Product Description
With Perl.NET it is now possible to use and create .NET components and to wrap existing Perl modules so that they are available to all .NET compliant languages. Perl.NET enables you to enjoy both worlds - .NET and Perl. By combining their features you'll have an ability to develop powerful robust components that may be reused in other .NET applications. This book provides many programs that illustrate features of Perl and .NET. The programs are clearly labeled in the text, and they are available through the associated Web site. There is also a case study that illustrates many features of Perl and .NET working together in combination, as they would in a practical application. The authors show you how to use .NET classes in Perl programs and how to create .NET components using Perl. Important .NET classes are surveyed, and there is coverage of using .NET in specific areas, including graphical user interfaces, database programming using ADO.NET, XML, ASP.NET and Web services. Also, in the appendix "C# Survival Guide" you will see how Perl interoperates with .NET languages, using C#, the language designed for .NET, as an example. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Programming Perl in the .NET Environment
Love Perl but wish it had the ability to work with the .NET framework?Well, this is the book for you!Let me tell you, if you program with Perl, then this book will earn its purchase price again and again.I've always loved the ease of programming in Perl, especially how well it works with sockets and network programming, but these days, you've got to be able to program Graphical User Interfaces.I've never been able to master programming GUI's using Tcl/Tk, but the C# like format of programming Visual Perl made creating Windows Forms a snap.The book gives so many examples of working with the .NET classes in any practical situation.Its got a great format including a discussion of programming with the .NET framework, a strong overview of programming in Perl, and of course the definitive guidelines to programming in PerlNET.It covers creating your own classes, components, forms, database interaction, and working with ASP.NET.It also gives an overview of working with the CPAN modules which is invaluable.The authors are intelligent, well-spoken, and are clearly experts in this particular area.You have GOT to buy this book!

Programming Perl in the .NET Environment
Love Perl but wish it had the ability to work with the .NET framework?Well, this is the book for you!Let me tell you, if you program with Perl, then this book will earn its purchase price again and again.I've always loved the ease of programming in Perl, especially how well it works with sockets and network programming, but these days, you've got to be able to program Graphical User Interfaces.I've never been able to master programming GUI's using Tcl/Tk, but the C# like format of programming Visual Perl made creating Windows Forms a snap.The book gives so many examples of working with the .NET classes in any practical situation.Its got a great format including a discussion of programming with the .NET framework, a strong overview of programming in Perl, and of course the definitive guidelines to programming in PerlNET.It covers creating your own classes, components, forms, database interaction, and working with ASP.NET.It also gives an overview of working with the CPAN modules which is invaluable.The authors are intelligent, well-spoken, and are clearly experts in this particular area.You have GOT to buy this book!

Programming Perl in the .Net Environment
This book was not only extremely valuable to me in understanding how to use Perl in the .Net Environmental, but also contains the best presentation of how to build pure Perl Modules that I have read to date.These concepts really jelled for me after reading and utilizing the examples presented in the book.

With my limited experience in object oriented programming, this book presented the topics in the right order to overcome my lack of OO experience.

I did have a few instances of failing to find specific terms in the index.

This book will continue to be a valuable resource as I continue to refine my Perl skills in creating perl modules and utilizing Perl in the .Net environment.

Strange mix - comes up quite well
Can you mix Perl and Dot.NET ??
I didn't think so till now.

I found the mix of Perl and Dot.NET quite strange - that's why I was surprise to see a book on that matter.

I felt very curious to see how can it work together.

Perl has lots of advantages that make it such an enormous success - very easy to write fast and efficient code.
Ask any unix admin / programmer.

The way Perl works with the rich options of Microsoft's new engine is good. I like the combination. It works well, the examples are quite good.

The first part of the book looks similar to every Dot.NET one can find, but the second part is the value for this book - and that's why I liked it.

Good techinal explainations and examples.
It was a good investment for me.

Review from the lead author
Hi, All!
I am the lead author of this book. Together with Michael Saltzman and Robert J. Oberg we tried to make this book as good as possible.
The book will be useful for you whether you are an experienced Perl programmer that wants to learn .NET technology or you are new to Perl.
The first part represents a tutorial of Perl itself. In the second part we dive into exciting world of programming Perl inside the .NET Environment.

I hope you will enjoy reading and our code samples will be useful and helpful for you.

Happy reading and programming! ... Read more

Product Description
Meets the growing academic market need for Perl books.Attempts to target experienced programmers whether that experience comes from professional programming or from the first two courses in a degree program in computer science.Softcover. DLC: Perl (Computer program language) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great for people who already know how to program
This book is great for those who already know how to program in C or C++.I am a C++ programmer and I needed to quickly learn the basics of Perl and this book was great.It's short, concise, and to the point - it got me up and running really fast.Within a few days, I was writing useful small scripts and ready to move on to some more advanced materials, including the O'reilly books on Perl.

I think only one addition would make this book even better: have a list of resources (other books, web sites) at the end of each chapter to find more information about certain topics.For instance, the chapter on CGI programming can point readers to Lincoln Stein's book on CGI.pm for more detailed information.

Mediocre at Best
We are using this book in my Perl class, and the general consensus is that this book is mediocre at best. Much of this comes from the fact that we are required to do the exercises at the back of the book, which, among other things, sometimes require you know information that has not yet been covered. Also some of the chapters do a poor job at explaining things, especially the functions chapter, in which even the examples in the chapter did not work when compiled. In its defense(short as it may be), however, the fact that it is short and concise made Perl more easy to handle.

To the point
I first started learning perl with the Camel/Llama books from O'Reilly -but did not like the style [or prehaps I lack a sense of humor?] and gaveup.

A 'Little Book on Perl' is just that. I skimmed over it for 30mins onthe bus each morning and after 3 days felt I knew enough to throw away myawk and shell scripts and use perl in anger. This being a small book is agreat advantage for someone familar with programming - you get to know thebasic features of the language fast. There are however some irritations -the opening example script has typos, and some of the page numbers areincorrect - my copy has the debugger chapter included twice. Still it isthe best perl book I have seen.

A Little Book on Perl - R.W. Sebesta, ISBN: 0139279555
I first started learning perl with the Camel/Llama books from O'Reilly -but did not like the style [or prehaps I lack a sense of humor?] and gaveup.

A 'Little Book on Perl' is just that. I skimmed over it for 30mins onthe bus each morning and after 3 days felt I knew enough to throw away myawk and shell scripts and use perl in anger. This being a small book is agreat advantage for someone familar with programming - you get to know thebasic features of the language fast. There are however some irritations -the opening example script has typos, and some of the page numbers areincorrect - my copy has the debugger chapter included twice. Still it isthe best perl book I have seen.

