Perl is a powerful programming language that has grown in popularity since it first appeared in 1988. The first edition of this book, Programming Perl, hit the shelves in 1990, and was quickly adopted as the undisputed bible of the language. Since then, Perl has grown with the times, and so has this book. Programming Perl is not just a book about Perl. It is also a unique introduction to the language and its culture, as one might expect only from its authors. Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective on the evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language, and lives and breathes the complexities of Perl internals as few other mortals do. Jon Orwant is the editor of The Perl Journal, which has brought together the Perl community as a common forum for new developments in Perl. Any Perl book can show the syntax of Perl's functions, but only this one is a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies of the language. Any Perl book can explain typeglobs, pseudohashes, and closures, but only this one shows how they really work. Any Perl book can say that my is faster than local, but only this one explains why. Any Perl book can have a title, but only this book is affectionately known by all Perl programmers as "The Camel." This third edition of Programming Perl has been expanded to cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other new features that have been added since the previous edition.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 114 Ratings

Too much waffle, not enough content - 2009-05-28
Reviewer Rating:
This book is absolutely terrible. I'm giving it 2 stars because I have managed to tease some capacity to program in Perl out of it, but at great personal effort.

The book's tone is largely condescending, and full of awful "jokes", which get in the way of the actual content. It's most significant failing, though, is the weight given to waffle over actual programming examples. For example, the chapter on Threads spends 4 pages making analogies about threads with cooks in kitchens, and saying what a great effort it was to get threading into Windows, but goes on to give bare examples of threaded code with little to no commentary at all, leaving the reader largely in the dark. You are supposed to "just understand" the code snippets. This is completely the reverse of what you actually need out of a comprehensive programming book.

Do your best to find an alternative way of learning Perl.

Programming Perl - 2009-02-24
Reviewer Rating:
This is THE BOOK. If you need to learn perl, this books explains all the insides of the language. The book will explain why everything is the way it is in perl. Now, if you are looking for examples to practice, you should get Learning Perl. You can read both books simultaneously.

good purchase - 2009-12-15
Reviewer Rating:
The book was really in a good shape and it's a good book for all who are programming in Perl.

Say what you will, it still has EVERYTHING - 2009-08-05
Reviewer Rating:
This is not the book to learn Perl from. I don't care how experienced a programmer you are - this book is not in any way the easiest path to getting a good amount of Perl under your fingertips in a short period of time. I was lucky enough to buy Learning Perl before I got this tome, which is a beautifully-written, concise introductory text on the language without all the verbosity of this book.

However, once I learned the Llama (Learning Perl) like the back of my hand, I snagged a copy of Programming Perl from a bookstore because I knew it was the "bible" and to not have it would be silly if I wanted to do anything serious with Perl. So I bought it.

Turns out it reads very well and contains a _completely_ thorough description of every feature the language has to offer. I really appreciated the care and completeness that was put into this book, and the organization of ideas made things clear. However, I only had this experience with the parts of the book I already understood relatively well. After Learning Perl I was able to thoroughly digest the nuances of scalars, arrays, hashes, regexes, and subroutines, and Programming Perl gave me a huge amount of insight into these topics I never would have gotten anywhere else. However, the things Learning Perl does not cover (references and objects, in particular) were completely inextricable to me when I tried to learn about them from Programming Perl. Once I learned about those things separately (from Intermediate Perl) I was able to digest the material in this book about them, and again gained lots of valuable insight.

In short, this book is a fantastic resource for parts of the language you already have used and are relatively comfortable with, but for which you feel you could use some more understanding. It is also an incredibly detailed reference to the core features of the language as well as to the vast library of built-in functions. Bottom line is, get this book whenever you get to that point where you want to *do* something *real*. It's not the best book for learning the language, but it is definitely useful when it comes to real coding.

Definitive manual for Perl - 2008-08-22
Reviewer Rating:
If you are programming in Perl, this is a required book to have. It is the definitive manual on the language written by the author of the language, yet is very readable.

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