The CGI/Perl Cookbook [With *]

No you won't learn from this book because it is a cookbook and like all cookbooks it gives you the recipe. Even the advance user doesn't remember everything and this is wonderful to lookup what you do need. You may be able to find the scripts other places but this saves time which to me is money by having them all in one place. I have this book sitting with the JavaScript cookbook and they both get plenty of use! They make my life easier and I think the book states what it is from the cover. You won't learn "how to " from this book but I don't see anywhere on the book that says you would. A wonderful assest!

I bought this book looking to learn PERL and to get a couple of cgi's off the ground. This book is perfect, especially since they solve most of the routine CGIs that you might need. With this book I was instantly able to implement a quoting system on the web without having to re-invent the wheel.Most books spend lots of time explaining how the web works with CGI. Once you get that under your belt, the task ahead is to get something done - and this is just the book to do that.

This book is just what I was looking for...the printed equivalent of someone sitting down with me and explaining how their CGI scripts work and going over each one line by line. I've used some of the scripts as is, modified others, and cut and paste code from several (including the subroutines) to create my own scripts. I have yet to see any Perl or CGI book that makes me want to throw all the others away, but this one will be on my desk long after most of the others have gone. (And the book's private support mailing list is frosting on the cake!)

I've been on Matt's Scripts Support List for over a year now, and I didn't think there were any decent books on Perl. Until I read CGI-Perl Cookbook by Craig Patchett and Matt Wright. Most books go into so much great detail that it makes it difficult to understand, even for a programmer such as myself. But this particular book is really easy to read and understand for the beginner as well as advanced user. Great job.

This is obviously a book that a lot of time and care went into, on the part of both authors. The CGI/Perl Cookbook has all of the best "goodies" from the excellent Matt's Script Archive website on its CD-ROM, and a chapter on each of the scripts carefully walks you through every line, explaining (in refreshingly non-technogeek language!) the programming theory behind each element and how the total script works. I found this very useful when I began writing my own Perl scripts. Matt's easy-to-modify CGI scripts are also great for people who don't care *why* it works, they just want it to work. With the excellent documentation Craig and Matt supply, these are as close to foolproof as CGI scripting ("Aaagh! 500 Server Error!!") gets, and all 20 scripts covered in the book are the basic, useful kind that anyone handling websites will want to use sooner or later (guestbook, form mail, feedback, and a really well-designed web store.) Excellent value; this is the kind of book you'll keep and use for years, whether it's your stepping-stone to writing your own scripts or whether you never want to get more in-depth than just typing in the path to your Perl executable.