Comments about oreilly Learning Perl, Fourth Edition:

Overall I find that "Learning Perl" is a good book. The authors painstakingly try to teach how to program Perl the way professional Perl programmers do. The book also tries to explain some of the "predefined variables" (such as @_, $!) that people who maintain Perl programs might come across with (Thanks for this).

One of my "gripe" is that it seems that Chapter 1 can be more terse. It needs 11 pages before it shows the "hello world" program, (Seems that there are only 3 scripts found in Chap. 1 is "Hello World", there are a couple of other, 2 others are just to show that you can write complicated programs using perl ).

It would be nice if "Learning Perl" and "Intermediate Perl" can be combined into one book (It is almost akin to splitting a C++ book into 2 books, 1 book for non-OO features of C++, and another book for the OO features of C++ [A little exaggeration])

Overall a very good book, especially for those who don't have programming background.

Comments about oreilly Learning Perl, Fourth Edition:

A simple google search:

site:oreilly.com learning perl code download

Shows that the code examples are available at:

examples.oreilly.com/learnperl4

However, the README file in the archive says the code goes with the third edition of the book.

Comments about oreilly Learning Perl, Fourth Edition:

I'm still in the process of reading this book, affectionately nick-named the llama by the Perl community. But I feel I've made it far enough in that I have a good feel for the writing style and overall quality of the book.

While there are a couple of technical errors here and there, they are mostly to do with the formatting and typography rather than the code. If you do find an error in your edition (there have been many additional printings of the 4th Edition), the books website (where you're probably reading this review right now) has a comprehensive list of errata, along with their corrections.

I have to say I really enjoy the writing style of the authors, and from what I've seen of the alpaca, there's more to come. They make the subject matter interesting, covering only what's needed, deferring more advanced techniques to later texts.

In my own experience, I am finding this book a great help in clarifying certain concepts as I read from cover-to-cover. But since I have decided to take on the maintenance of a previous programmer's Perl/Tk program, the learning curve is a little steeper than it may otherwise have been. That said, if I'd not decided to look at this code, I'd not likely be bothering to learn Perl at all, and what a shame that would be. I do find it to be a rather enjoyable language. Anyway, this book is a great tool, and is easy to use in conjunction with Mastering Perl/Tk as well as the Definitive Reference: the Camel.

Finally, a note to the authors: Keep up the great work! This is exactly the kind of book I have come to expect from O'Reilly, though I have, on occasion, been disappointed.

Comments about oreilly Learning Perl, Fourth Edition:

There were a few reasons why I wanted to learn Perl. Amongst those reasons were IRSSI (http://www.irssi.org) , an IRC client, which can use Perl scripts. My main motivation though, was to use Perl for the administration of UNIX based systems.

I have never programmed before, so I'm proud to say that Perl is my first language. I didn't know a single thing about Perl, but once I purchased Learning Perl, I quickly became familiar with the language (I'm amazed at how fast I learned). The book taught me everything from what a Scalar Variable is, to how Larry Wall thinks (perhaps that is an exaggeration), but I did indeed learn a lot. I found Perl to be an easy language to learn, thanks to Learning Perl.

And because this book was so great, I did not hesitate to purchase Intermediate Perl, Mastering Regular Expressions, and Peogramming Perl. They are all (in my opinion) a must have.

Comments about oreilly Learning Perl, Fourth Edition:

Even if you are a brainiac, you probably shouldn't jump right to the Camel.

I read about half of the Camel and then picked this (Llama) up and I'm very glad I did.

Perfect pace and choice of topics.

Really cleared up some of the fundamentals that were hindering my progress with the Camel.

Maybe I just needed to read Camel twice, but it's alot easier to just read this one first.

I am enjoying this one so much, I bought the Alpaca already. I have every confidence that the Camel will be a much more pleasant read after Llama and Alpaca.

If you are only 3 or 4 chapters into Camel, don't assume you are sailing smooth. You are about to hit very choppy water.

One gripe: book mentions downloadable code, but website has none. Not a big deal, since you should be typing everything anyway to get practice with the syntax.