Perl in a Nutshell

I have a shelf of Perl books from O'Reilly, from the Quick Reference to Advanced Perl Programming. This tends to be my first grab when I am looking for something. A bit thick when I am on the road, so I fall back to the Quick Reference, and whenever I do, I find I miss having the Nutshell book (with all my notes in the margins :) If I can't find it in this book, I jump to the Perl Reference most often.

Exactly as advertised, "Perl in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference" is a great reference book if you already have a basic understanding of Perl. Although it does have a section that it refers to as an "Introduction to Perl" it is actually a pretty cursory introduction and there are better books for learning the basics of Perl.The book does have an excellent section on installing Perl including installation on both the Unix and Windows platforms. I've worked with both platforms and the installation process is well documented including how to install modules. This brings us to the large chapter on getting and installing Perl modules. I have spent hours sometimes trying to find an appropriate module for a special situation. This chapter lists all the most common modules and includes descriptions of what they do. This alone makes it a valuable resource for anyone involved in Perl.The authors also include a lot of technical information including command line options and environment variables as well as a section on program structure, data types, special variables, operators, expressions, subroutines, filehandles, and just about anything else that you might need a quick refresher on. Functions are listed both by category and by alphabetical order with descriptions and syntax information. I had a couple of problems on a large project recently and it took three days to get an answer through the forums on the Internet. The answers to all of them are right here and I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had had this book then.A lot of other information is available in the book including CGI programming, Webserver programming, database programming, SOAP, Network modules including Net, Mail, NNTP, FTP, and LDAP, Perl/Tk, Win32 Modules and Extensions, OLE Automation, and ODBC Extensions. This book will be the one I keep close at hand when working with Perl and deserves its location on my desktop instead of in the library. "Perl in a Nutshell" is highly recommended for Perl programmers from basic to advanced level.

I am not a beginning programmer nor am I what you would call an expert. Having a background in PHP made Perl easy to learn, so I didn't need a book that would "teach" Perl. All I needed was a good reference to figure out the differences between PHP and Perl. This book did exactly that! I was able to start programming within a day and I have referenced this book more times than I can count during my most recent development efforts. The binding is nearly worn out! I recommend this book to intermediate programmers that only need a small boost to get to work. If you're a beginner, buy this book to use after you learn the basics and you'll find it to be one of the most valuable tools on your desk!

Many people are familiar with the UNIX in a Nutshell book that O'Reilly has published. These books cover the complete base UNIX Operating System (the commands with their parameters). UNIX administrators, like myself, went nuts over this book. This book was what we wanted, a good reference book that covered the commands with their appropriate switches without being a tutorial. UNIX in a Nutshell is the best reference book for UNIX on the market, hands down. Not only was the book a good reference based on how it was laid out, but for also being totally technically correct. O'Reilly has done it again, but this time with Perl. Perl in a Nutshell is not exactly what I expected from the book but instead it has a lot more to the book. The book was logically laid out by being broken down into eight sections and twenty chapters. The sections are Getting Started, Language Basics, Modules, CGI, Databases, Networking Perl/TK, Win32, & PerlScript. Going from the basics of the language to more advanced topics is a great design so the book will useful to many different people at different levels of knowledge and skill. As a previous college professor, I know that this book is perfect for the student and professional programmer. The modules section covers the standard modules that come with Perl. Not only does it list the standard modules but gives descriptions with a list of the functions. Not to mention that it lists all the parameters/switches for each function also. For example, the module File::Find has two functions within, find & finddepth. The Perl/TK section lists all the standard switches and options for all the function in the TK.pm module. This section is also a great companion to the Perl/TK book. If you ever do any web programming, then the section on CGI is invaluable. Mod_perl and CGI.pm are both covered in the book, along with LWP. This book will be very useful while developing all my new web based applications. The section on Win32 Perl was one of the more complete listing of modules/functions for the 32bit Windows platform. Network programming will be a breeze with the quick reference of all the network functions, including things like telnet, ftp, and IPC. The whole book has plenty of sample code explaining the different aspects of Perl. While reading the book, you can tell that the authors spent a great deal of time making sure that the book was easily readable. Perl in a Nutshell has all the relevant material in one easy to use reference book. What the book is not is a tutorial or a training guide. If you do not know Perl already, then you are better off with the Camel book (Programming Perl) or the llama book (Learning Perl), both from O'Reilly also. For someone like myself that needs reminding of the parameters/switches for various commands, the Nutshell book is perfect. This book is a must have for your zoo collection. I do have one negative thing to say about the book, and that is it should hav

This is the fourth, and probably last, general-purpose Perl book I'll own. Learning Perl makes a fine tutorial, but it misses the advanced topics and extensive libraries. The pocket reference is too concise for anything but the very basic standard functions. And Programming Perl is too sprawling for a good quick reference yet still too small to delve into the complex topics well.Perl in a Nutshell does for Perl what the excellent Java in a Nutshell did for Java. It lets me find what I'm looking for right away so I spend less time with my nose in a book and more time getting my programs working.What more could one hope for in a reference book?