Good - despite the typos
I first started learning perl with the Camel/Llama books from O'Reilly -but did not like the style [or prehaps I lack a sense of humor?] and gaveup.

A 'Little Book on Perl' is just that. I skimmed over it for 30mins onthe bus each morning and after 3 days felt I knew enough to throw away myawk and shell scripts and use perl in anger. This being a small book is agreat advantage for someone familar with programming - you get to know thebasic features of the language fast. There are however some irritations -the opening example script has typos, and some of the page numbers areincorrect - my copy has the debugger chapter included twice. Still it isthe best perl book I have seen. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (8)

Useful, inspiring - and fun!
As one of the reviewers for Automating System Administration with Perl,
I can only rabidly recommend the work as some of the best I have seen
lately on both subjects (Perl and System Administration).

Wish for More...
I rely on a substantial collection of O'Reilly references on a day-to-day basis.Therefore I am sad to say this book has collected quite a bit of dust on my bookshelf.

I like the concept of the book (I bought it, after all), but it seems to try to do too much.

To be sure, the topics included are worthwhile, and essential to any sysadmin arsenal.Unfortunately, I do not believe the author fully covers them in depth.IMHO the book would be greatly improved by focusing on a particular O/S (and I'm not advocating one......just pick ONE), rather than trying to be a go-to reference for [U]nix and Windows admins alike.

Topic coverage in this book leaves something to be desired.It seems like the author said, "Here is how to do an LDAP search with Perl.Moving on to AD, here's how you do an LDAP search.Here's how to manage users in [U]nix; now here's how to do it in Windows."

Save your money, instead invest in Automating Linux and Unix System Administration, Second Edition (Expert's Voice in Linux) for an engaging, useful book (barring the CFengine portion).

The Otter Book never leaves my side
Perl occupies the sweet spot between shell scripting and C programming, with the ability to lean as far as you'd like in either direction.As a sysadmin, Perl is better than a tool -- its the perfect tool for building tools, and this book is at the top of a very short list of texts which help bring to bear the full power of the best language for cutting down complex tasks down to size.

I've read a lot of Perl books and I own most of the O'Reilly books on the topic.The Otter Book, however, is the one which I cart around with me in my laptop bag wherever I go and is the first place I look for hints on how to attack problems that I face at work or home.It's chocked full of working examples and hints and tips on how to customize them, as well as plenty of context as to why these suggestions work the way they do.

The book is very well written and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether they are a professional admin or just want to cut out some of the repetitive tasks of managing their own workstation.

Excellent update to a classic
The original Otter book was published in 2000, and had a place on just about every sysadmin's shelf as well as most anyone who regularly used Perl.I expect this new 2009 edition will likewise be a "must have" for anyone serious about System Administration and Perl (and any Perl coder, really, given the wide range of topics).While it will likely serve as an excellent reference, I'd also recommend this edition to newcomers to Perl (up there with Llama, Camel and Perl Cookbook) due to the "real world" nature of the tasks covered and the author's obvious depth of knowledge and wealth of experience.

This edition is much updated from the 2000 original, with four new chapters ("Working with Configuration Files" and "Experiential Learning" being two favorites of mine) and two new appendices (including the "10 minute XPath tutorial).Some of what I like best about the book is the exploration of "best of breed" CPAN modules and "Pros and Cons" sections that compare modules for particular tasks.All-in-all very highly recommended!

Topics include spam control, analyzing log files, working with different configuration file formats, and more
AUTOMATING SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION WITH PERL by David N. Blank-Edelman appears in its second updated edition for any systems administrator working with Perl. It's been updated and expanded to include the latest operating systems and technologies and replaces an outdated version, so is key for any serious Perl computing collection. Topics include spam control, analyzing log files, working with different configuration file formats, and more.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Good for beginners
This is a very good book for PERL beginners. Easy to follow, good hands on samples. Though the examples are for web based development, we can try it on UNIX/LINUX shells.

Examples are simple and the book covers almost all sections of PERL (except for DB programming).

Overall excellent book for beginners. ... Read more

Product Description
Visually explore the range of built-in and third-party libraries of Perl and Apache

Perl and Apache have been providing Common Gateway Interface (CGI) access to Web sites for 20 years and are constantly evolving to support the ever-changing demands of Internet users. With this book, you will heighten your knowledge and see how to usePerl and Apache to develop dynamic Web sites.

Beginning with a clear, step-by-step explanation of how to install Perl and Apache on both Windows and Linux servers, you then move on to configuring each to securely provide CGI Services. CGI developer and author Adam McDaniel shows techniques for effectively developing and maintaining dynamic sites and he shares real-world examples describing MySQL database access, PayPal credit-card transactions, and sample Facebook and Twitter interfaces.

• Apache and Perl have been providing Common Gateway Interface (CGI) access to Internet Web sites for more than two decades, and both products are constantly evolving to support today's user requirements
• Shows how to install Perl and Apache on Windows and Linux servers and configure each to securely provide CGI services
• Details techniques for effectively developing and maintaining dynamic Web sites
• Addresses MySQL database access and PayPal credit-card transactions, and examines sample Facebook and Twitter interfaces

With this book, you’ll benefit from a wealth of techniques and resources that you won’t find anywhere else. ... Read more

Product Description
Perl is one of the most important scripting languages in use today. Open source, freely available, portable, versatile, and robust, powerful and easy to use, Perl is the first choice for thousands of professional web developers. But Perl is far more than a scripting language for the web. Supported by a comprehensive standard library and hundreds of third-party libraries, Perl is an increasingly popular choice for application programming.

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the Perl language. It covers the fundamentals of data types and file handling through advanced features like regular expressions, object-oriented programming, threads, internationalization, and integrating Perl with the C programming language. The latest version of the language, Perl 5.6, is used throughout, with commentary for those with earlier versions. Amazon.com Review
Perl is one of the most important and powerful languages available today, and Professional Perl Programming offers an in-depth guide to exploiting some of its best features. With a densely packed tutorial straight from the experts, it is suitable for any experienced developer who wants to get more from this language.

Weighing in at over 1,200 pages, the text is dedicated to the principle that more is more, yet in covering the breadth of today's Perl, it doesn't ever lose sight of the practical details. One of the best feautures is its attention to running Perl in multiple environments. Early sections look at installing and running Perl on Unix, Windows, and the Mac. There is plenty of advice on how to run and deploy scripts, including excellent sections on the internals of Perl, autoloading modules, and creating installable modules for distribution.

