NAME¶
perlbook - Books about and related to Perl
DESCRIPTION¶
There are many books on Perl and Perl-related. A few of these are good, some are
OK, but many aren't worth your money. There is a list of these books, some
with extensive reviews, at
http://books.perl.org/ . We list some of the books
here, and while listing a book implies our endorsement, don't think that not
including a book means anything.
Most of these books are available online through Safari Books Online (
http://safaribooksonline.com/ ).
The most popular books¶
The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is
Programming Perl:
- Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
-
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
ISBN 978-0-596-00027-1 [3rd edition July 2000]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000271/
The Ram is a cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to accomplish
specific tasks:
- The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
-
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/
If you want to learn the basics of Perl, you might start with the Llama book,
which assumes that you already know a little about programming:
- Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
-
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
ISBN 978-0-596-52011-3 [5th edition June 2008]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520113
The tutorial started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which introduces the
intermediate features of references, data structures, object-oriented
programming, and modules:
- Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
-
by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
foreword by Damian Conway
ISBN 978-0-596-00478-1 [1st edition March 2006]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004781/
References¶
You might want to keep these desktop references close by your keyboard:
- Perl 5 Pocket Reference
-
by Johan Vromans
ISBN 978-0-596-00374-6 [4th edition July 2002]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003746/
- Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
-
by Richard Foley
ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/
- Regular Expression Pocket Reference
-
by Tony Stubblebine
ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [July 2007]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/
Tutorials¶
- Beginning Perl
-
by James Lee
ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430227931
- Learning Perl
-
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
ISBN 978-0-596-52010-6 [5th edition June 2008]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106
- Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
-
by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
foreword by Damian Conway
ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102067
- Mastering Perl
-
by brian d foy
ISBN 978-0-596-10206-7 [1st edition July 2007]
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242
- Effective Perl Programming
-
by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy
ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010]
http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/
Task-Oriented¶
- Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
-
by Sam Tregar
ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/159059018X
- The Perl Cookbook
-
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
with foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [2nd edition August 2003]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135
- Automating System Administration with Perl
-
by David N. Blank-Edelman
ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396
- Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
-
by Linchi Shea
ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/159059097X
Special Topics¶
- Regular Expressions Cookbook
-
by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan
ISBN 978-0-596-52069-4 [May 2009]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520694
- Programming the Perl DBI
-
by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes
ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998
- Perl Best Practices
-
by Damian Conway
ISBN: 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735
- Higher-Order Perl
-
by Mark-Jason Dominus
ISBN: 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005]
http://hop.perl.plover.com/
- Mastering Regular Expressions
-
by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126
- Network Programming with Perl
-
by Lincoln Stein
ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Network-Programming-with-Perl/9780201615715.page
- Perl Template Toolkit
-
by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley
ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004767
- Object Oriented Perl
-
by Damian Conway
with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
http://www.manning.com/conway/
- Data Munging with Perl
-
by Dave Cross
ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
http://www.manning.com/cross
- Mastering Perl/Tk
-
by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162
- Extending and Embedding Perl
-
by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
http://www.manning.com/jenness
- Pro Perl Debugging
-
by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590594541
Free (as in beer) books¶
Some of these books are available as free downloads.
Higher-Order Perl:
http://hop.perl.plover.com/
Writing Perl Modules for CPAN:
http://www.apress.com/resource/freeebook/9781590590188
Other interesting, non-Perl books¶
You might notice several familiar Perl concepts in this collection of ACM
columns from Jon Bentley. The similarity to the title of the major Perl book
(which came later) is not completely accidental:
- Programming Pearls
-
by Jon Bentley
ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]
- More Programming Pearls
-
by Jon Bentley
ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]
A note on freshness¶
Each version of Perl comes with the documentation that was current at the time
of release. This poses a problem for content such as book lists. There are
probably very nice books published after this list was included in your Perl
release, and you can check the latest released version at
http://perldoc.perl.org/perlbook.html .
Some of the books we've listed appear almost ancient in internet scale, but
we've included those books because they still describe the current way of
doing things. Not everything in Perl changes every day. Many of the
beginner-level books, too, go over basic features and techniques that are
still valid today. In general though, we try to limit this list to books
published in the past five years.
Get your book listed¶
If your Perl book isn't listed and you think it should be, let us know.