“I picked up a copy of JavaScript by Example over the weekend and wanted to thank you for putting out a book that makes JavaScript easy to understand. I’ve been a developer for several years now and JS has always been the “monster under the bed,” so to speak. Your book has answered a lot of questions I’ve had about the inner workings of JS but was afraid to ask. Now all I need is a book that covers Ajax and Coldfusion. Thanks again for putting together an outstanding book.”

–Chris Gomez, Web services manager, Zunch Worldwide, Inc.

“I have been reading your UNIX® Shells by Example book, and I must say, it is brilliant. Most other books do not cover all the shells, and when you have to constantly work in an organization that uses tcsh, bash, and korn, it can become very difficult. However, your book has been indispensable to me in learning the various shells and the differences between them…so I thought I’d email you, just to let you know what a great job you have done!”

–Farogh-Ahmed Usmani, B.Sc. (Honors), M.Sc., DIC, project consultant (Billing Solutions), Comverse

“I have been learning Perl for about two months now; I have a little shell scripting experience but that is it. I first started with Learning Perl by O’Reilly. Good book but lacking on the examples. I then went to Programming Perl by Larry Wall, a great book for intermediate to advanced, didn’t help me much beginning Perl. I then picked up Perl by Example, Third Edition–this book is a superb, well-written programming book. I have read many computer books and this definitely ranks in the top two, in my opinion. The examples are excellent. The author shows you the code, the output of each line, and then explains each line in every example.”

–Dan Patterson, software engineer, GuideWorks, LLC

“Ellie Quigley has written an outstanding introduction to Perl, which I used to learn the language from scratch. All one has to do is work through her examples, putz around with them, and before long, you’re relatively proficient at using the language. Even though I’ve graduated to using Programming Perl by Wall et al., I still find Quigley’s book a most useful reference.”

–Casey Machula, support systems analyst, Northern Arizona University, College of Health and Human Services

“When I look at my bookshelf, I see eleven books on Perl programming. Perl by Example, Third Edition, isn’t on the shelf; it sits on my desk, where I use it almost daily. When I bought my copy I had not programmed in several years and my programming was mostly in COBOL so I was a rank beginner at Perl. I had at that time purchased several popular books on Perl but nothing that really put it together for me. I am still no pro, but my book has many dog-eared pages and each one is a lesson I have learned and will certainly remember. “I still think it is the best Perl book on the market for anyone from a beginner to a seasoned programmer using Perl almost daily.”

–Bill Maples, network design tools and automations analyst, Fidelity National Information Services

“We are rewriting our intro to OS scripting course and selected your text for the course. It’s an exceptional book. The last time we considered it was a few years ago (second edition). The debugging and system administrator chapters at the end nailed it for us.”

–Jim Leone, Ph.D., professor and chair, Information Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology

“Quigley’s book acknowledges a major usage of PHP. To write some kind of front end user interface program that hooks to a back end MySQL database. Both are free and open source, and the combination has proved popular. Especially where the front end involves making an HTML web page with embedded PHP commands. “Not every example involves both PHP and MySQL. Though all examples have PHP. Many demonstrate how to use PHP inside an HTML file. Like writing user-defined functions, or nesting functions. Or making or using function libraries. The functions are a key idea in PHP, that take you beyond the elementary syntax. Functions also let you gainfully use code by other PHP programmers. Important if you are part of a coding group that has to divide up the programming effort in some manner.”

–Dr. Wes Boudville, CTO, Metaswarm Inc.

The World’s Easiest Perl Tutorial–Fully Updated!

Perl by Example, Fourth Edition, is the easiest, most hands-on way to learn Perl. Legendary Silicon Valley programming instructor Ellie Quigley has thoroughly updated her classic to deliver the skills and information today’s Perl users need most–including all-new coverage of MySQL database programming and a Perl QuickStart designed to get experienced users up and running fast.

Quigley illuminates every technique with focused, classroom-tested code examples, detailed line-by-line explanations, and real program output. This exceptionally clear, easy-to-understand book takes you from your first Perl script to database-driven applications. It’s the only Perl book you’ll ever need!

New in this edition:

• Perl programming QuickStart: makes first-time Perl programmers productive in just twenty pages

• All-new chapter on using the Perl DBI with the MySQL database–plus an easy SQL primer to quickly get you started programming any database

• New introductions to Perl in biology (bioinformatics) and to mod_perl, a Perl interpreter embedded in the Apache server, which allows you to create fast, dynamic content; manage the Apache server; authenticate users; and much more

Completely updated:

• Includes many new and completely rewritten code examples

• Contains fully revised CGI coverage for building dynamic Web sites with Perl

• Covers modern Perl 5.8 concepts and principles–and provides a great foundation for Perl 6

More than 30,000 sysadmins, power users, and developers have used previous editions of Perl by Example

to become expert Perl programmers. With Perl by Example, Fourth Edition, you can, too–even if you’re

completely new to Perl. After you’ve become an expert, you’ll turn to this book constantly as the best

source for reliable answers, solutions, and code.

