Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

I used this book when I was a researcher in college and it helped a lot. Many of the examples in the book are directly applicable to work you will do in a lab. While this book does not have everything I found it an invaluable resource for anyone who is new to perl and bioinformatics in general.

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

this is the excellent online resource for the beginning programmers .

Only thing i like to mention is that should give more example on the bioinformatics codes...for different aspects.

Is there any resource for java like this one, which is specially made for bioinformatics using examples..

Please let me know.

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

it gives me a programing world!

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

This is good book, I ahvent read it all but its very comprehesive! I think that I'll finish the book with a solid understanding of Perl basics, a collection of programs for such tasks as parsing BLAST and GenBank. Bye Kate Lea

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

This is good book, I ahvent read it all but its very comprehesive! I think that I'll finish the book with a solid understanding of Perl basics, a collection of programs for such tasks as parsing BLAST and GenBank. Bye Kate Lea

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

This is certainly a superb book. I really enjoyed it. Here are some of the advantages of "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" over other entry level general purpose Perl books such as "Learning Perl".

(1) Most importantly, you learn Perl in the context of dealing with biological problems (e.g., parsing BLAST output) rather than general problems that will not even remotly interest you (e.g., parsing employee's address list). So you will be kept interested throughout the book.

(2) Entire codes, rather than code snippets, are presented.

(3) Explanations are much more friendly and clear.

(4) You can find some useful materials that are not covered in Learning Perl; for example, using Perl debugger, using range operator to skip lines, etc.

One problem with this book is that there are TONS of errata (I'm referring to October 2001, 1st edition). Most of their corrections are available from the book website, and half of them are re-phrasing of sentences, so errata will not prevent you from understanding the book. But it certainly takes significant amount of time to go through the HUGE list of errata corrections (I also found more than ten additional errata that are not found in the errata list and reported to publisher). So if it's not urgent for you, wait until next reprint becomes available.

One more wish list is that Bioperl module could have been covered (It is briefly mentioned over seven pages but not actually covered). Hopefully, the upcoming book (June 2003) "Mastering perl for bioinformatics" will cover it.

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

it's a decent book -- but there needs to be one devoted to BioPerl!

Comments about oreilly Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics:

This book is ok, not all that great for beginners. Has a lot of info, and the author shows you how to solve specific problems, but does not really show you how to deal with related problems. There are many errors, which is not unusual when people write books. The best way to learn perl is that you still have to learn the perl language itself to really understand it. This books has lots of examples, and if you happen to have the exact problems that you need to solve, then it is not bad. But to be honest with all you readers, the best way still is to read from other orielly's books on perl. And start programming from scratch! Goodluck to all ya!