A practical, hands-on focus is the rule throughout this text, which features short code excerpts rather than full-length scripts. Early sections cover pretty much the entire Perl language in significant detail, from data types (including scalars, arrays, and hashes, which help give Perl its distinctive personality) to flow control statements and their scoping rules. An important chapter presents object-oriented Perl, including common class design constructs like inheritance.

The emphasis of much of this book is on detailing the use of key Perl modules to perform basic and important tasks like file I/O, working with files and directories, process control, and networking. One notable section covers regular expressions with a clearly presented (yet sophisticated) tutorial to this essential Perl feature. (Besides the fundamentals, the book examines optimizing your regular expressions for better performance.) Later sections show you how to do networking in Perl, as well as how to get Perl to interoperate with C and even Java. The book closes with a concise listing of available Perl functions, as well as the most important Perl modules.

Professional Perl Programming doesn't dumb the subject down. Perl is infinitely rich and sometimes difficult, and this book is up to the task. It succeeds at presenting a wide-ranging tour of today's Perl with enough information to please even experienced Perl programmers. It contains much to mine in the way of basic and expert material that any intermediate to advanced developer can use to do more with Perl in everyday programming projects. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Introduction to Perl distributions and modules
• Running Perl on Unix, Windows, and other platforms
• Intensive programming tutorial for Perl
• Numbers and strings
• Perl operators in detail
• Using scalars, lists, arrays, and hashes
• Complex data structures and typeglobs
• Expressions
• Statements and blocks
• Flow control and loops
• Subroutines
• Scope and visibility rules in Perl
• Including and using Perl modules
• Autoloading modules
• Creating installable modules
• In-depth tutorial for regular expressions (including performance tips)
• Perl file I/O and file handles (including working with files and directories)
• Command-line handling and shells
• Terminal I/O
• Warnings and errors in Perl
• Using the Perl debugger
• Automated testing and profiling
• Text processing and reporting in Perl
• Object-oriented Perl (including basic object-oriented class design features like inheritance)
• Perl internals
• Integrating Perl with C, Java, and COM
• Creating and managing processes in Perl (including signals, IPC, and threads)
• Perl networking (from sockets to higher-level Internet protocols)
• Techniques for writing portable Perl code
• Unicode support
• Locale and internationalization techniques in Perl
• Function reference for Perl 5.6
• Listing of standard Perl modules

Customer Reviews (7)

Printed version of online manual ?
After I read this book a while, I noticed the content was very similar to Perl online manuals. It seems this book is a printed version of online manuals with a little bit of extra. Having said that, it goes over a lot of examples how 'context' makes difference and that's a big plus since understanding the context is a major part of Perl.

WROX rocks
I initially didn't have time to read this book, and it made a much better reference than O'Reilly's book because it didn't assume you knew what you were doing. The index is nice, and the table of contents helps find anything you don't know the name for - it's all logically organized.

When I finally got around to reading it, it was actually a nice read too.

So far this has been my experience with all the Wrox books I've gotten. They cover well what they cover, but don't always cover everything.

very detailed but not easy to read
The book is very detailed and comprehensive, but it is not easy to read and probably not suitable for beginners. Specifically, it does not provide complete examples with inputs, code, and output. There are also plenty of typos and small errors.

Still, in all fairness, this is a very comprehensive book with lots of topics not covered in other books. Also the paper is of good quality. Probably every advanced user should go through the book to pick up on things other books leave out.

Highly recommended for a broad audience
This is a very good Perl book! For beginners, intermediates or even advanced programmers in Perl. The book takes you from the basics to advanced applied Perl programming concepts.
The book manages what many others fail to do: It might be the only Perl book you ever need. If you worked through this book, additional information is readily available on the Internet. Thisbook is comprehensive enough to cover everything you need to know about the Perl language to write large scale 'mission critical' applications.
Admitted, if you already own the O'Reillys 'Learning Perl', 'Perl' and 'Perl Cookbook' this book will not contain many news. However, it is written very well and it is understandable, something I cannot always say about the 'original' Perl books or documentation.
If you do web programming, a logical addition to this book is 'Professional Perl Development' which offers lots of good information on how to design sophisiticated web applications.

An excellent book for advanced programmers.
This is an excellent, thorough, fairly advanced book.

Until now, I was an o'reilly zealot, clinging to my camel book and my CD bookshelf as the Only True Word.

Finally, here is the first real competitor to that series of books, with a fresh approach to the language that shows that the authors really know what they are doing.

So far, the book has done a great job covering all my industrial-strength perl questions with_examples that work_ and clear, concise explanations of the methods and the context. I find that the examples are really applicable to my professional needs as a contract perl programmer.

There's a great section on object-oriented perl, as well as a good debugging section.

IMHO, This is the best perl book out in a while. ... Read more

Product Description
Perl is one of the most popular scripting languages for adding powerful interactive features to Web pages. Perl lets you place forms on your site that collect and process user input such as comments and product orders; enables visitors to search for information; and can integrate a database into your site, among its many other capabilities. Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide fully revised and updated since its original 1998 release, gets users to the core of CGI scripting with Perl. Even first-time programmers will be able to create useful, workable scripts from scratch, or adapt and customize existing scripts to their own needs. Hundreds of screen shots and clear, easy-to-understand directions make this the perfect Perl book for beginners, as well as a handy reference for those with previous programming experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Long on examples, short on detail
This is a jumpstart tutorial book, so anyone looking for a comprehensive guide to either Perl or CGI will be disappointed.(But the title of the book series makes this pretty obvious.)I'm an experienced programmer, and I've had some experience with Python, a language very similar to Perl in some ways, but nevertheless I found this book helpful, even if it is somewhat simplistic.It provides a good, if shallow, introduction to the possibilities of the Perl language and CGI.This book is enough to get your feet wet;it is not enough to make you a competent web application developer.But once you finish this book, you can move on to something more substantial.What I like about this book is the way the author continues to repeat certain basic concepts, so that a beginner won't get tangled up and lost.(Things like the "here" document and "default" variable, for example, can throw the beginner for a loop.)So overall, I think this book is a pretty good starting point for Perl and CGI.

Absolute beginner programmers may still find this book too complex.There is a certain assumption of familiarity with basic programming concepts.But if you have even a small amount of experience with even a simple language like BASIC, you should be fine.

