[Chicago-talk] Perl CookBook 2nd Edition Review

[Scott T. Hildreth]

Book Title : Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition
Authors    : Tom Christiansen & Nathan Torkington
Publisher  : O'Reilly
Pages      : 964
Website    : http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2
Reviewer   : Scott T. Hildreth

Table of 
Contents   : http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/toc.html

Review :    Let me start out by saying that I was very excited to review this
          book.  At the same time I was a little overwhelmed.  How much detail
          do I go into, the book is so packed full of information and examples.
          What can I write about a book that most the Perl community, if not all,
          considers a vaulable resource for Perl programmers.  I decided I will
          just add my "2cents" to the stack of good reviews I have seen.

            If you have the 1st Edition, buy the 2nd Edition.  If you don't own a
          copy of the Perl Cookbook, buy one.  This book is, as I stated earlier, 
          packed full of valuable information and examples.  The 2nd editon gives
          the reader all the problem/solutions of the 1st edition and much more.
          The 2nd edition has updated recipes as well as new ones, which use newer 
          modules that have come into existence since the 1st edition was written.  
          Html::Mason, Template Toolkit, and POE are just a few of the newer modules 
          that are used in recipes.  The 2nd edition of the Perl Cookbook also includes
          2 new chapters.  One chapter covers processing XML and the other new chapter
          covers  mod_perl.  As the "What's New in This Edition" section states, 
          "The book you're holding is thicker than its previous edition of five years
          ago---about 200 pages thicker."  These additonal pages aren't filler!

            The Perl Cookbook 2nd edition is a must buy for the beginner to advance 
          Perl programmer alike.  If you have a problem, the Cookbook can give you a
          solution or at least point you in the right direction.  Sometimes I like to 
          just open the book to a random recipe and learn about a new module or see a
          different aproach to tackling a problem, TMTOWTDI.  My only complaint is that
          there is not a chapter on using parsers/tokenizers, such as Parse::RecDescent 
          and Parse::Yapp.  Although that topic should be a book in itself.  Yet, this 
          does not prevent me from giving it a full set of stars or whatever the rating 
          system may be.     


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E-Mail: Scott T. Hildreth <shild at sbcglobal.net>
Date: 10-Jan-2004
Time: 14:55:49
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