Product Description
If you ask Perl programmers today what book they relied on most when they were learning Perl, you'll find that an overwhelming majority will name Learning Perl--also known affectionately as "the Llama." The first edition of Learning Perl appeared in 1993 and has been a bestseller ever since. Written by two of the most prominent and active members of the Perl community, this book is the quintessential tutorial for the Perl programming language.

Perl began as a tool for Unix system administrators, used for countless small tasks throughout the workday. It has since blossomed into a full-featured programming language on practically every computing platform, and is used for web programming, database manipulation, XML processing, and (of course) system administration--all this while still remaining the perfect tool for the small daily tasks it was designed for. Perl is quick, fun, and eminently useful. Many people start using Perl because they need it, but they continue to use Perl because they love it.

The third edition of Learning Perl has not only been updated for Perl 5.6, but has also been rewritten from the ground up to reflect the needs of programmers learning Perl today. Informed by their years of success at teaching Perl as consultants, the authors have re-engineered the book to better match the pace and scope appropriate for readers trying to get started with Perl, while retaining the detailed discussion, thorough examples, and eclectic wit for which the book is famous.

This edition of the Llama includes an expanded and more gently-paced introduction to regular expressions, new exercises and solutions designed so readers can practice what they've learned while it's still fresh in their minds, and an overall reworking to bring Learning Perl into the new millennium.

Perl is a language for getting your job done. Other books may teach you to program in Perl, but this book will turn you into a Perl programmer.

Amazon.com Review
In this smooth, carefully paced course, a leading Perl trainer teaches you to program in the language that threatens to make C, sed, awk, and the Unix shell obsolete for many tasks. This book is the "official" guide for both formal (classroom) and informal learning. It is fully accessible to the novice programmer.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 292 reviews)

Irritating comments

The book is irritating. (-2 star) I keep wasting my time looking for every little star, cross, double cross, ... symbol in the text. Almost every page has comments at the bottom, and these comments are denoted by tiny symbols. I'd like to see the authors find all the text that goes with all those comments. They really need to listen to their own advice and write the book for people who will be reading it.
The book is incomplete. (-1 star) The authors keep mentioning things that will be discussed later or not at all. I have to look for the topics on the Internet to get an explanation.
The book uses terms without fully explaining them. A beginner would not understand the terms without looking them up on the Internet. (-1 star)
The book covers some interesting syntax rules. (+1 star)
The book gives exceptions to the rules. (+1 star)
The book is up-to-date. (+1 star)
The book gives fully contained examples (+1 star)

September 16, 2008

If you're looking for the best Perl introduction, this is it

An oft-repeated allegation against Perl is that it is write-only. In my opinion, this allegation is usually made by programmers proficient in other languages that have trouble understanding or following Perl idioms (one trivial example: the use of for loops instead of the Perl-native foreach loop).

The value of this book is that it teaches a beginner how to use idiomatic Perl. Someone learning Perl from this book will, in course of time, distinguish between line noise and well-written Perl.

A small subset of Perl is covered, not quite sufficient for much other than basic text processing; however the learning provides a firm base for exploration of other Perl books in O'Reilly's Perl menagerie. Specifically, the "Camel" book (Programming Perl) becomes a lot easier to read once the reader has completed this book and work through its exercises.

In sum, this is the best book for a gentle introduction to a very useful language.
August 07, 2008

One book for most of use

This is the book which led me into the Perl world. It's not the first Perl book I read. Before came to this book, I read some other books, took online lessions, etc. but it's this easy reading book did the work. I also bought the cookbook but never touch it. The knowledge from this book is quite enough for routine use of Perl for basic but useful scripting. If you're new to Perl, this is the right book for you.
March 18, 2008

Learning Perl

Well laid out, easy to follow for a beginner. Serious coders will need a more detailed and in depth book after completing this one.
November 02, 2007

very good book for anyone new to perl

I recommend this book to anyone who is new to perl. The only thing I thought could have been better though was add more examples after each chapter. But other than that the book explains the basics very good.
October 27, 2007

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Programming Perl (3rd Edition)
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant

Intermediate Perl
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, brian d foy

Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, Larry Wall

Mastering Regular Expressions
by Jeffrey Friedl

Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition
by Johan Vromans