchased a number of perl books, and several of those have been useful. The problem is that there's a tremendous amount to remember, especially if you're not coding 100% in perl, especially since encyclopediac reference books just don't have time for the 'why' aspect.

This book excels in a few important ways:

1) There's always a 'why' given, and the right way and the wrong way are contrasted. This makes it, for me, far easier to remember things. It helps that the author uses English very well, and I virtually never find myself wondering what he meant. (In too many programming books, there's just not enough editing of the explanations, and very poor English.)

2) While I don't always agree with the author's best practices, most of the time I do, and he always makes his case well.

3) He shows both 'before and after' code, and gets the amount of code needed to make the point exactly right. I almost never find myself flipping past over-long examples, nor do I find myself not getting things because he's too concise.

This book was both highly useful and a pleasure to read. (Perl is indeed the dark side, but now I revel in the dark side.)

Good work
This is good stuff.

It's a book with 256 guidelines about how to write better Perl code that's more accurate, faster, and more maintainable. It takes a courageous stand to declare how you /should/ use Perl, not just how you /can/ use it.

Here are some things I really like about the book:

- It covers a helpfully broad range of topics. Most of the things I've gone hunting for in this book so far, I've found. ...Including performance topics.

- It tells me why. I don't agree with every guideline in the book (but I do agree with most of them). It's probably a mathematical impossibility to write a book like this in which every guideline would please everyone (or even /anyone/!). But Damian Conway explains his rationale, which enables me to make an informed decision for myself about every guideline in the book.

- It's compartmental. It has that fun, "it's ok to read just a page or two" kind of structure that lets me grok a couple of little topics at a time, instead of making me plow through a lot to get a little.

I think that Programming Perl (Wall, Christiansen, Orwant) and Perl Cookbook (Christiansen and Torkington) are two of the best programming books ever written. Perl Best Practices is a worthy member of the set. This book has improved the quality of my programming. ... Read more