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Review:The Perl Cookbook
While no review can even get close to summarizing the wealth of information in this book, its structure is easily described: the organizing metaphor is the cookbook and therefore the bulk of each chapter contains recipes designed to address specific programming problems.
A Code FeastHere's a brief list of other goodies you can find in this book:
- a juicy regex grabbag, that shows how to match HTML links, IP addresses, all-caps words and key=value pairs among many other patterns.
- A full chapter on Database access that in addition to DBI also includes the most extensive discussion of DBM files in Perl literature.
- 40 pages on UNIX processes from the point of view of Perl.
- Examples on how to write demon and non-forking servers in the chapter on sockets and code to create robots, parsing server logs and automating form submission in the chapter on web automation.
- Numerous tips and examples of safe and efficient CGI programming in the chapter devoted to this.
- How to keep your modules separate from the system-wide ones and how to prepare modules you've written for CPAN distro
- Everything you ever wanted to do to dates/time but didn't quite know how .
At times, though, the authors can't keep themselves to just code snippets and
cook a full ready-to-eat meal in the form of a complete program to cap the
solutions presented in a chapter.
At the end of the Pattern Matching chapter,
for example, you can find 'tcgrep', Tom Christiansen's cross-platform supergrep
that "ignores anything not a plain text file, automatically expands
compressed or gzipped files, recurses down directories, searches complete
paragraphs or user-defined records . . . and adds underlining or highlighting of
the matches". A program called 'hopdelta' caps the "Dates and
Times" chapter and shows the time an email message took to reach each
destination based on an analysis of its header.
Anatomy of a ChapterAfter an introduction that tries to present the history and general outline of the topic of the chapter come the numbered recipes. Each recipe is divided into 4 parts: a brief statement of the Problem, followed by the code of the Solution and a detailed Discussion with further comments, code examples and pitfalls. The recipe ends with a See Also paragraph that sends the reader to the relevant man pages and further references.
Chapter 7, for instance, deals with File Access. It opens with a 4-page discussion of the basic concepts of file handles and I/O. It then quickly moves into the recipes, which range from the basic (opening a file, covered in depth, output flushing) to the often used and asked about (writing a filter, modifying a file) and ends with a longish complete program that implements lock control over a designated region of a file. Changing a file has 3 sections devoted to it: in-place modification using a temp file, doing it from the command line and the less common in-place modification without a temp file.
(Note: if you've been modelling your file locking on the flock() example on pp.166-7 of the Camel book, make sure you check out recipe 7.11, "Locking a File", to see what you may be doing wrong).
What's Bad?I'd say: nothing. A caveat is in order, though.
Good recipes do not a gourmet cook make. A handy compendium of code snippets like the ones in this book will help solve the problem at hand, but won't help you design better programs. I don't mean to detract from the book's value (after all its purpose is not to teach program structure), just to deflate a little the beginning Perl programmer who uses this book to get unstuck: he's solved the problem at hand and that's great, but he's not necessarily a better programmer for it. The authors are probably aware of this, hence the complete programs at the end of the chapters. I only wish there were more of these.
What's Good?Lucid presentation and clear organization make this book not only useful to refer to, but also pleasant to read through. And the code in it comes not only from experienced authors, but has also been polished by the feedback from scores of Perl gurus, which is a pretty good guarantee of its quality.
Do YOU Need the Ram book?To make it short, let's actually ask: "who doesn't need the Ram book?"
If you're Larry Wall, you probably don't need it . That's it. For the rest of the Perl crowd this book is pretty much an essential companion to the Camel, as both resource and learning tool.
(Note: If you use Perl to teach yourself programming, use the Llama ("Learning Perl," by Randal Schwartz) to get going, but keep the Ram in mind: if you get anywhere with Perl you too will want it).
Buy this book here.
Errata
Table of Contents
- Strings
- Numbers
- Dates and Times
- Arrays
- Hashes
- Pattern Matching
- File Access
- File Contents
- Directories
- Subroutines
- References and Records
- Packages, Libraries, and Modules
- Classes, Objects, and Ties
- Database Access
- User Interfaces
- Process Management and Communication
- Sockets
- Internet Services
- CGI Programming
- Web Automation
For that, get Perl, A Programmers Companion.