I love this book
I ALWAYS buy the Peachpit Press books for everything I need to learn.I bought one for Photoshop, HTML,Studio 10, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, VB, etc.They are straight forward and to-the-point and great books.

I checked it out from a library and liked it so much I bought it!
I'm a PERL beginner.I checked out several books from the library and this one, PERL and CGI, was the best fit.It gives a very good overview of what PERL is and its syntax.After just a couple of hours of reading I think I could start writing my own simple scripts.Easy to read and understand.I liked it so much I bought a copy from Amazon to keep as a reference!Not as an exhaustive reference --it's not that --but as a reference for all the common techniques and principles.Although there are a lot of illustrations, they're not really critical to the book.My only criticism is that the print in the pictures is so small it's hard to read.

Great Introduction to Perl
This was one of the first books I read to learn Perl and it provides an excellent introduction to Perl. At the beginning I think it could use a little bit more hand holding as some other books do, but if you are familiar with any syntax in a programming language you should be just fine. Even if you are one of those that did need to get another book to get you through the hand holding of learning to program for the first time with Perl, you will quickly find yourself wondering how to do things with Perl and this book will probably answer your questions so I think this book is indispensable for anyone that wants to learn Perl.

Really hard to follow
First off, she didn't even get started with user exercises until Chapter 7. (I can already use a web server, thank you-- she doesn't need six chapters to explain the subject) And it would be nice if she included the HTML form examples along with the corresponding perl/CGI scripts that processed the data generated. As it stands, she has a chapter which tells you how to create a form, and then two chapters later, when she gets to the perl/CGI examples, they don't correspond to anything that's been covered in earlier chapters pertaining to form data. I had a much easier time following a quickie online tutorial.

I cannot advise strenuously enough against purchasing this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics covers the core Perl language and many of its module extensions, presenting them in the context of biological data and problems of pressing interest to the biological community.This book, along with Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics, forms a basic course in Perl programming.This second volume finishes the basic Perl tutorial material (references, complex data structures, object-oriented programming, use of modules--all presented in a biological context) and presents some advanced topics of considerable interest in bioinformatics. Biologists and computer scientists who have conquered the basics of Perl and are ready to move even further in their mastery of this versatile language will appreciate the author's well-balanced approach to applying Perl's analytical abilities to the field of bioinformatics. Full of practical examples and real-world biological problem solving, this book is a must for any reader wanting to move beyond beginner level Perl in bioinformatics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Good starting material for programming perl in bioinformatics
Combined with the authors other book, Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics, this book provides a good self-study guide for those interested in understanding bioinformatics. This book is useful for biologist who has some programming experience, as well as programmers with some biology knowledge. It's written in a style that should suite most readers, as I find it each and smooth to read. Those looking for strict definitions or theory should look elsewhere.

Only chapters 4, 5 and 9 make it a worthwhile "Masters" book
This book is definitely written for the biologist that knows some perl and not the experienced perl programmer. To the biologists who have some experience, this book will open up many new possibilities, but to a person with a few years of perl experience, many sections are skimpy and wasteful on topics better covered by other Perl books.

For example, for anyone with truely massive datasets, it might have been worth the mention of the performance cost/benefits of using BerkleyDBs and hash joins (180-3500 times). With improvements of 2-3 orders of magnitude for large sets, it would have been worth a complementary example in chapter 6 so that readers can weigh the alternatives for certain situations.

The book, however, is well worth the price just for chapters 4, 5 and 9.

4) Sequence Formats and Inheritance
5) A Class for Restriction Enzymes
9) Introduction to Bioperl

A good follow-on to Tisdall's other Perl book
This book is a continuation of Tisdall's "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" and thus illustrates more advanced Perl programming techniques. This book not only talks about Perl programming, but it goes into some detail on the subject of bioinformatics itself. It is assumed that the CS-type reader has a good understanding of biology and the goals of bioinformatic programming. Otherwise, the examples and projects within the book will not make sense. The following is a description of the book's contents:

Part I: OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING IN PERL
Chapter 1. Modular Programming with Perl - Talks about using modules so that other people can reuse your programs and you can reuse other people's modules in your own programs.

Chapter 2. Data Structures and String Algorithms - Talks about all of the different data structures available through Perl and how to build up special structures in Perl that you might need to describe complex data. Also mentions various string algorithms that are used in analyzing biological data and implements them in Perl.

Chapter 3. Object-Oriented Programming in Perl - Introduces object-orientation in Perl via a module that includes a class that keeps track of genes.

Chapter 4. Sequence Formats and Inheritance - How to convert sequence files into alternate formats such as FASTA and GCG. The object-oriented concept of inheritance is also introduced.

Chapter 5. A Class for Restriction Enzymes - By writing a more complex class, you get a bigger dose of object-orientated programming in biology.

Part II: PERL AND BIOINFORMATICS
Chapter 6. Perl and Relational Databases - Talks about SQL and the design of relational databases. MySQL is examined specifically.

Chapter 7. Perl and the Web - You learn about web programming in Perl by seeing how to put a laboratory on the Web via Perl and CGI.

Chapter 8. Perl and Graphics - Graphics programming in Perl is demonstrated when you learn to write a program that displays changing data to the Web. The graphical Perl module PD is discussed and demonstrated in a program.

Chapter 9. Introduction to Bioperl - Introduces the reader to Bioperl, which is a group of open source Perl modules used for bioinformatics programming. They provide many basic facilities so you don't have to worry about them.

Part III: Appendixes
Appendix A. Perl Summary
Appendix B. Installing Perl

I really thought this was a 5-star book. However, it is not obvious from the title that this is really volume two of a two volume set of books on Perl programming for the biologist, so I can see where the lower ratings might have come from.

Perhaps the CGI could have been omitted?
This is the sequel to his earlier beginner's book on Perl. Now, he goes further into usages of Perl. While experienced programmers will not find these terribly challenging, they are not the intended audience.

Of the topics, the most important is where he shows you how to interface with a SQL database. Given the sheer mass of sequence data generated these days, it is inevitable that efficient database usage be done. So he gives a quick tour of relational database design. With examples of how Perl has modules to submit and query the database. The treatment is somewhat cursory, since he has other, non-database topics to cover.

Of those, he includes CGI programming. This might be questionable. CGI code has proved incredibly hard to scale. Maybe he felt the necessity to include code for handling web servers. Unfortunately, a typical reader won't have enough experience to be aware of CGI's problems. The danger is that she actually starts coding CGI Perl. The true debugging and maintenance costs will not show up till later.

