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Learn Perl

So, you want to learn perl? Where to start? A good place is this introduction or any of the books in the Beginners section below. As you learn more, you can move down the book lists and visit www.perl.org and www.cpan.org for more information.

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Books

Books commonly recommended on the beginners lists. If a book isn't mentioned in this list it might still be good, but there is a good chance it isn't. :-)

Beginners

Learning Perl (3rd ed)
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix. 316 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (July 15, 2001).
Learning Perl is the tutorial book, covering how you could spend the first 30 to 40 hours with Perl. New 3rd edition!
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules
by Randal L. Schwartz with Tom Phoenix. 240 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (June 9, 2003).
Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules picks up where Learning Perl leaves off. This new book offers a gentle introduction to the world of references, object-oriented programming, and the use of Perl modules that form the backbone of any effective Perl program. Following the successful format of Learning Perl, each chapter in the book is designed to be small enough to be read in just an hour or two. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises to help you practice what you've learned with answers in an appendix for your reference. In short, this book covers everything that separates the Perl dabbler from the Perl programmer.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Beginning Perl
by Simon Cozens, Peter Wainwright. 700 pages. Wrox Press Inc. (May 25, 2000).
Beginning Perl is a different kind of Perl book. It's written particularly with the beginning programmer in mind, but it doesn't treat you like an idiot, and experienced programmers will not feel patronised. It covers a lot of ground, from the very basics of programming, right through to developing CGI applications for the web. More importantly, it emphasises good Perl practice, and readable and maintainable code.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Elements of Programming with Perl
by Andrew L. Johnson. 350 pages. Manning Publications Company. (October 1999).
"If you come from a non-programming background and you want to learn Perl go and buy this book. Now. The rest of the review will wait until you get back. If your coming to Perl from another language and you have basic to intermediate knowledge and experience of programming concepts go and buy this book. If you know Perl well then buy this book and when ever anyone asks you a lot of questions hand it to them and smile as you realise you've just done them a favour." -- Dean Wilson, London.pm
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Perl Fast and Easy Web Development
by Les Bate. 405 pages. Premier Press. (November 12, 2002).
Perl Fasy and Easy Web Development is book is intended to get new web developers started building Web applications with Perl as quickly as possible. The first part of the book familiarizes the reader with enough of the basics of the Perl language to get started in web development, using brief examples to illustrate each point. From there, the reader is shown how forms can interact with Perl CGI programs and how to build CGI programs into Web-based, database-driven applications.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

CGI Programming with Perl (2nd ed)
by Scott Guelich, Shishir Gundavaram, Gunther Birznieks, Linda Mui. 451 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (January 15, 2000).
The authors' second pass at CGI pedagogy is a lucid, honest, and expanded account that develops functionality of dynamic Web pages in a rational progression--from HTML client-server and CGI syntax basics to general input/output, forms, e-mail, graphics, and simple database applications, including maintaining client state and data persistence under the otherwise stateless HTTP protocol. The authors offer synopses of cookies, JavaScripting, server security, and XML, all of which are described in detail in other books. (from Amazon.com's review)
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

MacPerl: Power & Ease
by Vicky Brown and Chris Nandor. 372 pages. (1998).
MacPerl: Power and Ease is designed for both the beginner to Perl, and those who want to take advantage of Perl on Mac OS. It's divided into three primary sections: learning about programming, learning about Perl, and advanced topics. The latter includes brief sections on objects and references, and more complete information on how to use the Mac toolbox modules for making windows and dialog boxes and using AppleScript with Perl. It covers the MacPerl based on perl 5.004, and Mac OS (Classic), but much of the first two parts apply to any platform, and much of the third part applies to Mac OS X
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Perl & LWP
by Sean M. Burke. 264 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (June 2002).
The LWP (Library for WWW in Perl) suite of modules lets your programs download and extract information from the Web. Perl & LWP shows how to make web requests, submit forms, and even provide authentication information, and it demonstrates using regular expressions, tokens, and trees to parse HTML. This book is a must have for Perl programmers who want to automate and mine the Web.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Picking Up Perl
by Bradley M. Kuhn. self published. (July 1999).
This book has been created for a number of reasons. The primary reason is to provide a freely redistributable tutorial for the Perl language. In writing this freely redistributable tutorial, it is our hope that the largest number of people can have access to it and share it. In the Perl community, we have discovered ways to save time by writing Perl programs that make our jobs and lives easier. Surely, Perl is not a panacea, but it has certainly made our lives a little bit better. It is hoped that you can use Perl to make your jobs and lives easier, too.