About the CD-ROM:

The CD-ROM includes all code and files for this book’s hundreds of example scripts.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 42 Ratings

This is an excellent Perl book for beginners - 2008-11-16
Reviewer Rating:
This is a very complete book if you want to learn and start to implement Perl. While Perl is not the be all/end all language, it is very much fun to use, especially in the UNIX world where you find the limitations of all the various shells limiting. Perl can get you going, and you can continue to learn more and more (such as object-oriented Perl) as you grow and evolve.

But this book is really good for beginners. While the examples are simple (as they SHOULD BE in a learning environment) each example line is explained in great gory detail. None of these "Hey, look at what I can distract you with while trying to teach you this simple example" or some authors involved and crazy "Case Study"; these examples are easy to assimilate. It is up to the reader to put the concepts together to make a coherant program (and Perl is a very forgiving language, making it great for beginning programmers).

When I was teaching Perl for collegiate newbies, this was my book of choice. The students would actually visualize some program, and this book would show them how the pieces worked. So the students just put them together and away they went. A lot of other Perl books fall very short in this aspect. Of the dozens of Perl books I own, this is one to read if you want to start with Perl.

Poorly organized... - 2009-03-03
Reviewer Rating:
Wow -- what a frustrating experience! I'm an experienced programmer who is familiar with both C and shell programming, which are the two areas that are referenced often in the book, but it was *still* hard to figure out how to do things in Perl using this book.

My biggest complaint is the very poor organization. As some other reviewers noted, it seems to be a random collection of tidbits, but not organized logically or hierarchically like every other programming book I've ever read.

For example, as I write this, I'm trying to figure out how to read lines from a file. I looked at the section for "Report Writing". As most anyone can figure out, when you write a report, you need data. So this section goes on and on about generating reports. But all the example simply output the contents of various variables. As anyone who processes data knows, the normal sequence of things is: read data, process data, output data. Well, I have yet to find how to simply read in lines from a text file. I mean the book talks about printf, so I assume there is something similar to scanf or gets or something similar right? I'm sure it must be in here somewhere, but so far it is not obvious from the table of contents or the index.

Hey, so what about this section called "Getting a Handle on Files"? Nope! It tells you how to open and close files, and how to even output lines of text to a file, but amazingly, it doesn't mention how to read lines from a file! ARGHHHH!!!

I guess this author must expect data to spontaneously, magically materialize from thin air!

I finally figured it out! ...but not from this book. It took me two minutes with Google to figure out what I couldn't find in this book after half an hour!

So, now that I know the "trick" to reading lines from a file, out of curiosity, I try to find the info in the book. So I search the index for "$_". Well, guess what? You know how most languages have their share of special characters (including operators, of course), so every programming book I've read had these symbols in the index (and as far as I can recall, usually right at the front of the index)? Well, this book does not put the special symbols in the index! This is a huge shortcoming, because as you read through the book and see these various symbols for the first time, it is usually very convenient to be able to look them up in the index (as opposed to trying to search in the book for the first occurrence of the symbol). Well, that's not an option here... Ridiculous!

Great concept, mediocre execution - 2009-09-28
Reviewer Rating:
Perl is by no means easy to learn. Its syntax is notorious and its constructs are not the cleanest you will ever see. Yet, it is omnipresent. You will find something done in Perl everywhere. As such, it is a good language to, at least, get introduced to. I think that Perl by Example fits the concept of a textbook to be used in class since it has end of the chapter exercises. The whole "by example" idea is good for those who know at least one programming language and need no special introduction to fundamental programming concepts. However, a good concept or idea can be ruined by poor execution and editing. This is where Perl by Example fails to impress, almost miserably. There is so many typos all over the book (4th edition). And it's not only typos, there are programming errors too. People may succeed in learning Perl from this book, but be prepared for a rocky road. If there were no typos, I would give this book 3 starts. In its present state, it is nothing but another mediocre programming book. Too bad, the concept of teaching a language by example is great.

Required ereading for anyone new to Perl. - 2009-09-20
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book after reading some of the reviews on Amazon, and I haven't looked back. I have programmed in different languages for 25 years now, but only in Perl for the last six months. I program in Perl every day, and this is my most thumbed book. I started from scratch, with only a few bits of sample code and taught myself. There are a few quite negative views out there, but for me I can't understand why. It's a professional well-written book with plenty of simple examples.

Good book for learning Perl - 2009-05-03
Reviewer Rating:
This book was required for an online course on Perl programming and so far I have to say that it has been pretty easy to read and follow. It has many clear examples and exercises. Not to mention, the book is HUGE and covers a large range of topics. If you are going to learn Perl, this book is a great one to pick up.

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