Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not great for people unfamiliar with UNIX/C/awk
Comment: I found this book to be extremely easy and useful reading. I taught myself the basics of Perl using this book in only a few days and wrote a substantial program immediately afterwards. It is not, however, a great book unless one already has a certain familiarity with UNIX and scripting, like shell scripts or awk or ANSI C itself. This book has elevated me to a higher level but only I think because I was already at a point where I could take in the material. Even so, there may not be a better introductory level Perl book out there. It may merely take more than a few days to wade through the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent first step
Comment: This book is an excellent way to ramp up on Perl quickly. It takes you through the in's and out's of Perl at a wonderful pace and covers most of what you need to know. This is the book to get if you're new to Perl and need to learn it quickly. The 200 or so pages are readable in less than a week.However, there are a few important things to note. This is not a standalone book. You will need to get the Programming in Perl book as well to serve as a reference guide. Also, this book assumes basic Unix knowledge. If you have no exposure to Unix, a couple of things (very minor though) might be a bit baffling. If you've played with Unix, then this book is a breeze. I managed to ramp myself up on Perl and start writing some sweet scripts within a week. I also bought the Programming in Perl book and now I turn to that book for the more heavy duty stuff. The long and short of it: this is the best beginners book around for Perl.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book rocks! I know, a funny thing to say about...
Comment: such a subject, but it was perfect introduction to Perl. For a non-tech hack like me it really gave me a basic understanding and the ability to write some scripts. I've got a lot more to learn but now I have a foundation.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: can be read on a long weekend!
Comment: I had no previous exposure to perl and I have read more than half of the book and absorbed it very quickly. I would say this book is sufficient for 90 percent of the needs of 90 percent of the people who want to learn perl. It is concise and that helps you glance through chapters quickly and learn the basics without getting slowed down by details that may come to use rarely. There are two minor negative things that come to my mind. The examples are rather boring and some useful tips which I think belong to the text are casually mentioned in the footnote, e.g. use of & before the name of a function.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A reader
Comment: Well what did you expect, they wrote the damn language! This book is nice. If you don't however: know some unix, have some programming background and have at least moderate intelligence (I'm sure you do) and patience, then this book may not be for you. Bottom line: this book is hard, but if you can get through it, you're getting somewhere.
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