A "Perl" Of Wisdom (Perl by Example - Ellie Quigley)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Perl by Example - Ellie Quigley
Date:	26/09/09 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A huge amount of info

Disadvantages: A huge book is needed to house it all

Way back when, before I was a healthcare bureaucrat, before I was an EFL teacher, before I was a trampolining coach and before I worked in communications (though just after I served time as an au pair and as a holiday rep), I was a computer programmer.

At the start of my first degree's final academic year it was decided that I needed to teach myself Perl so I could use the language to program my Masters project. It wasn't a language I had any experience of, so I got hold of a 'Perl in 3 weeks' book and took just one lot of 7 days to learn the basics. When a books fair came to uni the week after, I bought a copy of "Perl By Example", mainly, it has to be said, because it was pretty cheap and the only Perl title they had - it's not an overly common language like, say, C++ or HTML. But, I' then used it pretty much every day for the following 6 months, so it was quite a useful title to have on my shelf.

"Perl By Example" is not a book I would recommend for complete beginners. It doesn't feature tutorials or even chapters of an appropriate length to treat as such. However, once you know a bit of the language, it's a good reference book to consult if you need to know how to get a certain function working, or how to work out why something you've written isn't behaving. AKA where to find the Gremlins ;-)

Generally speaking most computing books are written by geeky back office guys who, though technically competent, are often not skilled writers. This one is different - the author is a female computing lecturer from America - and so the style is different too, a little easier to understand than other titles, and a little less formal. None of those stupid chatty comments or jokes, but just a bit easier to read than some.

It starts with an introduction to Perl, a brief look at the history and information on where to download it if you don't already have it on your system. This is followed by chapters on things like reading, writing, using files and various operations. Pretty standard stuff for computing books. After all the basic Perl details there are a couple of chapters on using the language with CGI and HTML, both of which I had to incorporate into my system. They're common add ons to Perl which is why they're included, but it also means if you just need a quick intro to either you don't need to go out and get your hands on a different title - this book should do.

Each example is followed by a detail line by line explanation of the code, so you can follow what the segment does and why. This is pretty useful if you're learning the language as you often need examples that differ slightly from the ones provided, so having an explanation of each statement's working allows you to see which bits you need to alter for your program.

One review I read (albeit after purchasing the book) called it "the most well organized, "to-the-point" Perl tutorial and reference you can find" and this is a view I would second. For quick flicks, this book is great because you can get right to what you want without having to wade through mountains of text first - and the index is so detailed you automatically get started on the right page, not one vaguely related to the topic. For this reason, I found it more suitable for me than the famous Camel book (aka 'Learning Perl' published by O'Reilly).

It's a large, thick book (roughly 700 pages) and liable to take up half a bookcase, but it has to be recommended, not least for its comprehensiveness - it covers almost every imaginable topic, and works with Linux, UNIX, and Macs as well as Windows set ups. Buy it on Amazon used for around £25, or pick it up at a computer books fair for about a tenner. That's really not a lot to spend for such a comprehensive textbook, and as a student, when money I was a lot tighter than it is now, I frequently had to spend more on less worthy books (generally those written by my professors, who also wrote the reading lists...)

There are various versions available, but I would go for the latest you can afford as although the code itself isn't changing, with each revision they are adding new sections or clearer explanations following feedback from readers.


Published by Prentice Hall

Summary: A worthy, if rather heavy, text