Oh, yeah. I can see the blurb.
"Write your own remotely-exploitable counter."
programmer with limited funds, I'm wondering where folks would recommend I spend a limited budget to expand my Perl arsenal.
Perl Cookbook + Advanced Perl Programming
or
Perl Resource Kit (UNIX ed.)?
(this one's obviously a bit more, point is, I can't afford all three...)
I started out with "Learning Perl" and
"Programming Perl". For beginners I strongly
recommend "Learning Perl" for learning and
the other book as a desktop ref. There are
also tons of examples, FAQs and what have we
floating around on the net. That should
be more than sufficient to get you started.
I used to wonder why every book review on /. is overwhelmingly positive, but I just noticed that the amazon.com link to order it includes /slashdot/ at the end (presumably to differentiate /. sales from other sales). What deal does /. have with amazon.com? Why are these ads labeled as reviews? I suppose there's some "firewall" between advertising and editorial content...
All 3 of those guys have their strengths and weaknesses, so it would be a matter of using the best of each.
I'm surprised to see a recommendation for Advanced Perl. It's probably the least satisfying of all of the ORA books I own (about two dozen). It's also the one Perl book that I've actively disrecommended to my proteges. Better by far is Joseph Hall's _Effective Perl Programming_ (Addison-Wesley). In either case, neither is for the neophyte.
OBTopic: The ram book is indeed very good.
Matt Wright's stuff is terrible. He doesn't check return codes, doesn't do proper file locking, doesn't make use of modules... . Blech.
I agree that O'Reilly's CGI book could use a thorough updating. In particular, something that covers CGI.pm properly would be nice.
Amazon.com has an incentive program where if you have book reviews on your site, include a link to buy that title on Amazon, and people buy the book through this route, you get some small percentage of the sale. Some people may call this "synergy" but I think it's a little shady. I never buy from Amazon.com anyway - I like going to real bookstores where I can browse and actually look through the book I want to buy.
Buy the Perl Cookbook and Adv. Perl Programming, not the Perl Resource Kit.
IMHO, the PRK is a complete waste of money. O'Reilly just did a perldoc on every module @ CPAN, and published a really expensive book with that info.
Personally, I can type "perldoc foo" faster than I can get out a book and flip to the section in question. In addition, perldoc allows one to cut and paste code.
Howabout:
Would
Perl in a nutshel + Perl cookbook
be a good duo for learning perl, or should one
throw in learning perl/programming perl????
GW Basic and Quick Basic are very old Mickeysoft products.
This was an attempt at humor (which I enjoyed) from an old hand, not a beginner's plea for help.
I have this book and I think that it is absolutely great - it really is a must buy for perl programmers. There's always something new to learn.
>> Why are these ads labeled as reviews?
>> I suppose there's some "firewall" between
>> advertising and editorial content..
Apparently there isn't. I'd rather go and read reviews on amazon directly--they do seem to post all kinds of things, not only the positives (not that I know what their procedure is.) I'd not trust reviews like these, because someone always pays for whatever you see, even if it's purportedly a "review" and not a promo. I remember an exuberant review of some Java/Patterns book here, which on a personal perusement turned out to be a pile of highfalutin' junk. Caveat emptor...
All that said, the "Cookbook..." is very well done.
Get both Camel book and Llama book, but start
with Llama book first. Camel is more like
a reference guide. Llama is closer to tutorial.
In the beginning you'll be refering mostly to
Llama. Eventually, you'll switch to Camel.
....a good first book for Perl is "Cross Platform Perl" by Eric Johnson. It is written at a level for people without much programming experience, and it covers a lot of the basic things you would want to do (ie: open/write to a file, etc).
After you finish that book, i would recommend moving on to "Learning Perl" (the O'Reilly llama/gecko book). It more covers the language more extensively, but may be a little "terse" for somebody without a lot of programming background.
...programming in Perl is fun; it behaves the way you intuitively expect it too. and therer is no reason to do anything if it's not fun.....
