Perl

This book is dated, but it provides useful chapters on using references for building data records in memory. Most of the other material appears in amplified form in later O’Reilly books.

A completely new 2nd edition of this book was published in June, 2005. The second edition was written by Simon Cozens, and the subject matter is completely different.

The book’s chapters are:

1. Data References and Anonymous Storage
2. Implementing Complex Data Structures
3. Typeglobs and Symbol Tables
4. Subroutine References and Closures
5. Eval
6. Modules
7. Object-Oriented Programming
8. Object Orientation: The Next Few Steps
9. Tie
10. Persistence
11. Implementing Object Persistence
12. Networking with Sockets
13. Networking: Implementing RPC
14. User Interfaces with Tk
15. GUI Example: Man Page Viewer
16. Template-Driven Code Generation
17. Extending Perl: A First Course
18. Embedding Perl: The Easy Way
19. Perl Internals

This book covers advanced Perl techniques in detail. It is appropriate for someone who has several years’ experience with Perl and is creating production-quality software.

The book’s chapters are:

1. Advanced Techniques
2. Parsing Techniques
3. Templating Tools
4. Objects, Databases, and Applications
5. Natural Language Tools
6. Perl and Unicode
7. POE
8. Testing
9. Inline Extensions
10. Fun with Perl

This book is essential for anyone using Perl for CGI programming.

Intermediate Perl is the new edition of what was formerly named Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules, by Randal L. Schwartz.

The price (US $40) is high for a book that has only 256 pages. The cover proclaims “Foreword by Damian Conway”, but the Foreword was written in May, 2003, is only a page long, and doesn't add anything useful.

Many of the examples in the book refer culturally to the television series Gilligan’s Island. Baby Boomers, unfortunately, will have no problem with references to the Minnow, the Professor, and coconuts, but I wonder if younger readers have the background. Couldn’t the authors come up with something a little more 21st century?

The book’s chapters are:

1. Introduction
2. Intermediate Foundations
3. Using Modules
4. Introduction to References
5. References and Scoping
6. Manipulating Complex Data Structures
7. Subroutine References
8. Filehandle References
9. Practical Reference Tricks
10. Building Larger Programs
11. Introduction to Objects
12. Objects with Data
13. Object Destruction
14. Some Advanced Object Topics
15. Exporter
16. Writing a Distribution
17. Essential Testing
18. Advanced Testing
19. Contributing to CPAN

I used this book as a reference when I taught beginning Perl to scientists at Cereon Genomics. This is an excellent book for learning Perl. I learned a few new things while reading this book, but an experienced Perl programmer does not need this book.

The 4th edition was published in July, 2005.

This is my favorite Perl book, and this book made it easy for me to switch to object oriented Perl, which I use exclusively these days. You will not need all the information in this book, but all of the information is useful. Chapter 2, a Perl refresher, clearly explains many Perl obscurities, and this chapter alone is worth the price of the entire book.

This book is now out of print, but it’s available from the Manning Publications Co. web site as a PDF ebook.

This book serves as the basis for coding standards in my current job.

The book’s chapters are:

1. Best Practices
2. Code Layout
3. Naming Conventions
4. Values and Expressions
5. Variables
6. Control Structures
7. Documentation
8. Built-in Functions
9. Subroutines
10. I/O
11. References
12. Regular Expressions
13. Error Handling
14. Command-Line Processing
15. Objects
16. Class Hierarchies
17. Modules
18. Testing and Debugging
19. Miscellanea

Your Perl problem has probably been solved before, and this is the first place to look for a solution.

The 2nd edition was published in August, 2003.

This is the ultimate authority on Perl. I find this book useful as a reference, but you won’t be able to learn how to code in Perl by reading this book. Some of the witty comments in previous editions have disappeared from the 3rd edition.

This is the essential guide to using Perl to interact with databases, Excel spreadsheets, DBM files, etc. A weakness of the book is that there aren’t enough examples.