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Perl @ Web Programming
Programming Shed : Programmer Store & Resources |
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Perl Index - Perl Book :
Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs With Perl
by Joseph N. Hall Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co ISBN: 0201419750; 1st edition (January 1998) Effective Perl Programming is a gem of a Perl book. Its author, Joseph Hall, is a well-known Perl instructor and frequent poster on the seminal comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup. The book's technical editor is none other than Randal Schwartz, noted Net personality, enigmatic author of Learning Perl, and contributor to "Programming Perl". Hall has distilled his years of Perl experience into a book for Perl programmers that is both fluid and fun to read. It's somewhat like reading the Perl FAQ; even when you think you know everything, there's so much you don't know. Effective Perl Programming has a clear layout: the text is easy on the eyes and the monospaced font makes a clear distinction between backticks and single quotes. Hall uses his PEGS (PErl Graphical Structures) notation to show the difference between Perl's different types of data structures and how everything ties together. Packed with great examples and code snippets, this book is an excellent source of tips and tricks to make your Perl programs faster and easier to read. You'll also find a strong section on using the Perl debugger to improve your Perl programming skills. In yet another section, Hall walks the reader through the creation of a complete XS module that can boost the performance of array shuffling eight-fold. All in all, this is a great book for programmers who want to move beyond plain, verbose Perl toward a more succinct and powerful coding style. From Book News, Inc.: Presents programming solutions, techniques, pointers, rules of thumb, and pitfalls to avoid. Ten chapters include examples and cover basics, idiomatic Perl, regular expressions, subroutines, references, debugging, packages and modules, and object-oriented programming. Intended as a guidebook, not a manual, it is suitable for readers who have a basic understanding of Perl and a few months of practical experience. Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR Book Description: The book on Perl that experienced Perl programmers have been looking for, Effective Perl Programming explains idiomatic Perl, covering the latest release (Version 5). It includes information and useful examples about the structure, functions, and latest capabilities of the language, such as self-documenting object-oriented modules. Learn from Hall's answers to "real life" questions and problems he receives from newsgroups and his Perl seminars. Ingram: A hands-on, problem-solving guide to Perl programming explains how to enhance one's profiency in Perl and includes useful examples and code, as well as self-documenting, object-oriented modules available with Perl 5. Original. (Intermediate)." From the Inside Flap: I used to write a lot of C and C++. My last major project before stepping into the world of Perl full time was an interpreted language that, among other things, drew diagrams, computed probabilities, and generated entire FrameMaker books. It comprised over 50,000 lines of platform-independent C++, and it had all kinds of interesting internal features. It was a fun project. It also took two years to write. It seems to me that most interesting projects in C and/or C++ take months or years to complete. But it also seems to me that a whole lot of ideas that start out being mundane and uninteresting become interesting three-month projects when they are expressed in an ordinary high-level language. This is one of the reasons why I originally became interested in Perl. I had heard that Perl was an excellent scripting language with powerful string handling, regular expression, and process control features. I learned Perl, and learned to like it, when I was thrown into a project in which most of my work involved slinging around text files. I quickly found myself spending hours writing Perl programs that would have taken me days or weeks to write in a different language. Who should read this book. Effective Perl Programming is a book of advice and examples. It derives from my experience as a Perl programmer and--especially--as a Perl instructor. The book is suitable for readers who have a basic understanding of Perl and a few months of practical experience programming in it. Because Effective Perl Programming is a guidebook, not a manual, readers will need access to a comprehensive reference. I recommend either the Perl man pages (freely available in many forms, including Unix man and HTML) or Programming Perl. Although I use a lot of Unix-derived examples in this book, most of what appears here is not specific to Unix. I thought about including Win32 Perl and MacPerl examples but eventually decided that the book would have more integrity and consistency if it didn't stray from Perl's "native" operating system. I do encourage non-Unix developers to read Effective Perl Programming, or at least to give it a careful look. How and why I wrote this book I've always wanted to be a writer. In childhood I was obsessed with science fiction. I read constantly, sometimes three paperbacks a day, and every so often, wrote some (bad) stories myself. In 1985, I attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' workshop in East Lansing, Michigan. Afterward, I spent a year or so occasionally working on short story manuscripts, but never published any fiction. (Not yet, anyway!) Later on, when I had settled down into a career in software, I met