Perl in a Nutshell fills in that gap between the man pages and the other books. Learning Perl was good for the novice and Programming Perl had the main information you required. Advanced Perl Programming pushed out the boundraries, while The Perl Cookbook provided the missing bits of the first edition on Programming Perl.

For various reasons, I aleays prefered the first Programming Perl. I found it more complete and easier to find what I wanted. However the Perl 5 improvements to the language, meant a bigger book and a revision and I always have found it a little harder to find the odd things I am looking for when coding.

Now we have the "Quick Reference" Perl in a Nutshell, finding the correct syntax is easy and it covers the wider range of many of the other modules too. Together with the cookbook and the others, you have good solid, high quality upto date documentation, reference and solid working examples. In addition the books are very readable and clearly set out, which makes reading then a pleasure