Good Companion text
This first half of the book focuses entirely on Object-Oriented(OO) Perl. The second half follows up with a general survey of various perl implementations of particular programming issues involving databasing, cgi, graphics, modules, etc, and BioPerl.

This book does a good job of applying Perl in OO for Biology in the first half of the book. In the second half he overviews a few broad topics in bioinformatics; he doesn't go super specific, but its a sufficient overview and for me sparked more interest in understanding how I can use perl to handle my informatics issues.

In the first half, the author does an excellent job on detailing the ins and outs of perl references and how to construct complex data structures. Indeed they are a bit strange looking at first, but the author breaks it down really good so pretty much anyone can understand it.

For me the most intriguing part of the book was in the second half, which included relational databases, graphics, and bioperl. In particular, the chapter that covers Perl DBI and DBD::mysql was really cool. That secion was very helpful for me because I am familiar with php/mysql, but have not ever used Perl to interact with Mysql before.

I especially liked the gif draw aka GD chapter. I had no idea how cool GD is. But moreover how it can be integrated with Perl to generate really cool looking plots. Before this book I always used gnuplot. But Tisdall shows you how to get to work with GD pretty good using basic practical examples.

The chapter on BioPerl was especially helpful as well. In particular, he shows you what he did to install the beast. He shows you how to use the CPAN shell and again its really beneficial to read through. It motivated me to pursue other topics in bioperl and how I can use it to query different ncbi databases for example.

Overall, the text provided a good overview on OO Perl and on various other topics involving Perl for Bioinformatics in general. I am glad I bought it. It was really very practical/useful - I refer to it all the time actually! ... Read more

Product Description
Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk is the second volume of The Best of the Perl Journal, compiled and re-edited by the original editor and publisher of The Perl Journal, Jon Orwant. In this series, we've taken the very best (and still relevant) articles published in TPJ over its five years of publication and immortalized them into three volumes. The forty articles included in this volume are simply some of the best Perl articles ever written on the subjects of graphics, the Web, and Perl/Tk, by some of the best Perl authors and coders.Much of Perl's success is due to its capabilities for developing web sites; the Web section covers popular topics such as CGI programs, mod_perl, spidering, HTML parsing, security, and content management. The Graphics section is a grab bag of techniques, ranging from simple graph generation to ray tracing and real-time video digitizing. The Perl/Tk section shows you how to use the popular Perl/Tk toolkit for developing graphical applications that work on both Unix/Linux and Windows without a single change.Written by twenty-three of the most prominent and prolific members of the closely-knit Perl community, including Lincoln Stein, Mark-Jason Dominus, Alligator Descartes, and Dan Brian, this anthology does what no other book can, giving unique insight into the real-life applications and powerful techniques made possible by Perl. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good TPJ articles for the topics Web, Graphics and TK
"Web, Graphics and Perl/TK" is a reprint of the best articles of the The Perl Journal (TPJ) for the following topics:

- Web programming with Perl
- Graphics programming with Perl
- Perl/TK

The chapter about "Web programming" covers roughly the following topics:
- CGI programming and CGI.pm
- mod_perl programming
- LWP (libwwwperl) and the modules to parse HTML
- Miscellaneous topics

I found the main chapter "Web programming" very interesting and a good introduction into the topics that it covered.

The chapter "Graphics" is a collection of articles about Graphics programming without the use of Perl/TK (e.g. GD, Perl and GIMP). I found the articles to be quite interesting and to contain some very good ideas. Because I am a database guy, I will not use most of these ideas but I will definitely use GD to generate web graphics. It is always amazing how much you can do with Perl and how easy this can be (sometimes).

The third part of the " Web, Graphics and Perl/TK" deals with Perl/TK only. I personally do not really understand TK (even when I was still using TCL/TK) so that I cannot really comment on the contents of these articles. I found them quite readable and the stile was OK. However if I had to (re-)learn TK, these articles would not be enough. If I need to use Perl/TK, I will buy the O'Reilly books that cover Perl/TK.

I like this TPJ series because the authors cover a certain aspect of Perl or Perl usage in a very condensed form that makes it easy to get a quick start in this area. I am really looking forward to reading "Games, Diversions and Perl Culture" (last book of this series ... Read more

Product Description
mod_perl embeds the popular programming language Perl in the Apache web server, giving rise to a fast and powerful web programming environment.Practical mod_perl is the definitive book on how to use, optimize, and troubleshoot mod_perl.New mod_perl users will learn how to quickly and easily get mod_perl compiled and installed. But the primary purpose of this book is to show you how to take full advantage of mod_perl: how to make a mod_perl-enabled Web site as fast, flexible, and easily-maintainable as possible.The authors draw from their own personal experience in the field, as well as the combined experience of the mod_perl community, to present a rich and complete picture of how to set up and maintain a successful mod_perl site.From writing and debugging scripts to keeping your server running without failures, the techniques in this book will help you squeeze every ounce of power out of your server.True to its title, this is the practical guide to mod_perl. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

An excellent investment
We have been using perl for our server side programming for over 6 years now. During this period, the popularity of our web based applications has grown.To deal with the growth, we have had to optimize the programs, as well as look at alternate server setup strategies. We acquired this book as it covers both the topics of our interest -- mod_perl for efficiency of perl programs and setting up servers that use mod_perl.

In the course of the optimizations, we have gradually moved into the mod_perl world. It has yielded significant performance improvement, probably making our web application more than 50 times as fast. "Practical mod_perl" served as a guide while we carried out this transition, which has resulted in dramatic savings in our server costs. I have no hesitation in saying that this wonderful book is perhaps the best investment we have ever made in technology.

As the title suggests
This is very practical.It starts with a lot of information on how apache works and how mod_perl and other modules intract.Then, after learning that information, it shows how you can use the knowledge to signficiantly improve the performance of your mod_perl apps.

In addition, it gives valuable advice on how to troubleshoot fustrating issues with mod_perl & apache.

This book should be required reading for anybody doing mod_perl work.

mod_perl from the horse's mouth
This one of the most informative O'Relly books by absolute metrics: almost 1000 pages packed with useful information. It pretty much covers all bases: from porting existing CGI scripts to mod_perl, to architecturing busy websites for optimal performance. One of the authors, Stas Bekman, works on mod_perl full-time, so this is it's basically as authoriative as it gets.

The only drawback of this book that I noticed is that it sometimes gets too heavy on basic Perl or sysadmin stuff, making the experienced developer flip pages in anxiety. Also, some parts are too similar to online mod_perl documentation (which is not surprising as it's written by the same person).