Essentials

Programming Perl, 3rd ed
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant. 1092 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (July 2000).
The revised and updated reference book for Perl 5.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

The Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, Larry Wall. 794 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (August 1998).
"Precious few books can meet the needs of novices and experts simultaneously. The Perl Cookbook does, and on nearly every page. It has the perfect mix of instruction, revelation, and attitude." --Jon Orwant, editor of The Perl Journal
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Perl 6 Essentials
by Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski and Leopold Totsch. 208 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (June 27, 2003).
Perl 6 Essentials is the first book that offers a peek into the development of the new Perl language while it's still in flux. Written by members of the Perl 6 core development team, the book covers the development not only of Perl 6 syntax but also Parrot, the language-independent interpreter developed as part of the Perl 6 design strategy. This book is essential reading for anyone committed to the Perl community. It will satisfy their curiosity and show how changes in the language will make it more powerful and easier to use.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Advanced

Advanced Perl Programming
by Sriram Srinivasan. 434 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (August 1997).
Somewhat dated, but still a good and broad introduction to many more advanced topics
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Perl Debugged
by Peter J. Scott, Ed Wright. 288 pages. Addison-Wesley Pub Co. (March 27, 2001).
I *highly* recommend Perl Debugged to anyone at the beginning or intermediate stage in Perl programming, particularly to programmers who have less than 2-4 years of debugging experience in general. An experienced programmer, on the other hand, will want to buy a copy (copies?) to browse and then hand to his junior co-worker(s) with stern instructions to "read first, code later." -- Joseph N. Hall (author of Effective Perl Programming)
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Effective Perl Programming
by Joseph N. Hall. 288 pages. Addison-Wesley Pub Co. (January 1998).
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason
by Dave Rolsky, Ken Williams. 318 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (October 2002).
This book shows you how to create large, complex, dynamically driven web sites that look good and are a snap to maintain. You'll learn how to visualize multiple Mason-based solutions to any given problem and select among them. The book covers the latest line of Mason development 1.1x, which has many new features, including line number reporting based on source files, sub-requests, and easier use as a CGI.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C: The Apache API and mod_perl
by Lincoln Stein, Doug MacEachern, Linda Mui (Editor). 724 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (March 1999).
Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C will allow you to enhance your Apache HTTP server in just about any way you'd like. Overall, it is an excellent book, and it has a lot of good information and terrific examples on everything from "Content Handlers" to customizing the Apache server configuration process. -- Doug Beaver.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Practical mod_perl
by Stas Bekman & Eric Cholet. 924 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (May 27, 2003).
Mod_perl embeds the popular programming language Perl in the Apache web server, giving rise to a fast and powerful web programming environment. Written for Perl web developers and web administrators, Practical mod_perl is an extensive guide to the nuts and bolts of the powerful and popular combination of Apache and mod_perl. From writing and debugging scripts to keeping your server running without failures, the techniques in this book will help you squeeze every ounce of power out of your server. True to its title, this is the practical guide to mod_perl. review
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

mod_perl Developer's Cookbook
by Geoffrey Young, Paul Lindner, Randy Kobes. 650 pages. Sams Publishing. (January 2002).
A practical, hands-on guide that shows you how to exploit the power of mod_perl. review
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd edition
by Jeffrey E. Friedl. 496 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (July 15, 2002).
Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition has been thoroughly updated to include all the new features of Perl 5.8, as well as several other languages, including Java, VB.NET, C#, Python, JavaScript, Tcl, and Ruby. Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that made a complex, dry topic crystal-clear to thousands of programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use. review
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Extended and Embedding Perl
by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens. 384 pages. Manning Publications Company. (July 2002).
Extending and Embedding Perl explains how to expand the functionality and usefulness of the Perl programming language and how to use Perl from C programs. It begins simply but also covers complex issues using real code examples from the Perl source. The book discusses how to write interfaces to C libraries (as well as C++ and Fortran libraries). It shows you how to implement Perl callbacks for C libraries, how to pass Perl hashes and arrays between Perl and C, and how to use the Perl Data Language infrastructure to improve the speed of array operations.
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Programming the Perl DBI
by Alligator Descartes, Tim Bunce. 346 pages. O'Reilly & Associates. (February 2000).
Database programming with Perl
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Object Oriented Perl
by Damian Conway. 490 pages. Manning Publications Company. (August 1999).
Filled with syntactic tips and tricks, Object Oriented Perl is a sure bet for any programmer who wants to learn how to use Perl objects effectively. review
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

Perl: The Programmer's Companion
by Nigel Chapman. 292 pages. John Wiley & Sons. (September 25, 1997).
Buy from: Amazon - Powells - Amazon UK - Bookpool

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