I have a few feet of bookshelf space devoted to Perl. This is the book I use most frequently.
As a beginning tutorial, it is long and detailed. For intermediate and advanced tutorial use, the 3rd edition is much improved over the 2nd edition. It shines as a language reference. I am picky about indexes. The index is good but it could be better.
If you are only going to buy one book for tutorial and reference, buy this one. If you are going to buy more than one Perl book, buy this book for reference. If you bought the 2nd edition and like it, buy the 3rd edition, you will not be disappointed.
So with such a strong recommendation, why did I not give this book the highest rating? There is a technical issue in Perl, described below, that needs to be documented.
Perl uses a process model to do work in parallel. UNIX natively works this way but Windows works differently. On Windows, processes are simulated with threads. Perl threads are still experimental although that should be fixed in the not too distant future. When you do a fork under UNIX it works but under Windows it appears to work then you get a visit from Dr. Watson sometime later. The cause is that most of the Perl library is not thread safe.
My criticism of this book is that any application that uses processes portably, uses threads or uses the fork function under Windows needs to know which Perl library functions are thread safe and which are not. If that critical information was included in this book, I would have given it the top rating.
|