Still, this is the first book with substantial mod_perl2 coverage, and probably worths buying for this reason alone. All in all, if you're coding mod_perl for living, I think you owe it to yourself to have this book in your O'Relly collection.

Definitive guide to mod_perl administration
At almost 900 pages, this is certainly the biggest book on mod_perl that has been published so far. In my opinion it's also one of the most useful.

Stas Bekman and Eric Cholet are two of the best-known and (probably more importantly) most respected names in the mod_perl community so you can be sure the the information you get in this book is going to be top quality.

Part 1 of the book is about mod_perl administration. It starts with an overview of what mod_perl is and how it relates to CGI and the Apache web server before going into a chapter which gives a quickstart guide to installing and using mod_perl on some of the most common platforms. Chapter three then goes back over the installation process in far more detail. Chapter four explains how to configure mod_perl in various ways and chapter five cover monitoring, upgrading and maintaining your mod_perl enabled web server. Chapter 6 is full of advice about how to write Perl code that takes advantage of mod_perl's features.

Part 2 is all about mod_perl performance and contains chapters about benchmarking and tuning your server. I found chapter twelve to be particularly useful as it discusses a number of useful strategies for splitting server load between a mod_perl server for dynmaic content and a "plain" (non-mod_perl) server for static content. Other chapters in this section cover other strategies for improving performance by tuning Apache's configuration, changing your Apache and mod_perl build options and being cleverer about the HTTP headers that you return.

Most dynamic web sites have a database involved somewhere so part 3 covers using databases with mod_perl. Part 4 is all about debugging and troubleshooting your mod_perl server. Finally, part 5 looks at what has changed with the release of the forthcoming mod_perl 2.0.

And this isn't just theoretical stuff. The two authors have been involved in developing mod_perl for a long time but they are also mod_perl users. You can just tell from the way they write that the problems they discuss are problems they have dealt with. This is the voice (or, rather, voices) of experience.

A lot of the text in the book is based on the mode_perl guide which has been available on the web for some time, but all of the content has been revisited, updated and expanded. This book is not really in competition with books like The mod_perl Developers Cookbook or the older Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C as those books largely concentrate on how to write code for mod_perl whereas the emphasis in this book is on configuring and administering a mod_perl server.

And if you are the administrator of a mod_perl server then you should really consider adding this book to your library.

Useful, informative volume on mod_perl
Practical mod_perl is a doorstop sized volume that provides more information on using mod_perl than you ever thought you needed.

The almost 900 pages are divided into five parts and a bunch of appendices. Part I, "mod_perl Administration" covers building, configuring and installing mod_perl, followed by some Apache details and an 80-page guide to coding with mod_perl in mind. Part II, `mod_perl Performance' deals with ways of getting the best out of Apache and mod_perl, with a little about security. Part III deals with databases, including persistent connections and data sharing. Part IV is a great guide to debugging and troubleshooting. Part V is a brief look at Apache 2 and mod_perl 2.

The appendices are useful. The first is a short section of around a dozen small `recipes' for performing various tasks using mod_perl. I found these a good base for more complex tasks, particularly when combined with examples from elsewhere in the book. The second is a list of Perl modules that extend Apache and mod_perl with a brief description of each. The third gives some strategies for providers wanting to host Apache with mod_perl. The fourth and fifth give good overviews of the Template Toolkit and AxKit, an XML application server built on mod_perl.

The book is readable, tending towards heavy writing and certainly dense, but I didn't feel this was a problem in a book meant for a fairly advanced audience. I think you'd want to be a fairly good Perl programmer and well versed in Apache before needing this volume and shouldn't expect to be spoon fed. I thought it well written.

In a book of this size you expect to find a lot of example code, and you won't be disappointed. The book is peppered with short Perl examples and example command lines and configurations, all well explained. The one shortcoming is that there aren't many examples of full-blown applications where you can see everything discussed and have it explained all in one place. I would have appreciated some more of this, the examples tend to be on the short side.

This book sits well in the marketplace. It provides more details on running, installing and configuring mod_perl and Apache than mod_perl Developer's Cookbook (and also delves more into the reasons for doing something one particular way and much more help on debugging), though the Developer's Cookbookbecomes a good companion to this volume as it provides a lot more in the way of examples. For those that want to get deep into the high end of mod_perl there is Writing Apache Modules in Perl and C, which is at core a good book on high end mod_perl programming.

O'Reilly have their usual website with Table of Contents, an example chapter, and errata. The authors have their own website with some of the same information and all the code examples from the book as both individual files and one 40k tarball.

I would recommend this book to anyone who administers and writes for mod_perl, it fills the missing pieces in mod_perl Developers Cookbook and is a good companion volume to it. ... Read more

Product Description
Perl/Tk, the marriage of Perl with the Tk toolkit,allows you to build Perl programs with an attractive,intuitive GUI interface. Mastering Perl/Tk isthe one and only book you need for learning Perl/Tkand for mastering the techniques of experiencedPerl/Tk programmers.The first half of the book contains the basics onhow to use Perl/Tk, with coverage of all the standardwidgets and a thorough tutorial of the geometry managers. Mastering Perl/Tk then branches out into advancedapplications, including extensive program examples.The result is a book accessible for novices, andinvaluable for experienced programmers ready to learnthe next step in the elegant and effective use of Perl/Tk.Nancy Walsh is the author of Learning Perl/Tkand Steve Lidie is the author of the Perl/TkPocket Reference and a series of Perl/Tk articlesin The Perl Journal. Together, they have written Mastering Perl/Tk to be the definitive guide toPerl/Tk. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Excellent for more advanced Pe;rl/Tk applications
I had a Perl/Tk application started and my customer was impressed but when I received this book, I was able to perform a number of GUI items which were beyond the capacity of the Learning Perl/Tk which I had been previously using or the Internet queries I had used.The applications were easy to find using the index and easy to implement.The depth of this book was sufficient to take my application to a much more sophisticated level, closer to what I could have done using JAVA.I had been unable to find the answers found here on either the Internet or the previous Perl Books I had used.

Outdated!! - perl/tk is not even used anymore
The only reason you would want to buy this book is if you want to modify an existing perl/tk program.Even then, I do not recommend buying it.

Perl/tk is discontinued!!!!!!ActivePerl now uses the package tkx to bridge tk and perl.Although similar to perl/tk, it has many new updates not included in this book.Plus, the syntax is new.

