Beginning Perl (Programmer to Programmer)

capa.gif......Page 1 3145_Prelims.pdf......Page 2 3145_SOC.pdf......Page 8 3145_TOC.pdf......Page 9 3145_Intro.pdf......Page 25 3145_Chap01.pdf......Page 43 3145_Chap02.pdf......Page 61 3145_Chap03.pdf......Page 99 3145_Chap04.pdf......Page 137 3145_Chap05.pdf......Page 171 3145_Chap06.pdf......Page 203 3145_Chap07.pdf......Page 241 3145_Chap08.pdf......Page 267 3145_Chap09.pdf......Page 303 3145_Chap10.pdf......Page 333 3145_Chap11.pdf......Page 359 3145_Chap12.pdf......Page 401 3145_Chap13.pdf......Page 457 3145_Chap14.pdf......Page 511 3145_AppA.pdf......Page 547 3145_AppB.pdf......Page 555 3145_AppC.pdf......Page 563 3145_AppD.pdf......Page 591 3145_AppE.pdf......Page 603 3145_AppF.pdf......Page 609 3145_AppG.pdf......Page 617 3145_AppH.pdf......Page 627 3145_AppJ.pdf......Page 647 3145_Index.pdf......Page 655 This is a good book which is a unique mix of intro and intermediate material. It is now also available as electronic edition including Kindle Edition from Amazon. It is suitable for one semester course in Perl. Version covered is Perl 5.8 not 5.10. Some issues covered such as dereferencing of arguments in subroutines are rarely covered even in intermediate books. This is definitely much better and cheaper book then Learning Perl (ignore the lemmings effect in Amazon reviews of this pretty weak book). The strong point of the book is the set of examples (you can download them) which illustrates basic material of each chapter. Running them is a must for studying Perl with this book. Examples are often overcomplicated (like most Perl books authors Simon Cozen tries to impress reader with his knowledge of intricacies of Perl and often loses the sense of proportion; but he is not as bad as Randal Schwartz who is a pathological "overcomplicator" ;-). Still they are very helpful in understanding the language. A very useful exercise that I successfully tried with my students is the simplification of examples provided. The book is the best for programmers moving from other languages then to "plain vanilla" beginners. It might be also useful for Unix system administrators who know Unix shell reasonably well. The range of topics covered is really impressive: Introduction Chapter 1: First Steps In Perl Chapter 2: Working with Simple Values Chapter 3: Lists and Hashes Chapter 4: Loops and Decisions Chapter 5: Regular Expressions Chapter 6: Files and Data Chapter 7: References Chapter 8: Subroutines Chapter 9: Running and Debugging Perl Chapter 10: Modules Chapter 11: Object-Oriented Perl Chapter 12: Introduction to CGI Chapter 13: Perl and Databases Chapter 14: The World of Perl Appendix A: Regular Expressions Appendix B: Special Variables Appendix C: Function Reference Appendix D: The Perl Standard Modules Appendix E: Command Line Reference Appendix F: The ASCII Character Set Appendix G: Licenses Appendix H: Solutions to Exercises Appendix J: Support, Errata and P2P.Wrox.Com Simon Cozens definitely knows the language well and it shows. The book coveres a lot of intermediate topics like references, databases, OO concepts, CGI, etc. Lists and hashes are explained well although the author often abuses lists and uses them where they do not belong. Both lists and hashes are introduced early in the book. Regular expressions are explained OK. I like the approach the author takes in writing a small program which demonstrates various concepts. The book covers both DBM databases and SQL databases. MySQL is used to demonstrate how PERL interacts with an SQL database. Most Linux distributions have MySQL installed by default, the book also contains useful information about installation and basic configuration, that helps to make MySQL up and running. DBM, which are simple key-value pair databases are covered in more detail. The author demonstrates complex data storage using DBM files. Normally DBM can only store a single value for any key. As for SQL only fairly simple SQL commands are covered, but then it is an introductory books and it's naive to expect full SQL coverage. In CGI chapter the author introduces CGI environment variables and HTTP commands such as GET and POST first. Then he switches to the CGI.pm module which is standard module in Perl but unfortunately introduces a lot of overcomplexity in the topic. CGI security issues are also mentioned. Basic networking is covered in chapter 14. The Net::FTP module is covered in chapter 11 ( Object-Oriented Perl ) which makes this chapter simultaneously an extension of networking chapter. The set of examples from the book greatly enhances the value of the book. It is mostly error free and immediately usable. Also each chapter has exercises with the answers. That makes the book more suitable for the classroom. All-in-all this is a solid introduction to Perl which is attractive not only due to the price. Perl is an immensely popular scripting language that combines the best features of C, key UNIX utilities and a powerful use of regular expressions. It has a wide range of uses beyond simple text processing and is commonly used for web programming - creating and parsing CGI forms, validating HTML syntax and hyperlinks - as well as e-mail and Usenet news filtering. Perl is increasingly the system administrator's scripting language of choice and is used for file and directory manipulation, database access and a whole range of daily system operator chores. First steps in Perl Working with simple values Lists and hashes Loops and decisions Regular expressions Files and data References Subroutines Running and debuggung Perl Modules Object-oriented Perl Introduction to CGI Perl and databases World of Perl Regular expressions Special variables Function reference Perl standard modules Command line reference ASCII character set Licenses Solutions to exercises Support, errata and P2P.Wrox.Com.