Bookreview: Professional Perl Programming
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Software Development
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original in en Guido
Socher
en to en:Lorne Bailey
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Guido really likes Linux not only because it is a great
operating system but because it is a community.
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"Professional Perl Programming" is a book from the Wrox
"Programmer to Programmer" series. You get 4.2 kg of paper and a
lot of know-how for about 80 Euro. The book covers basically all
aspects of Perl 5.6 that one can think of.
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Introduction
About 7 years ago I read my first book on Perl. It was "Learning
Perl" by O'Reilly. Since then I have used Perl extensively for
various projects. "Learning Perl" was at that time still about Perl 4
and I have only updated my knowledge by reading manual pages and
online documentation.
The book "Professional Perl Programming" from Wrox looked like a good
opportunity to get an update about all new features and have a
good overview over Perl 5.6 and new functionality.
The book
"Professional Perl Programming" has over 1200 pages and covers almost
every detail of the language. The book describes itself as
immensely useful for both newcomers to Perl and experienced Perl
Programmers.
Personally I would not recommend it to an absolute newcomer. It is
written in the classical order starting with installation of Perl,
data types, operators, complex data structures, flow
control .... etc. This probably makes it too abstract and dry for
a newcomer who might not yet know exactly what to do with this
programming language. A tutorial style book like the above
mentioned book from O'Reilly might be more suitable for a novice
programmer.
Who should read the book? The book is in my opinion written for a
Perl programmer with at least a basic knowledge. It covers almost all
aspects of the language and in some places even provides details
about Perl's internal functions. This helps to understand the
strength and the limitations of certain features. It helps to write
more optimal code. The book uses lots of small, independent
examples and code snippets to illustrate the subjects. Every page
has at least one such example. You can copy these small examples
easily into your program and adjust them to your needs. Remember
however that this is not a tutorial. The authors do not present an
application or program that will gradually grow in functionality as
you read the book.
Reading the book I learned some new details and had a lot of new
ideas on how to make the Perl code I write better .
The book is as well very suitable as a reference. You can have it
on the table beside your keyboard and use the 41 page alphabetical
index to answer your questions. The small examples which you find
on every page in the book will make programming very easy.
References