Perl Cookbook, Second Edition
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 4.64Customer Rating: 4
Summary: Several years of experience in several hundred pages
Comment: Sometimes I think either Tim O'Reilly or Tom Christiansen knows what I am thinking.
In the past week alone, I can count half a dozen times I have wondered about ways to do things in Perl, and never once have I failed to get either a full solution or a running start from the information in this book. If you have read Learning Perl by Christiansen and Schwartz (and if you haven't, you probably should before tackling this one), then this is your next step on the road to Perl.
This book contains hundreds of examples of solutions to "How do I..." type problems using Perl. Ranging from core language topics like hashes, sorting, and string and array processing, to files, database access, IPC, and brief but useful sections on Web and CGI usage, there is something here for everyone who does things with Perl.
Each chapter contains at least a dozen 'recipes' for solving a particular problem in a particular context. Each recipe is neatly laid out with a brief description of the problem, a proposed solution, and a follow-up discussion section. I especially appreciated the discussions, as they maintain the plurality of Perl--the proposed solutions work, but the discussion area almost invariably also includes alternate approaches or techniques. That's the beauty of Perl (and its motto)--There's More Than One Way To Do It. This book offers the intermediate programmer years of experience in solving real world problems using Perl in a few hundred, easy to read pages.
If you have learned enough about Perl to get started, the next thing you should do is get this book. So get cooking!
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: perfect companion for producing fast, quality solutions
Comment: Soon after I bought this book, it's been on my desk anytime I'm writing Perl code. It provides a fast way of getting straight to the code samples perfectly suitable for most tasks one might need to incorporate in Perl script. That much you could expect from a "cookbook".
What makes this book brilliant is that it supports the idea of "learn as you go", the very reason many programmers turned to Perl. You don't need to know every feature of the language in order to produce powerful Perl programs. What you need in most cases is in-depth knowledge of the area you're focusing on. That's exactly where "Perl Cookbook" saves the day!
Well organized set of solutions each followed with comprehensive analysis I enjoyed reading and greatly benefited from.
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: The missing manual from the Camel Book
Comment: Invaluable text that offers quick and varied solutions to the most common perl tasks. I like the variety of solutions; generally the first one they suggest is the one of the ideas you'll have had for solving the problem; then they refine it into most robust, idiomatic perl, which means you have the option of learning how the pros do it.
Oh, and the index is well laid out, which is absolutely essential in the must-finish-this-program-by-tonite sort of book that this is.