Keep 'em rocking Ralph
Ron Rangel
Ya gotta remember that all these reviews are written on a volunteer basis. A volunteer is a lot more likely to take the time and effort to write a coherent, well-thought-out review than someone who's indifferent. Also, I suspect that a lot of the negative reviews that get submitted could be boiled down to variations on "IT SUCKD!!!!!!" Still, I'd like to see someone pick up their poison pen and carefully dissect a real stinker of a book. (Maybe some pro-MS business tome?)
Exactly... Start with "Perl for Dummies", read about the first 5 or so chapters, and then read the Camel book (Programming Perl). At least thats what I did.
I've got a pile of crappy perl books that I bought and outlived their usefullness in a week. This one is great; I go back to it to get ideas on how to see how others might solve problems.
Since I don't really work with a bunch of Perl hackers, and am too busy to monitor mailing lists of such, it's my water cooler equivalent.
And that's a beautiful thing.
-Shabbir
shabbir@mindshare.net
I didn't look at the book as closely as I probable should, but I was not impressed with what I saw. It's the kind of stuff you can get from looking at anyone's code. The network section seemed especially lacking, hell the man pages for the equivelent C functions are more useful.
D'oh! The Web's soft underbelly: competence != self-promotion. If I wanted liner notes from Dream Academy's album, I'd go dumpster diving!
I figure those two and the online docs should cover just about everything......
Total for both w. shipping from shopping.com was
$37
(amazon price would have been 51 + shipping, how do they stay in business?)
Also - try bookpool. Even cheaper there.
Had you read thru the posts for this review you'd have seen that there are cheaper alternatives than these.
See under items called 'Errata' and 'Price check' posted yesterday.
?
I saw this cookbook in the bookstore. It's good, but I passed because Chp 19 didn't quite have as much as I would like.
Meanwhile, their web CGI book is a few years old and goes all over the place with Perl, VBscript and Mac stuff.
I'd like to see ORA maybe combine the talents of Shishir, Matt Wright, and Selena Sol in one book.
Well, we could simply shut-down the site. Servers and bandwidth don't materialize out of the air. If you think we're making money on here, I don't think you realize how mistaken you are. Rob earns 1/2 minimum wage, me 1/10. Authors nothing.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
yeah, it's a nice book and I looked up some stuff more than once. But is it as essential as the Camel? By no means. It's like a very elaborate FAQ, tasks that have to be done often and stuff ppl do wrong a lot. In this respect it's a good read for Perl-newbies(not neccessarily programming newbies). Once you passed the initial hurdles of intermediate to advanced perl programming however the recipes in this book don't apply to your programming problems very often, and if they do you already know it because you did it hundred times before.
The big problem I ahve with this book is that it really doesn't work well as a printed book. This needs to be in electronic form for easy search and copy'n'paste! I was lucky to get my hands on a electronic version before it went into print and bought the book later. It was nicer in zeroes and ones (allthough I didn't keep it as it didn't appear very legal).
So I'd say for me it is a 7/10.
- illuminaut, arbiter elegantiarum.
According to cgi-perl.com Matt Wright is co-authoring the Perl/CGI Cookbook. Despite the naming this book is not published by O'Reilly, but Wiley. I can't stop but wondering how you can become so famous writing poor code. I mean Wiley isn't excactly a student-press publisher and the site claims it would be the best-selling CGI book at Amazon.
Matt Wright's CGI scripts are good examples how *NOT* to do it. I don't wanna know what horrible tales he is going to tell in the book.
Who is going to save us from the wave of Wright-taught CGI-scripters wasting our resources?
Anyone ever heard of the other author, Craig Patchett?
- illuminaut, arbiter elegantiarum.
Posted by DonR:
I personally learn by example. This book has been invaluable to many projects I have worked on. Its a must buy.
Posted by Anhydrous Cowboy:
Yah, right, and the exception TESTS the rule, not PROVES the rule. What's your point, Poindexter?
Okay, flame me if you will...
I'd like to learn Perl. I have a few applications for it. Unfortunately, I know very little about programming (I was pretty good with GW Basic and QuickBasic... but that was a *long* time ago). I was wondering, what would be the best way for me to back into programming and launch into Perl? Should I try the Camel book? I need a lot of hand holding...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
hehe - Glad to see someone noticed :) I like to use billg's email address so that all flames are directed towards him instead of me...