Here is a good explanation as why tkx is now used:

"Because Perl/Tk extricated Tcl from Tk, it took considerable effort to track newer Tk releases, and so has waned in modern years. The recommended Tk binding for Perl now is the "Tkx" module, a much smaller layer that provides a direct bridge to the Tcl API that Tk exposes." -tkdocs dot com

Mastering may be an overstatement
This book provides a lot of information about Perl/Tk, but in a somewhat scattered fashion, making true mastery of the subject an intensive process. It is an excellent learning tool, but the reader should be aware that there is much to learn beyond what is presented here.

don't buy Perl/Tk book
I'm a big fan of the O'Reilly Perl books.Most of them are very well written, and can really increase your knowledge about a topic.But this book is an exception.Simply put, it's horrible.Don't buy this book.It's poorly written, has a bad style, and provides nothing that you couldn't easily get from online documentation.

Get this one INSTEAD of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not in addition to
This book has so far given me all the information I've
needed to write usable GUIs.However, I share the concern
expressed by other reviewers that the the titles 'Learning
Perl/Tk' and 'Mastering Perl/Tk' can be misleading.While
it's reasonable to assume that the 'Learning' volume is
introductory/tutorial while the 'Mastering' volume is for
advanced techniques, this is not the case.The 'History of
this Book' section of the preface describes it as an
expansion of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not a sequel or supplement.
There is no need to buy both books.
... Read more

Product Description
While there are dozens of books on programming algorithms, never before has there been one that uses Perl. Using the algorithmsexplained here, you'll be able to carry out traditional programmingtasks in a high-powered, efficient, easy-to-maintain manner with Perl.This guide assumes a basic understanding of Perl syntax andfunctions, but not necessarily any background in computer science.The authors clearly explain the reasons for using various classicprogramming techniques, the kind of applications that use them,and -- most important -- how to code these algorithms in Perl.Topics range in complexity from sorting and searching to statisticalalgorithms, numerical analysis, and encryption.If you are an amateur programmer, this book will fill you in on theessential algorithms needed to solve problems just like an expert. Ifyou've learned algorithms in other languages, you will be surprised at how much different (and often easier) it is to implement them in Perl.The authors include the editor of The Perl Journal and the master librarian of CPAN; all are contributors to CPAN and have archived much of the code in this book there.Amazon.com Review
Written for readers with at least some Perl programmingexperience, Mastering Algorithms in Perl delivers a solidlibrary of algorithms written in Perl for business and mathematicalcomputing. From data structures to cryptography and more advancedmathematical algorithms, this book provides a worthwhile guide toextending Perl's coding capabilities.

The best thing aboutMastering Algorithms in Perl is the scope at which it coversthe universe of algorithms while refraining from getting bogged downin academic detail. Besides basic data structures--a lynchpin of bookson algorithms--the authors provide dozens and dozens of algorithms forsorting, searching, and doing mathematical computations of allkinds. While they discuss "Big-O" notation and assume a generalfamiliarity with math, they don't overwhelm the reader. (You can evenborrow the code without needing a math degree to understand it.) Thefocus is on efficient, reusable Perl subroutines written and compiledby three Perl experts.

Standout chapters include extending Perl'salready powerful string processing abilities, game programming, andcryptography. Generally, the authors achieve a good mix of moreadvanced (and less well-known) algorithms, along with thebasics. Chances are you won't need to use all the dozen or so sortingalgorithms presented here, but the authors include them all, just incase. As a reference and tutorial, readers can pick and choose whatthey need for real-world Perl development.

There hasn't been a bookdedicated exclusively to Perl algorithms prior to the publication ofthis one. In all, Mastering Algorithms in Perl fills a usefulniche by compiling a powerful library of Perl algorithms that will beuseful for anyone who works with this programming language, whether inbusiness or academic computing. --Richard Dragan

Topicscovered: Perl data types, Big-O notation, data structures, queues,deques, linked lists, binary trees, sorting and searching algorithms,game and dynamic programming, sets and multisets, matrices and graphs,string matching and parsing, 2-D geometry, number systems,cryptography (including DES and RSA), probability, statistics, andnumerical analysis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Enjoyable, broad-ranging coverage of algorithms
This is a very accessible introduction to data structures and algorithms in Perl. It doesn't go into a lot of theory, it isn't going to answer your computer science homework, but it does give a good feel for the various applications of algorithm research.

Plus, the code is all in Perl, which is not as unreadable as received wisdom asserts. It's certainly more accessible for the interested Perl-savvy amateur than the pseudocode in Introduction to Algorithms.

Obviously, you're going to have to move onto the likes of Cormen et al, if you're really serious about this stuff. And practically speaking, yes, most of this can be found in CPAN without you having to worry your pretty little head about the mechanics. If just getting something done is your main concern, then this is not the book for you.

Plus, it must be admitted that the level of detail varies across the chapters, and some of the explanations can be opaque, even for the simple stuff. I felt I had to work unnecessarily hard to comprehend some of the material: the discussion of the A* algorithm, some of the tree-related algorithms and the section on compression all suffered from this to varying degrees. This is the sort of book which requires concentration (plus copious scrap paper for scribbling down arrows and boxes) to get anything from.

But to complain that Perl doesn't need you to write these data structures from scratch, and it isn't a suitable language for this sort of thing anyway, is to miss the point of at least part of the book. It's about communicating the intellectual pleasure of wrapping your head around thesefundamental bits of computer science, and in that respect it succeeds admirably. If you're looking for an introduction to the area, this is definitely worth getting hold of.

Accessible discussion of algorithm topics implemented in Perl
If you have ever studied algorithms and data structures, then balanced trees and O(N) notation may still be a painful memory. Also, part of Perl's strength is in its built in parsing and sorting features so why would you need to know other ways of doing the same job? If your work does not challenge Perl's features then you probably do not need this book. However, if you have no computer science background and Perl is your language of choice then this book requires serious consideration.

The book is concise and the advice given in concepts like choosing an appropriate data structure or in benchmarking your program is actually quite sound. It covers a wide number of topics such as sorting, searching, sets and matrices together with material you may not find in a data structures book like geometry, cryptography and statistics.

Your choice depends on the task at hand. If you're looking for a Perl book where you can find routines to encrypt a string or find the maximum distance between two points then this book will not disappoint. Indeed, I believe that anyone serious about programming would benefit greatly from some of the Computer Science subjects discussed and implemented in Perl that are offered in this book.

Good implementation of popular algorithms
Klowledge of algorithms and data structures is vital for effective programming, and Perl is one of the most popular programming languages around, so this book fills a long-needed niche.

