Perl Cookbook (Paperback)

One of the best (and worst) things about Perl is the fact that 'There's More Than One Way To Do It', and the Cookbook contains a number of useful recipes for a variety of different tasks ranging from simple things like opening files up to data parsers. A downside of this is that just when you think you know the language, the authors come up with another way to do something! The book focuses, rightly, on `everyday' programming applications and as a result the treatment of CGI and databases is lacking but, having said that, perfectly good books are available on both subjects.

Along with O'Reilly's other Perl books, the Cookbook has taken up permanent residence on my desk - the book is *that* good. If you're just getting into Perl programming, you'll learn an awful lot by using the Camel Book in conjunction with the Cookbook.

There are lots of poor computing books out there, but the Cookbook stands head and shoulders above practically everything, but then would you expect anything less from two authors who are pillars of the Perl community?

Just go out and buy it!

The solutions I found most handy are things that tell you how to, say, parse comma delimited stuff, or do certain things to HTML files and URLs.

I found the section on validating email addresses to be one of the best I've found, and it backed me up very well when a client told me that I had to completely validate them.

It is not as readable as the camel book ("Programming Perl"), but fills a complimentary niche.

Basically, if you use perl regularly for many varied tasks, then you probably need this or you will be reinventing the wheel far too often. You'll probably get back the cover price as time saved the very first time you refer to it.

A bit of unnecessary flannel exists in this book and makes some areas over complicated, yet in other areas not enough detail exists. This book is most definitely directed at the UNIX side of Perl rather than just Perl. Useful but being so UNIX biased, it occasionally can be a bit difficult adapting to the Windows environment. Although a small attempt has been made at attacking the problems with Windows NT and Perl, there is no reference to lesser OS such as Win98 or 95 and not a mention of the Mac. This is can be frustrating for some whom may wish to use a none UNIX OS. I have used this book many hundreds of times for ideas and reference in the creation of nearly a thousand scripts and packages all of which I have written and tested on Windows 98 machines and then successfully executed on UNIX machines with no changes.

Sadly (like all O-Reilly) books, the index is not as good as it could be. Most programmers who are looking for a solution to a problem don't always know the commonly used name for the answer and the index seems to have been written by someone who knows what they are talking about with Perl. Sounds like a silly comment but most whom would be using this book don't know what they are talking about and if they did why use the book ? That aside the index is moderately useful but most readers will probably find themselves inserting 50 or 60 bookmarks for the most useful parts and examples.

All that said the information embedded in this book is almost as complete as it could possibly be. Many of the examples and snippets in this book can be used directly and come fairly close to useful for real world use. All in all a very good book with moderately easy to understand texts. If you found either 'CGI Programming on the World Wide Web' or the famous Camel 'Programming Perl' remotely useful, this book will knock you back with the amount packed in. Almost everything from both books and more have been seamlessly tied together in this very good book.