Randal Schwartz. I hired him as a contractor on an engineering project and worked with him for over a year. Eventually he left to pursue teaching Perl full time. After a while, so did I. In May 1996, I had a conversation with Keith Wollman at a developer's conference in San Jose. When we drifted onto the topic of Perl, he asked me what I would think of a book called Effective Perl. I liked the idea. Scott Meyers's Effective C++ was one of my favorite books on C++, and extending the series to cover Perl would obviously be useful. I couldn't get Keith's idea out of my head. With some help from Randal, I worked out a proposal for the book, and Addison-Wesley accepted it. The rest--well, that was the fun part. I spent many 12-hour days and nights with FrameMaker in front of the computer screen, asked lots of annoying questions on the Perl 5 Porters list, posted many bug reports to the same list, looked through dozens of books and manuals, wrote many, many little snippets of Perl code, and drank many, many cans of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi. I even had an occasional epiphany as I discovered very basic things about Perl I had never realized I was missing. After a while, a manuscript emerged. This book is my attempt to share with the rest of you some of the fun and stimulation I experienced while learning the power of Perl. I certainly appreciate you taking the time to read it, and I hope you will find it useful and enjoyable. From the Back Cover: Powerful and flexible, Perl has established itself as a premier programming language, especially as a tool for World Wide Web development, text processing, and system administration. The language features full support for regular expressions, object-oriented modules, network programming, and process management. Perl is extensible and supports modular, cross-platform development. In Effective Perl Programming, Perl experts Joseph Hall and Randal Schwartz share programming solutions, techniques, pointers, rules of thumb, and the pitfalls to avoid, enabling you to make the most of Perl's power and capabilities. The authors will help you develop a knack for the right ways to do things. They show you how to solve problems with Perl and how to debug and improve your Perl programs. Offering examples, they help you learn good Perl style. Geared for programmers who have already acquired Perl basics, this book will extend your skill range, providing the tactics and deeper understanding you need to create Perl programs that are more elegant, effective, and succinct. This book also speaks to those who want to become more fluent, expressive, and individualistic Perl programmers. To help you design and write real-world programs, Effective Perl Programming includes: • Perl basics • Idiomatic Perl • Regular expressions • Subroutines • References • Debugging • Usage of packages and modules • Object-oriented programming • Useful and interesting Perl miscellany Numerous thought-provoking examples appear throughout the book, highlighting many of the subtleties that make Perl such a fascinating, fun, and powerful language to work with. About the Author: Joseph N. Hall is a software designer with interests in object-oriented languages, compilers, and graphical user interfaces. He teaches Perl and World Wide Web classes in association with Stonehenge Consulting, a leading provider of Perl Instruction. Customer Reviews Reviewer: Timur Shtatland from Cambridge, MA USA "Effective Perl Programming" is a *very* useful book, well-written, with transparent examples. It is recommended for intermediate and advanced programmers. My scripts indeed started to run (and look) better after using just several of the numerous techniques described in this book! "Effective Perl Programming" occupies the niche left previously empty in the Perl literature. It is different from its closest counterpart, "Perl Cookbook", in the following aspects. "Effective Perl Programming" describes a smaller number of very highly versatile techniques. Also, the small format, modular structure and clear style of "Effective Perl Programming" allows one to read it anywhere, in addition to using it as a great desk book. Reviewer: commander_doughboy from Seattle, WA I've been using Perl casually for a few years now, but when I first got this book six months ago, I sort of skimmed through it and didn't find anything too interesting. But when I started doing a few Perl projects, I kept thinking, "Hey, didn't that book say something about a better way to do this?" So I'd look it up, and an elegant solution to my problem would be there. It's not that I couldn't have done it without the tip, because as all Perl programers know, "There's More Than One Way To Do It", but it taught me a cleaner way than I would have done otherwise. Most tips are no longer than a few pages, and they are neatly organized by topic ("Regular Expressions", "Subroutines", etc.) in the index. Highly recommended for the semi-experienced Perl programmer who is looking to polish their programming skills. Reviewer: gerard from barcelona, catalunya A fantastic book, if you are an ex-newbie it's perfect, a lot of tricks for your fast improvement. The most useful stuff is the regex one, if you don't want to be an expert it gives you useful suggestions (if you want to be a regex expert, there are better books!). It's not expensive, it's not a big book, you can live without it but if you really LOVE perl, and you are a maniatic of details, you won't find a waste of money buying this one. Reviewer: A reader from Millburn, NJ USA Lots of neat tricks. But some are not taht readible. Be careful with Perl or you can end up with maintenance problems. |
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