Effective Perl Programming: Ways to Write Better, More Idiomatic Perl

The day I got this book, I turned to page 1 and started reading. Two hours later, I had made it only to page 80. Why? Because this book is DENSE and FULL of tips and tricks that will expand the horizons of the intermediate programmer. I spent a lot of time studying the numerous examples in order to soak up all the information that was being presented.I've been programming with Perl since 1992 and teach it at a community college. And yet with every turn of the page, I learned something new. Examples:Making regular expressions more efficientUsing map() and grep()How to call a subroutine from inside a stringGreat stuff! The techniques I've learned from this book have been incorporated into my new Perl scripts and they are shorter and faster than ever before.I can't lavish enough praise on this book. Authors Joseph Hall and Randal Schwartz should be commended. If you have been using Perl for some time and want to hone your skills, get this book now.

I've been using Perl casually for a few years now, but when I first got this book six months ago, I sort of skimmed through it and didn't find anything too interesting. But when I started doing a few Perl projects, I kept thinking, "Hey, didn't that book say something about a better way to do this?" So I'd look it up, and an elegant solution to my problem would be there. It's not that I couldn't have done it without the tip, because as all Perl programers know, "There's More Than One Way To Do It", but it taught me a cleaner way than I would have done otherwise.Most tips are no longer than a few pages, and they are neatly organized by topic ("Regular Expressions", "Subroutines", etc.) in the index. Highly recommended for the semi-experienced Perl programmer who is looking to polish their programming skills.

This is an excellent book. It runs through 60 items, through regular expressions, "map", and "grep". Each item describes a concepts and best usage of one of the core concepts of Perl. This may be one of the first technical books I read from start to finish (the very *best* way to read this book of progressive concept development). Reading this book changed my understanding of Perl programming, improved my code (by the first 50 pages), and reduced my programming mistakes.This was also the single most fun technical book I have read. Not comedy, but true delight at finding new ways to use Perl. I can readily believe that Joseph Hall is a successful and popular instructor, if this is an example of his class design.

It's slim, but packed with incredibly useful knowledge. The book is organized as a number of "Issues" each of which has numerous examples and related sub-issues. This book is in the same vein as "The Perl Cookbook", but addresses problems from a more general approach, instead of "How do I do X?". This is not a book for Perl newbies, but after going through "Learning Perl" and hacking a few scripts, a beginner should have encountered some of the issues that this book addresses. The book is readable and the examples are useful. Some of the more useful, but less-understood features of Perl (map, grep are the ones I've encountered so far) are explained quite well. All in all, reading this book should take you from Perl baby-talk to Perl adulthood.

Precise and concise. Well written. Useful itemized table of content. Packed with excellent examples of do's and dont's. Indispensable. Recommended for all serious Perl programmers.