"Pro Perl" / Peter Wainwright   >>

Reviewer: Arjen Laarhoven Rating: This book is aimed at the working professional who doesn't need to be held by the hand. Topics, especially the basics (variables, control structures) are covered in detail, not eschewing the sometimes murky depths of Perl. Of course, regexes and object-oriented Perl can't be treated as well as in "Mastering Regular Expressions" and "Object-Oriented Perl", but Peter does a good job introducing even these more challenging subjects. At over 1,000 pages, this is a big book but it's not fluffed up either. Each chapter discusses a topic in-depth, including even the darker corners of Perl. Areas where Perl tends to get used a lot, such as command-line utilities and text processing, are treated in their own chapters. Other areas, like GUIs (with Perl/Tk for example) and Web-related things aren't discussed at all. Important topics like debugging, profiling and benchmarking are treated in detail, as is the testing of programs. Perl version 5.8 is treated in this book, although care has been taken to point out differences between 5.8 and the older 5.005 and 5.6, which are still in widespread use today. This is important as it's sometimes necessary to target the older versions for reasons beyond your control. Peter points out differences between perl versions as well as platforms. Unix is the default platform, but in areas where it matters, like filesystems and process control, pointers are given to make your programs portable. A book introducing programmers to Perl should have a clear and consistent code formatting style. Occasionally, the code in Pro Perl is formatted sloppily. Although the code is very readable, indenting and use of spaces in statements could be much more consistent. A book of this size and scope is bound to have some errors and quirks, but the ones I found are relatively minor, and easily fixed in a future printing. Although The Camel is the Perl book, I think that for a working programmer "Pro Perl" is more suited. Less quirky and witty, but with a more practical approach to programming in Perl, this book is a welcome addition to the range of Perl books. Here is a link to an interview with the author.