Books for a relative Perl newbie

[Russell Matbouli]

On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 10:43:21AM +0100, Andrew Wilson wrote:
> Indeed, the camel is *the* acknowledged reference on perl, you won't go
> far wrong with it.

*nod*

> I would just learn perl if I was you

I agree.

> Why?  Asking as someone who did modperl programming before any other CGI
> stuff.

CGI doesn't require you to be as strict as mod_perl does, which makes it
easier for the novice IMHO. Not that I'm saying that the best way to
get into Perl is through writing bad code, it's just easier that way.

> Learning perl is a great little introduction to the language, It's the
> first book I read/worked through.

I found it too basic and didn't go into enough detail, but that may be
because I borrowed both the llama and the camel from the library at the
same time. The llama is a better book if you don't know anything about
programming or want a good base to start from.

> While this may be true, it generally a crap idea.  perl is not c, idioms
> that are a great way to do things in c are a crap way to do it in perl.
> Try to learn idiomatic perl.  Having said that, you don't need to learn
> it all at once.

Again, I wasn't saying it was a good way, just pointing out that it was
possible, and that it would flatten the learning curve for someone who
already knows C. Idiomatic Perl will always be better, but you have to
get into the way of it first. You'll look at your C-like Perl and say,
"urgh, that's ugly", then realise that there's a more perlish way to do
it.

> One piece of advice.  Always, always always turn on warnings and use strict.

Indeed. On a recent (post 5.6.0) Perl, you can do 'use warnings;' to do
this, otherwise put a -w on the shebang line. Put 'use strict;' at the
top to enable the strictures.

How will this be handled in Perl 6? I think they should be on unless you
turn them off (as we virtually *demand* those two pragmas in every piece
of code under perl 5...).

> There are various perl beginner lists, which I'm told are a good place to
> learn from better coders, but I've never read them and can't really
> recommend them from personal experience.

I don't think you could go far wrong posting to your local PM group, but
there is a beginners at perl.org list (although it seems high volume, I
subbed for a month or so when it was set up).
-- 
Russell Matbouli       |    I saw George Bush at a benefit concert actually
russell at futureless.org |   waving at Stevie Wonder. Someone had to tell him:
PGP KeyID: 0x3CA84CF4  |          "He can't see you". -- Anne Robinson
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