With the plethora of Perl books out today (375 listed at
I was suprised to see a new Perl book on the scene, but after reading
it I was pleasantly surprised with its quality. For people who are starting out in Perl, or just need a good refresher, Simon Cozens \”Beginning Perl\” is a good choice.
Right off the bat, Simon starts with a great history of Perl. Sometimes computer authors spend too much time talking about history and origins of computer and languages which tends to turn reader off very quickly, but this was well done. With Simon\’s introduction you get a feel for the evolution of Perl and a clear understanding of why you should be reading this book as well as why you should be using Perl. My only problem was a single line where he says \”It\’s very easy to learn\”. I think he should have included the same caveat that came with the game \”Othello\” (\”A minute to learn, A lifetime to master\”).
One of the other things that I thought was great was the coverage of perldoc. Now people are familiar with the idiom RTFM, but a lot of time people don\’t know how to read the manuals (especially in open source arena where you don\’t get a manual), so I think the coverage of the perldoc feature was a great thing to have right at the start.
Getting into the meat of the book Simon did a nice job of explaining the differences between compiled and interpreted. And how Perl fits into this world of programs. However it seems that this information might better have been in the introduction instead of the \”First Steps in Perl\” chapter.
When we do get to the perl example it is very well handled, as it is through the whole book. In addition to the script\’s code, we get step by step explanations of what is taking place, plus intentional error generation. Most books gloss over what happens when you get an error, but in this case, the author intentionally creates and error at times so we can get a better understanding of how to read Perl error messages.
Simon does an excellent job of building the knowledge of the reader to help develop a good base of Perl knowledge. The book does start at the beginning, and is intended for beginners (hence the name) but for a starter, it does a good job.
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