Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics

Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics

Perl Books

Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills

Format: Paperback
Author: Cynthia Gibas
ReleaseDate: 15 April, 2001
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

horrible
It has been no help whatsoever. This book is the worst I've ever purchased. It had a couple examples of PERL programming. . . big deal.

The 5-star ratings are obvious shills (one reviewer wrote a very long review and has never reviewed anything else).

Good introduction, somewhat uneven
Some reviewers deride it as too superficial or as too Unix-centric, but I think those are two of its strengths. This book is a good introduction to Bioinformatics and to what it takes to get started in the field. The authors lay no claim to having written the definitive work on the subject of Bioinformatics, and they freely admit that they come in with a certain bias. If you are serious about Bioinformatics this won't be your last book anyway, but it'll get you started.

That said, I found the material a bit uneven. The authors tend to jump from almost trivial stuff to very complex in a heartbeat, and they sometimes use a concept or command before it can be properly understood One example: Introducing the Unix commands head and tail, then moving on to split and csplit. The introduction to regular expressions as needed by csplit follows a few pages later.

Nevertheless, I plan to use this book as a companion text to my own sequence of computer classes for biologists, and I think it will serve that purpose very well.

Useful only for a reference book
That is the reason why we are spending much time on finding a book that we can say "This book is just for me!"

Well, this book is not a self-teaching book by itself. We are all well aware that it is impossible to write a book on bioinformatics satisfying all types of readers. Don't expect that things will become clear to understand after reading this book.

If your expectation is just to taste flavor of bioinformatics and to use it as a reference book, then this book is right for you.