Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (The Perl series) [Paperback]

This is a pretty weak introductory book. Don't' buy it with your own money (corporate funds are probably OK if the book is discounted more than 20% ;-). The authors definitely do not understand the Win32 environment well enough. The language is explained as an isolated phenomenon without reference to existing scripting tools (VBA, VBScrit, Rexx, etc.). The main use of Perl in Win32 environment is CGI progammining and here the book does not have enough value for beginners. Generally this book looks like an attempt to adapt the original Randal Schwartz book to the Win32 environment (second edition for UNIX also is not the best introductory book available, but at least it was one of the first books on Perl). The adaptation attempt failed and the results are pretty disappointing. Neither the examples, nor style are very suitable to Win32. For example "Standard Perl distribution" (page 6) contains recommendations like: nmake ( Build all of Perl) nmake Test (test your distribution) nmake install (Install to the target dir. In the Makefile) These recommendations can be considered a joke for Win32 beginners, who get used to prepackaged software. Chapters are very uneven in length and quality. The Chapter 1 is disappointing. The secret word guesser introduced in the Chapter 1 is definitely far from the best introductory example for Win32 audience. The number of unexplained concepts introduced here would scare novices. Probably more simple examples of a couple of UNIX-style filters (head, tail, and maybe unique) would be more appropriate. Chapter 2 is OK. Chapter 3 does not provide a clear description of Perl syntactical and semantical achievements and pitfalls. For example, Perl considers a negative subscript on the array as a count back from the end. So each element has two indexes (from the beginning and from the end). The last element has an index -1 that is very convenient. BTW Perl use the same approach in the substr built-in function. Chapter 4 seems to be written by "structured programming diehards" and is very weak. Rich Perl control structures are not covered. Neither continue, next, break operator (they really simplify construction of non-trivial loops), nor the short-circuit semantics of || && operators in if statements (not apparent for people who never programmed in C) was not discussed. Chapter 5 (hashes) is only 4 pages long for such an important subject as associative arrays. Strangely enough it does not mention the %ENV - probably the most important associative array for novices. Chapter 6 (Basic I/O) is very short. Perl after all was designed to process logs and such a chapter definitely should be more than four pages long and should contain more examples. Chapter 7 fails to recognize the different mentality of Win32 users. Basically there are two approaches to the regular expressions in Win32 environment. One is to use it only when necessary and the second is to use them whenever possible. The first camp (partially represented by former REXX users and VB users) prefer more procedural way of text manipulations and tend to rely more on substr, index, length, split and join functions in text manipulations, while the second is the regular expression addicts. The authors definitely belong to the second camp ;-). IMHO non-greedy (minimal) matching is often more convenient that a regular one, especially for novices, but it was never mentioned in the book. Chapter 15 is probably one of the few things that were done right in the book. The index and substr built-in functions are covered adequately. I would like to mention that the authors cover a very important use of the substr in the left part of the assignment function (the idea borrowed from the PL/1). Chapter 16 is just OK. Chapter 17 is a joke as DBM is the Unix-only beast. Only the last page ("Win32 Database interfaces") can be considered relevant for Win32 users. It's really depressing to see such a blunder in an O'Reilly book. Chapter about CGI is somewhat superficial. At the same time it is the main application area for Perl, especially in Win32 environment. The only subject covered in this book that was not covered in the "Cross Platform Perl" is the coverage of OLE2 (Chapter 19). It uses a rather interesting example of MAPI. Win32 is not UNIX. Strangely enough for such a book the discussion of pitfalls of Win32 environment is completely absent. For example the authors fail to stress the difference between chop and chomp function. Even the most annoying difference between UNIX-style and Win32 style directory paths syntax (with "\" instead of "/") was never mentioned. I believe O'Reilly should do better reviewing and editing job if it want to preserve its reputation of publisher of consistently well written and edited books. - Nikolai Bezroukov BASF Corp. Advanced Technology Group. Standard disclaimer applies.

The book is well-written and I worked through it in two days and enjoyed it. The style is conversant and nice to read, which makes it a very good introduction to Perl if you happen to work on NT. The book is not a Nutshell book, does not contain very much NT specifics and is probably not worth the money if you already know Perl. In short: the book is exactly what the title says it is.

One of the best reasons to use Perl in a Windows NT environment is to write large, complicated batch programs. The Microsoft DOS/Windows batch command language has some serious limitations that make Perl a really attractive alternative.

I picked up Learning Perl on Win32 Systems and worked through the first 6 or 8 chapters after lunch. I wasn't sure this was a good strategy when I began, but I'm glad I did it.

I would recommend that you pickup Programming Perl, 2nd Edition, as well. I didn't use the book for the first week of my Perl immersion program, but I needed it fairly soon.