Perl Cookbook, Second Edition

Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules

Perl Best Practices

Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition

Advanced Perl Programming

Perl Books

Mastering Algorithms with Perl

Format: Paperback
Author: John Macdonald
ReleaseDate: 01 August, 1999
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

Good implementation of popular algorithms


If you've ever looked at "Introduction to algorithms " by Cormen et al (CLR), this book will look familiar. Klowledge of algorithms and data structures is vital for effective programming, and Perl is one of the most popular programming languages around, so this book fills a long-needed niche. It covers many of the topics covered in CLR, though not in such theoretic depth. It does, however, have mountains of Perl code implementing those algorithms.

This book can seemingly have two purposes - one is to learn algorithms (as the title suggests), and the other is to understand the implementation of algorithms in Perl.

IMHO, the authors fulfilled the second part quite well. For the first part, CLR is a excellent book and is hard to better. I don't think "Mastering algorithms" explained the topics in a clear enough way to compete with CLR, but it can indeed be a terrific companion to CLR (get the first edition, used copies cost pennies). Read about the algorith m in CLR, understand it from the pseudo-code and diagrams, then take "Mastering algorithms with Perl" and learn the Perl implementation of the algorithm.

A great book on the subject
A huge number of topics are covered, from Data Structures, to Searching/sorting, to cryptography, and much more. This book is a great book, not only on the subject of algorithms, but also on how to implement them in Perl. And what I found to be among the most useful additions was that for every subject, they give you a full implementation on the subject. I've read a few books on algorithms, but this is one of the most easy to read, and definitely one of the most practically useful. Recommended for any Perl programmer, regardless of skill.

MAP makes many promises, but fails to deliver.

I heard this same advice before buying this book and ignored it, I really wish I had listened back then. As a guy ( engineer not computer expert ) who uses computers everyday to help his research, I would steer you away from using Perl for any task involving mathematical concepts more complicated than addition/subtraction/multiplication and addition.

While MAP has some nice pictures which broadly describe the essential concepts, it will give you no idea as to how to actually implement those ideas. Further, all the code is available in CPAN ( If you don't know CPAN, check it out before going any further - at the very least install a module ) and much ( at least what I attempted to use ) appeared to be broken.

Authors of computer books are usually good about answering e-mail but these authors did not deign to respond to mine.

If you are out there, struggling to learn algorithms, I would suggest taking a good computer course on the subject. I'm 99% certain the course will be taught in C/C++ or similar language -these languages have tremendous advantages over Perl when it comes to data structures and, believe me, even as a novice I've come to appreciate them. . .

If you really know algorithms and wish to write a few in Perl, you can do without this book. Pick up Deitel & Deitel's 'Perl: How to Program' instead or O'Reilly's basic book ( which is good, but I prefer Deitel and Deitel ) . . . . besides D&D answer their e-mail.