Perl Books

The Big List

The Big List is a comprehensive list of all Perl related books. What follows are reviews of books I or someone I respect actually have had experience with.

Evaluation System

5 Star System

We use a five star system:

***** - excellent, wonderful, couldn't hardly be better
**** - very good
*** - good
** - average
* - not so good, can't recommend it

Dimensions

We rate a book on a number of different dimensions so you can key in on what's important to you. For a book on a familiar subject, for example, you may want a lot of information and don't care much how its organized. But for a book on a complicated new topic you may want a gentler hand guiding you.

Overall - the overall rating for a book
Usefulness - is the book packed with good information?
Organization - is the book well organized for the intended audience?
Writing - is the book well written?
Value - is the book a good value for the money?

Book Style

You may hate a book others love simply because it clashes with your personal learning style. We try and give the flavor of how a booked is organized so you can match a book with your style.

Reference - A reference book doesn't tell you how to do a particular task, but it tries to be exhaustive on a certain subject like language syntax, library calls, etc.
Workshop - You learn by doing. It uses a carefully crafted series of exercises which build on each other allowing you to work at your own pace and experience little successes.
Tutorial - A combination of reference and workshop styles. You may find a lot of discussion with exercises thrown in.
Essay - Each chapter discusses a topic in-depth using an expository style.
Mixed - No one style dominates. This may be by design or confusion.

Books

Teach Yourself CGI Programming with Perl in a Week

Title	Teach Yourself CGI Programming with Perl in a Week
Who	Eric Herrmann
Publisher	Sams
ISBN	1-57521-009-6
Price	$39.95 US
Pages	512
Overall Rating	***
Usefulness	****
Organization	***
Writing	***
Value	***
Index Quality	****
Style	Tutorial
Operating System	Unix only. It is dismissive of the Windows market making the book almost unusable for Windows users.
Intended Audience	Casual to Accomplished programmers
Actual Audience	Somewhat sophisticated programmer.
Disk Included	Yes, a CD containing WWW related Perl code and applications
Table of Contents	Getting Started An Introduction to CGI and Its Environment Understanding How the Server and Browser Communicate Learning the Basics of CGI Using Server Siide Include Commands Using Forms to Gather and Send Data Understanding CGI Data Management Decoding Data Sent to Your CGI Program Using Environment Variable in Your Programs Putting it All Together Building an On-Line Catalog Using Existing CGI Libraries Using Applications that Make Your Web Page Effective Using Image Maps on Your Web Page Guarding your Server Against Unwanted Guests Looking at Advanced Topics Debugging CGI Programs Tips, Tricks, and Future Directions Appendixes MIME Types and File Extensions HTML Forms Status Codes and Reason Phrases The NCSA imagemap.c Program
Caveats	This book is not for a beginning programmer. There is simply to much to learn at once and the style of the book isn't gradual enough for beginners. It really should have tried to accomidate windows users.
Special Mention	It packs in a lot and a lot of good information into one book.
Review	TBD

Learning Perl

Title	Learning Perl
Who	Randal L Schwartz
Publisher	O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
ISBN	1-56592-042-2
Price	$24.95 US
Pages	246
Overall Rating	****
Usefulness	****
Organization	****
Writing	****
Value	*****
Index Quality	****
Style	Essay. It starts with a comprehensive example and then devotes a chapter each to Perl's features.
Operating System	Unix only.
Intended Audience	Casual to accomplished programmers.
Actual Audience	Casual to accomplished programmers.
Disk Included	No
Table of Contents	Introduction Scalar Data Arrays and List Data Control Structures Associative Arrays Basic I/O Regular Expressions Functions Miscellaneous Control Structures Filehandles and File Tests Formats Directory Access File and Directory Manipulation Process Management Other Data Transformation System Database Access User Database Manipulation Converting Other Languages to Perl Appendices Exercise Answers Networking Basics Topics We Didn't Mention
Caveats	It covers Perl4 and not Perl5. A broader section on networking would have been useful.
Special Mention	It gives answers to the exercises! This is great. Overall it is instructive, while being easy to read, and packed with a lot of good examples.
Review	TBD