Customer Rating:  
Summary: I have some complaints
Comment: The back cover of the 3rd edition says (roughly), "Ask a perl expert today what book they used when they were learning perl, and they'll tell you it was the llama." Well, yeah; probably when they were learning perl it was literally the only introductory book on the subject. So that's not really an endorsement of quality.
The llama is actually a decent companion on your perl voyage. Particularly if you already think of yourself as a programmer are at least acquainted with the unix way of thinking, it will show you much of what you want to know about perl. And if you're new to perl you'll want to have this book (there still aren't any better options for the newcomer). However,
1. The nonstop Flintstones references are hard to stomach. (Yes, that's a trivial complaint. But it drives me nuts.)
2. There aren't enough exercises. This is a nontrivial complaint. For example, the chapter on control structures has only ONE exercise (!), which you can solve by ignoring most of the material in the section. The chapter which introduces SPLIT and JOIN has no exercises that use them (there aren't any exercises anywhere in the book that use split and join, as far as I can tell.) It's a persistent problem; since most folks learn by doing, they'll be required to exercise some imagination in creating and testing their own exercises. An introductory text should be much stronger in this area.
3. The 3rd edition rewrite moved some fundamental (and easy) stuff into a late-in-the-book "Advanced Perl Techniques" chapter. A few examples off the top of my head are the transliteration operator, slices, and sorting subroutines, which are meat and potatoes perl. They were better integrated into the body of the text in the 2nd edition.
4. The authors actually warn you away from trying things out in some cases! I'm thinking, for instance, of the offhand "CSV files are too hard, don't try splitting them" and "Don't try to work with HTML, it's too hard" comments. That is not in the spirit of perl at all. A few exercises that show what the difficulties are and give a few tricks for handling them would be better. And you'll be in a much better position to used and appreciate a prewritten module if you understand the difficulties it's supposed to be taking care of.
The biggest improvement in the 3rd edition is the reorganization of the regular expression material (into three chapters). They still need more exercises, but the presentation is good. On the whole, though, I liked the organization in the old editions better and probably recommend using one of them if you can find it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: THE beginning Perl book
Comment: This book is the best book for the complete Perl beginner. If you know nothing about Perl, or even nothing about programming, this book will get you into the basics of Perl in no time. The writing style is alright, it keeps you interested in the book, and the topic. There are practice problems to do at the end of the chapters, to give you some practice with the language and the way Perl works. I recommend for any beginner in Perl, or beginner in programming. If you have a decent understanding of the Perl basics, you'll want Programming Perl instead.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great introduction
Comment: This book is aimed at Perl novices and sys admins who need to get up to speed quickly. As with most O'Reilly books I found the authors know thier stuff and the book was well edited. The book contains enough info to allow you to script most sys admin tasks, and has the benefit of being short and therefore easy to carry, but once you get a taste of Perl's power you will no doubt want to get the "camel" (programming perl), which is more comprehensive.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Comment: I have read quite a few perl books but this one is simply amazing. Simple, concise and yet highly detailed, this covers all basics of Perl with through examples, as well as providing some insight into the more advanced techniques. Highly recommended for the entry and intermediate level.
Customer Rating:
Summary: questions about perl
Comment: i read nine chapters of this book
1.i still don't know what perl can really do.
2.can perl work only under DOS?not windows?
3.what books should i read next to became a perl programmer
4. (can perl make PC games?)
5. how can i turn my perl program into a regular .exe program so it could run on computers that doesn't have perl!
thanks
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