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40th out of 92 books
—
159 voters
Learning Perl
Learning Perl, better known as "the Llama book", starts the programmer on the way to mastery. Written by three prominent members of the Perl community who each have several years of experience teaching Perl around the world, this edition has been updated to account for all the recent changes to the language up to Perl 5.8.
Perl is the language for people who want to get wor...more
Perl is the language for people who want to get wor...more
Paperback, 4th Edition, 312 pages
Published
July 21st 2005
by O'Reilly Media
(first published July 14th 1993)
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This is the way to start writing Perl: quick and painless.
Start on page one, where the authors mention that they "enjoyed writing it," with the following footnote:
Start on page one, where the authors mention that they "enjoyed writing it," with the following footnote:
Now, if you're wondering how we can say that we've enjoyed writing it (in the past tense) when we're still on the first page, that's easy: we started at the end, and worked our way backwards. It sounds like a strange way to do it, we know. But, honestly, once we finished writing the index, the rest was hardly any trouble at all.
Jul 23, 2007
Kent Frazier
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
beginning programmers
Shelves:
programming,
computers
This was my first real programming book (not counting others that I bought but never got far enough it to really make a difference). I felt that it was a really good introduction to programming, as well as a fairly good introduction to Perl. It is certainly not the most comprehensive book on the subject, but the simple but effective description and the exercises at the end of each chapter did a lot to help me grasp programming principles and reinforce them. The book was short enough that I read...more
There's this old geek joke where you compare programming languages and cars (Assembler would be a Formula 1 racer, LISP would be an electric car, etc). Here's Perl:
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In the quest to broaden my technical skills (or 'layoff insurance' as I like to call it), I've opted to learn programming. With IT Support rapidly becoming so automated and out-sourced, it seems to me that my current job will one day be replaced by a robot (in India, likely).
So one of my Unix admin co-workers has been extolling Perl, and I opted to pick up what appears to be the beginner's volume published by O'Reilly (my favorite tech publisher). I'm slowly working through it--it didn't take lo...more
So one of my Unix admin co-workers has been extolling Perl, and I opted to pick up what appears to be the beginner's volume published by O'Reilly (my favorite tech publisher). I'm slowly working through it--it didn't take lo...more
I've actually read this in russian. It was one of the first books of programming I've read. I remember having a lot of fun when reading it. This was definitely the right book for me at the time. Now I would recommend learning other languages such as Python or Ruby.
I read 3/4 of this book straight though. It's a very well writting programming book. I've only used perl like 3 times in my whole life and have written maybe 2 lines ever though, so maybe this book scared me straight?
This was an add on text for a Perl class. Seems like I've
taken more than one version of this class, in person, online,
they're everywhere.
Contains various perls of wisdom you should need for this
language.
This is, hands down, the best book for learning Perl. I have kept a copy of this book near my desk for the past 7+ years, and loan it out to anyone who is interested in learning more about scripting in Perl.
I loved this book!! While I learned C++ in school as my first language, Perl and specifically this book inspired my love of development and shaped my future career path.
This is my first book on Perl. I think it is pretty easy to follow, and delivers clearly the basics of Perl. I'd love to recommend it to beginners.
Jan 19, 2010
Kelly
added it
Totally learning old school PERL for some stuff at work. This text confirms many of the stereotypes that I have of PERL users. The foreword is a hilarious discussion of PERL wizardry which reminds me why I never learned PERL of my own volition. HAHAHA
The book is good but the language is not. Cpan is full with abandoned buggy libraries. I quit using Perl and shifted to Python.
read this back at CNN in 1999. i've refused to read or write perl since then, and it's done me nothing but good.
I read this when the first edition came out, but have been away from the language for a while, and picking it up piecemeal was getting old. It’s vastly improved over the earlier version(s), which were pretty good to begin with. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn about Perl. (Yes, there are a zillion of online tutorials, but this covers a lot more breadth.)
A good introduction book to Perl. A most have if you need
to learn Perl programming
to learn Perl programming
On of the best beginner programming books ever written regardless of language.
A great book for a beginner in Perl.
This really raised my game.
Great book if you want to ..
Always on my desk
Perl may not be a perfect language, while this book is a great introduction to Perl.
It's comprehensive but compact, outlined well too.
The authors demonstrated their deep understanding of Perl with sense of humor.
It's comprehensive but compact, outlined well too.
The authors demonstrated their deep understanding of Perl with sense of humor.
Gentle introduction to Perl. Light paced but good.
Great guide to Perl. Takes you by hand to learning you some perl, with lots of good perl-humor as well.
Very hard to read this book from cover to cover. Good book to keep around for reference purposes. This author goes in-depth with Perl. Highly recommend it for Perl Ninjas out there.
Clear writing style. Great exercises shared.
I recommend reading this book for entertainment and never writing a line of perl. The language is more backwards and silly than even VB (which is saying a helluva lot), but the three writers work through its vulgarities well enough to nearly convince the reader that it's actually worth learning. Don't be fooled by their wiles: perl is a mischievous mistress.
This is *the* Perl book. If you only read one, this should be it. The text explains concepts well, and the end-of-chapter exercises are designed to reinforce what you've just learned, integrating with anything you learned earlier, and also to stretch your imagination. You don't need any prior programming knowledge to find this a useful resource.
Good book for foundations, I would say... My review wouldn't be a particularly fair one because I didn't get too far with this. As quickly as my need to learn Perl arose, it diminished and disappeared. That said, should that need come back, I believe that this is book where I would re-start.
If you want to learn Perl, then this book should be your starting point. The book has a humorous and example-based learning approach. You will see more footnotes than anyother book. The footnotes are worth reading with lot of insights on why things are the way they are.
Excellently written book. At first I thought this book was full of chit-chat with so many footnotes but by the end of it, it helped me really understand the basics of Perl. Totally recommend it for anyone who is thinking about "learning perl".
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