Perl Cookbook, Second Edition

Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition

Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition

Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules

sed & awk (2nd Edition)

Web Programming

Learning Perl, Fourth Edition

Format: Paperback
Author: Randal L. Schwartz
ReleaseDate: 14 July, 2005
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

Excellent!
There are exercises at the end of each chapter and all the solutions at the end of the book, the exercises are not hard yet I find them very very useful. This is one of the easiest books I've ever seen, you'll learn a lot without much effort. I'm still not done reading it and I already write Perl code that makes my job a lot easier. Also there are plenty of funny jokes. Get it now!.

Potentially good book, but too wordy.
It is full of vain attempts to be funny, vague irritating forward references, and references to other programming languages that are not helpful for people who know them and unnecessarily intimidating for those who don't. This book should be half as thin. The authors have good information to give, but I had to get through too much extra writing to get to the point. This is my first and only Perl book, so I don't know how much better other Perl books are. I'm not a professional programmar, but I have some experience using Unix and C/C++. If you're comfortable with Unix shell (but not necessarily an expert) and any basic programming, maybe you'll be better off with some more advanced book. This book can be childish and boring.

craptacular
I admit I'm not a great code writer, but at some point you need the answer, otherwise you can sit in front of your screen all day writing code that doesn't work or compile. Most of the answers to the exercises in Appendix A don't even compile, much less work. I can do that without the help of this book.