Anonynimity is your friend.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I'm only on chapter two of this book. While it is an extremely impressive and educational source of knowledge, I think it could have stood a little better editing. For example, Recipe 1.2 refers the reader to the use of the && operator in Recipe 8.13, which has no such operator (nor the and operator)!
There have been at least two other errors, that I can't remember off the top of my head (nor find in the book on a quick scan, to be honest). All books have errors, but I'm only on chapter two, and minor details like this can be KILLERS in computer books. It's especially disappointing after the flawless presentation in Programming Perl.
Nevertheless, I do recommend it. It saved me hours on the project I'm working on now!
I've done more than a couple of reviews for Slashdot myself, and there is one extremely simple reason why my reviews are overwhelmingly positive:
I don't have time to read bad books.
There are plenty of good books out there, and those are the ones I read. I review the books I read. Simple.
In that respect, my reviews are less of "this book is good and I recommend it" and try to tackle more of "what this book is about and who it might apply to."
I can't speak for Eugene.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
I review for Slashdot as well.
I've never ordered from Amazon.
You don't have to either.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Well, as a professional software developer at a major Canadian software development corporation, I think that if I spend several hours writing up my thoughts on a relevant book I have read in its entirety, that qualifies as "editorial content."
I have no problem giving a poor review to a poor book, even if I received it as a review copy. In truth, I purchase many books every month, have an enviable professional library as a result, and spend a significant portion of my personal time reading and absorbing them.
In practice, I only tend to read useful and good books, so that weeds out poor reviews as a side effect. Anyone is free to disagree with my reviews, and to purchase or not purchase the book in question as they see fit.
I don't purchase at Amazon, mostly because I'd just as soon order it at a local store. Price is not an issue for me personally, since I make a decent (though by no means complete!) salary.
YMMV
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
btw, I've been programming Perl professionally for well over 3 years... guess it kinda makes a difference. I would say that most people would find APP quite useful.
However, I will check out the perl cookbook. I'm particularly interested in the bit on daemons.
The bit on efficiency and programming style near the end of the Camel Book is quite good too. The bit on how to style programming was interesting - it is almost identical to what I do! (I was already doing things that way before I read it...)
Well... I don't read books I don't like to the end, so it's hard to do a review of it. I expect the same applies to the other authors.
Programming Perl and Advanced Perl are excellent texts, if you know the commands and maybe not so much how to use them.
The organizational structure of the Cookbook allows it to be not based on the language functions, but on what you want to do.
I use this book more than my copy of Programming Perl, and feel it is essential for learning Perl. Mostly because the text Learning Perl doesn't support you in the high-end ideas you try to complete. This book was one of my favorite purchases and most used books. 11/10.
I can't recommend it enough.
My parents gave it to me for my birthday (well I did hint pretty heavily).
I've already worked through half the book and have actually used Perl in my job now.
Definately get it.
Kashani
- Why is the ninja... so deadly?
If i remember correctly, the book includes an introduction by Larry Wall himself, stating that he has in fact learned a good amount from this book as well.
What's the point of reviewing a bad book? :)
There's tons of them...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Amazon $31.96
BarnesAndNoble $31.96
Bookpool $24.95
Shopping $19.97
Spree $31.96
Regards, Ralph.
Seen positively: It's a review of a good book that just happens to help finance Slashdot.
.org to operate like this. I think you're right to raise the possibility of the "advertising" polluting the editorial content.
Read the "Amazon Info" box by the review: "The books here are brought to us in Partnership with Amazon.com. If you follow the links around here, and eventually buy a book, we get a percentage of the cost!" The openness of the relationship is about the only thing that makes it acceptable to me.
Seen negatively: The books reviewed are rather too often surprisingly expensive non-discounted books at Amazon, when they can be had *much* cheaper elsewhere. Here I start to smell a rat. Especially when the reviewer attempted to include pricing info from other sources but had the info edited out by Slashdot (as happened in this review).
If the Slashdot affect works for book sales like it does for websites then CmdrTaco and Co. can be making a pile of cash off these reviews. If so, it can't be so healthy for a
But who can you trust in this respect nowadays, anyhow?
Regards, Ralph.
"A handy compendium of code snippets like the ones in this book will help solve the problem at hand, but won't help you design better programs."
