Customer Reviews

Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a previous reviewer said, this isn't a book for advanced perl programmers. For intermediate users, however, it is excellent. No time wasted covering the perl basics, just lots of useful tips and hacks

There isn't realy anything wrong with this book per se. It does have some good ideas for Perl programming.

I just didn't find it very interesting or even that useful. I stopped reading half way through.

The authors are long-time professional Perl trainers and it clearly shows: the selection of material, organization and presentation style are honed and distilled to be worth paying for hourly. The book is well-balanced beteween theory and practice being divided into several thematical chapters each starting with a short intoduction followed by concrete receipes, accompanied with examples. It's also very usable as a reference as receipes are clearly named and easy to find.

If you got a basic hang of Perl and are starting to love it, get this book now. This is a rare one, teaching Perl beyond syntax and common module usage.

Well written, succinct, no fat. Material is too simple for CS or Perl experts or for advanced readers who want a deeper look under the covers. Covers a broad swath of perl issues in a very shallow manner. Pricy for the skinny size of the book -- I read it over 4 days before going to bed. Not much of a reference. Good starting point for many ideas and other more specialized books and online docs.

I wanted to give it 3*. But I am not the intended audience since I have nearly 10 years of professional experience in Perl. I wish I borrowed a copy or read it in the book store. For someone with 6 months to 2 years of Perl experience it could be a good book to kick you up to the next level of Perl.

This book covers some cool tricks and tips and more efficient coding than some of the other Perl books. Few books I believe actually add to your knowledge and offer ideas and inspiration. For a Perl book after you've got some experience--or even not--this one's pretty good.

I started writing perl around ten years ago, and at the time my perl looked a lot like the c code I wrote in 1990.. or the FORTRAN code I wrote in 1975! And so it was for many years.

But this book, more than any other, helped turn me into an actual perl programmer. It covers the basics- things like 'use "$_" implcitly whenever possible, but don't refer to it explicitly if you don't have to'. There's a good description of slurp mode. And it covers those neat little tricks, like using:

($a,$b)[$a<$b]

to return the greater of two scalars.

It's not a book for the absolute beginner. But once you've written a few programs and start wondering why your perl doesn't look like that written by the perl gurus, this is the book to get.

Very useful tips and techniques. Whether you need help dealing with Perl's "idiosyncrasies" or making your Perl code run more efficiently, you'll love this book.

Perl starts out as a world unto its own, full of strange symbols, it is shrouded in a world of mystery and obfusaction (or not :) ).

Admit it, part of the charm of perl is writing some obscure JAPH one-liner, being able to get 'shebang' jokes, and knowing what the heck $$->a->razzle()->dazzle might actually accomplish.

But how to get there? You've probably read the Llama and the Camel. You've probably got some bigh honkin scripts out there doing some heavy lifting. Heck, you may have cobbled a RegEx together that unravels the Necronmicon. All this and yet....

Odds are you came from a C-ish or similar background and you realize that you're still writing C or Java, but in Perl.

This book is the Emerillian kick to the next level. Realizing that languages, Perl especially, have idioms, best practices, standards, Hall acquanints you with them.

Just as children are baffled by "a fork in the road" you may find handy idioms like my ($b) = ($a=~m,(^\w+?),) something you have to look up, or memorize -- but later you'll realize that you *needed that* phrase in order to round out your vocabulary (just like a 'fork in tho road').

Hall also makes good suggestions that will help make your code tighter, helping your banish overuse of globals (impossible for someone else to maintain). He teaches you to document and follow standards.

this book was critical in my development form perl-plateaud and stymied, to perl-proficient.

Thanks Hall!

Another in the "Effective [insert language] Programming" series, this is probably the best Perl book in my library. It goes beyond the typical refrence book, in that it will show you the best constructs to use in given situations. It differs from the "Cookbooks" in that the examples are generalized, so it is geared more for those who are knee deep in perl code already, rather than the beginner.

The sections on loops and sorts are worth the price of the book alone.

This is a great book for beginners and intermediates. Do you know that a foreach loop is 10% faster than a for loop?. Have you used Orcish Manuever (Wooh !! that sounds fancy :-) ) or schwartzian transform?. we ll if you haven't you should try this book. Even if you are a PERL wizard, you might still want to take a look at this book.