Perl 5 Pocket Reference

This is just what I needed - a quick reminder to refresh my memory occasionally without referring to the other perl books or docs. It's small and inexpensive -I keep one at home and one at the office. This book is great for jogging your memory to remind you of use and syntax but it should not be relied on as a true "reference". If you have the Camel and the Llama book this is a perfect addition.

With the addition of an index and references to perldoc commands, and updated material for Perl 5.6, this reference guide is virtually all a Perl programmer needs. To steal from Larry Wall's Foreward from this book, it's really hard to write a review about something this perfect.I do wish the book had some extra material: a link to where to get a copy of Perl, some tips on using the -w switch and "use strict" to find bugs, an explanation of the basic perldoc options, a link to the Perl newsgroups and guidelines for posting to them, a few more choice examples of code. To steal from Larry's Foreward again, this information would have made things ever so much easier if I'd had it *before* I started writing in Perl...Update: I'm not sure why other reviewers are saying that this reference is not very useful. Until today, this book has been my only Perl reference for over a year and thousands of lines of Perl code, except for occasionally using perl's built-in help. I did refer to Programming Perl today to find how to make a hash slice on a hash reference that is stored in a hash, but unless you're writing something complicated like that, this pocket reference tells you how to do it. If you really can think of something that's missing, be sure to visit the O'Reilly web site and give them the feedback!

This is a great little book for those who already know perl, but don't program in it enough to remember it all. I always carry it in my bag. Not the best book for the beginner.

I guess if your have to carry documentation around with you all day, this is the book to have. Otherwise, get Perl In A Nutshell.

This is a great book for people who know how to program and are just learning Perl. If you don't know how to program, then forget about it.You really can't beat the price. If you really want to know Perl, you should really go for the big book. This is a great reference to accompany the full reference.