Effective Perl Programming: Ways to Write Better, More Idiomatic Perl

Effective Software Development

by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, Brian D. Foy

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.

Genres: Programming, Computers, Computer Science, Nonfiction, Technology, Reference, Technical

653 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 1997

Reviews

[Nathan Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the most awesome resource on Perl I have ever found. I just finished reading it through for the second time; it was a good read when I was a beginner, and it is still a good reader as an advanced programmer.

[Mark A.]

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[Clintweathers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what scripting language you use.

Perl, Python, R, Javascript, Ruby (ok, maybe not Ruby), whatever.
Having your code be lucid, literate and readable is important no matter what language.

If you work in Perl, this is a great book to help make your code more idiomatic (or, as Perl coders say, "Perlish").

This is one of the two books (along with The Camel) I have at my elbow every time I code in Perl.

[Psoup1965 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book context was good. As a professional Perl programmer I did find some information useful.

However, I purchased this for my eReader as a quick reference and the code samples are extremely hard to read. I am disappointed in the eReader version of this book.

[Amanda]

A second edition?? The first one was brilliant. Before I've even finished chapter one of the new edition, I've been introduced to the goatse operator... it's the slightly-unhinged quality of the language that gives it that distinct Bukowski flavor.

[Ramesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helps separate the kiddies and the adults in the Perl world.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simply wonderful perl book. Has some really nice features of 5.10 & 5.12. It's been wonderfully updated and is now on my wishlist.

[Дмитрий Лобанов · Rating 5 out of 5]

Effectiveness is my power

Great book.
From every chapter I take minimum 10 tips and tricks.
Each bad style has fail example in this book.

Thank you, guys, for this book!

[Ajitabh Pandey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book about how to write perl programs effectively. A must read for all perl programmers.

[David Sewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book for advanced perl programmer.