If the book was just snippets and descriptions, this would be true. But in most cases, a step-by-step description of how the code works is provided. This allows the reader to learn from the examples, not just blindly copy them.
I have all three. I would go with "Advanced Perl" and the cookbook. The Unix Resource Guide is pretty pricy. It is useful, but not as much as the other books. (And the most useful parts are just printed versions of the various perl docs.)
Another recommended book is "mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl. It explains regex for pretty much everything. (Not just Perl.) One of the most useful O'Reilly books out there.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
I'd love to have a C version of this. I can pretty much do what I need in Perl, but now I'm eager to get more into C for CGI scripting, and K&R 2nd edition, for all its goodness, just doesn't _talk_ about how to do stuff like, say, open a filehandle piped to sendmail, or silly little crap like that. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
A worthy addition to the two truly *essential* Perl books, namely:
...
Programming Perl
Advanced Perl Programming
Accept no substitute
Perl for Dummies is a good starter book. It was a
lot more help than Learning Perl, but I still
refer to both.
I just picked up the Perl Cookbook, and it looks
like it will also be a huge benefit. I've
reinvented the wheel (badly) several times for
lack of good practical examples like these.
*Really* nasty reviews can be very entertaining, though. Things like the Bookwork column in the UK magazine Private Eye are fantastic. It's not just a case of bad notices - it's really brutal but very accurate (well written and argued) reviewing.
I take the point about making money from sales, but perhaps if anyone is writing really acid reviews you could include them for sheer entertainment value.
Borders: $39.99 borders.com
O'Reilly: $39.95 oreilly.com
Amazon: $31.96 amazon.com
BarnsAndNobel: $31.96 barnsandnobel.com
BooksAMillion: $31.96 booksamillion.com
Books: $31.91 books.com
BuyBooks: $25.16 buybooks.com
I was considering writing a free search engine
that would find the cheapest book, CD, or Video
by looking through the various sites. Do you think people would be interested in something like that?
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
How's about I...
Call it FREE, make it FREE and we all get rich!
;-)
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
After talking about I wrote it and interfaced it to the web.
I'd be interested in any feedback.
Check it out at:
http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~bgann on/booksearch/
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
Nope.. Learning Perl is probably the best tutorial book I've ever seen (language independent). And I'd highly reccommend it. Though, if you know your programming pretty well, I'd skip Learning Perl and go straight for Programming Perl 2nd Edition (the camel book).
see subject
"All that glitters is not gold"
IMHO, the Perl Resource Kit is a waste of money. It didn't give me anything much that I couldn't get for free from CPAN. If you don't have any internet connection at all, it might be worth-while, since it's pretty much just a shovelware distribution of CPAN.
1.Two sections were transposed: "Anatomy of Chapter" should come before "A Code Feast". (author's negligence).
2.Here's a list of prices (edited out):
shopping.com: $19.95
bookpool.com: $26.50
amazon.com: $31.96
Eugene Sotirescu
Problem is you can't really browse thru the kit, because it's usually shrink-wrapped.
ORA's web site has some excerpts tho.
The price is kinda steep, but check out bookpool's price ($90, $60 off the store price!) if you decide to go with it.
If you haven't done OO in Perl, the Kit might help you use modules that need OO code (the pods are often stingy).
I agree with your approach. Allow me two points tho:
1.You can't draw a meatcleaver distinction between decription and recommendation. "what this book is about and who it might apply to" often carries an implicit recommendation.
2.The "Perl Cookbook" is a special case. I don't know many tech books that reach this quality of both code and delivery and can sustain it through over 400 pages. That's why this it gets an 'unmixed', "this book is good and I recommend it" review.
1. The last sentence of the review says: ". . . this book is pretty much an essential companion to the Camel, as both resource and learning tool." 2. The sentence you quote means that you can't learn program structure by reading code excerpts, no matter how well commented they are. What to use as globals, how to build subroutines and modularize your program is a separate art. Eugene Sotirescu
Hmm... I don't like Matt Wright's perl code.
Shoot, you could do the same thing with a pro-Sun semi-tome such as the SysAdmin and Advanced SysAdmin guides.
All software sucks, some just suck less than others.