If you've ever looked at "Introduction to algorithms " by Cormen et al (CLR), this book will look familiar. It covers many of the topics covered in CLR, though not in such theoretic depth. It does, however, have mountains of Perl code implementing those algorithms.

This book can seemingly have two purposes - one is to learn algorithms (as the title suggests), and the other is to understand the implementation of algorithms in Perl.

IMHO, the authors fulfilled the second part quite well. For the first part, CLR is a excellent book and is hard to better. I don't think "Mastering algorithms" explained the topics in a clear enough way to compete with CLR, but it can indeed be a terrific companion to CLR (get the first edition, used copies cost pennies). Read about the algorith m in CLR, understand it from the pseudo-code and diagrams, then take "Mastering algorithms with Perl" and learn the Perl implementation of the algorithm.

A great book on the subject
This book is a great book, not only on the subject of algorithms, but also on how to implement them in Perl.A huge number of topics are covered, from Data Structures, to Searching/sorting, to cryptography, and much more.And what I found to be among the most useful additions was that for every subject, they give you a full implementation on the subject.I've read a few books on algorithms, but this is one of the most easy to read, and definitely one of the most practically useful.Recommended for any Perl programmer, regardless of skill.

MAP makes many promises, but fails to deliver.
As a guy ( engineer not computer expert ) who uses computers everyday to help his research, I would steer you away from using Perl for any task involving mathematical concepts more complicated than addition/subtraction/multiplication and addition.

I heard this same advice before buying this book and ignored it, I really wish I had listened back then.

While MAP has some nice pictures which broadly describe the essential concepts, it will give you no idea as to how to actually implement those ideas. Further, all the code is available in CPAN ( If you don't know CPAN, check it out before going any further - at the very least install a module ) and much ( at least what I attempted to use ) appeared to be broken.

Authors of computer books are usually good about answering e-mail but these authors did not deign to respond to mine.

If you are out there, struggling to learn algorithms, I would suggest taking a good computer course on the subject. I'm 99% certain the course will be taught in C/C++ or similar language -these languages have tremendous advantages over Perl when it comes to data structures and, believe me, even as a novice I've come to appreciate them...

If you really know algorithms and wish to write a few in Perl, you can do without this book. Pick up Deitel & Deitel's 'Perl: How to Program' instead or O'Reilly's basic book ( which is good, but I prefer Deitel and Deitel ) ....besides D&D answer their e-mail. ... Read more

Product Description
(Pearson Education) A guide to writing CGI applications with Perl, showing how to accomplish everyday tasks necessary for online operations. Includes line-by-line code explanations, examples, and skill-stretching exercises. Also covers working with HTML, tracking clicks, and cookies, among other topics. Softcover. DLC: Perl (Computer program language). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Not easy to follow
This was a little conplex and not easy to follow, as some reviews said.
I'd look at another.

A rare gem
This is a fantastic book!It is best for people who already know Perl and have written basic CGI scripts and now wish to write full-blown applications.

The attraction of this book is simple:there are countless sources that teach you how to write a CGI "page" -- a single script that has a couple states.But it turns out that writing CGI-based "applications" are much harder.

This is one of the rare books that discusses the architecting of CGI-based *applications* including the full source of a very interesting content management application.As such, this book is virtually unique among the dozens of others books.It is not perfect and I keep hoping that the authors will come out with an updated edition.But for all that, it remains unparalleled.

Not a good introduction to CGI
I bought this book because the Amazon reviewers loved it so much. I got about 150 pages into it and now I need to buy a different book. This book is good for people who really really like to learn by rote. The authors cover interesting and important topics, but they don't explain them well. They don't even try to outline the purpose of a script before coding it. They also introduce functions that are new to the reader somewhere in the middle of a script. They never write, "This is function x. It can be used like this... Here is an example...."

They just start coding without any introduction except for some stupid jokes.

That said, if you already know a buttload of Perl and DBI and CGI programming, you might like this book for the examples.

Also, there were way too many errors in the text and the code, and that makes it even harder to learn.

Not all I expected
I read the raving previous reviews and thought this would be the CGI book for me.It wasn't.I know a bit of perl, but relatively little about cgi (I know a bit, but not much).Here are my comments:

Good things:
- I thought most of the example programs in the text were good and illustrated the points being made.
- I liked the discussion on taint

Bad points:
- I thought the examples were somewhat random and did not give me tools to attack general problems.
- I would have liked a better description of cgi.pm (perhaps I should get Lincoln Stein's book)
- I did not like the line by line format of the code.I found this very distracting and redundant.I would have preferred seeing the code and then having the authors describe the main points of the code (instead of all the trivial comments inbetween all the lines).
- I did not like the dependence on databases.Perhaps this is something most serious cgi programmers use, but storing my data in text files is sufficient for most of the applications I might use.I would have preferred a separate chapter on database and cgi (or I could just buy a separate book on this).

I'm not sure why everyone else raved about the book so much, but I didn't find it so wonderful.

Very helpful
This is an extremely useful book for writing web-based applications with Perl.Lots of helpful descriptions and examples.Useful for beginners to familiarize themselves with a wide range of necessary terms and topics.For example, I found the chapters on mod_perl and dbi very helpful.Also useful for more experienced CGI programmers because of the useful examples and techniques presented. ... Read more

Product Description
With more than 1,000 examples, Perl Black Book, 2nd Edition is a complete reference to the Perl language ranging from language syntax and idioms to its use in applications such as e-commerce and integration with technologies such as XML and SOAP. Award-winning author Steven Holzner has updated his best-selling first edition to cover all aspects of Perl language version 5.6 including: syntax changes, improved security features, new database modules, and built-in functions. Three new chapters have been added to the second edition covering XML with DOM, SAX, CGI, SOAP, and WML. Plus, three chapters from the first edition have been moved to the included CD-ROM for a grand total of 31 chapters of complete Perl coverage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

Will get you of the ground and you will come back for more
This has been a tremendous reference book. This book will help you find answers quickly. It is very well indexed, and it covers most of the subjects that a Perl jockey would run in to.



Perl Black Book

Best Perl book ever
Steven Holzner has written many, many tech teach/reference books, but his Perl Blackbook is by far the best. The book features several characters, but focuses mainly on the Novice programmer and the Master programmer. The Novice works through the book, much as you would, learning about Perl along the way.

But don't let the "teaching" aspect of the book fool you - It is a tremendous reference book. Very well indexed, and covering most any subject that a Perl coder would run in to.

For anyone looking to learn: Get this book. For anyone looking for that 'beat all' reference book: Get this book.

One of the best Perl references ever
This book can be used to learn Perl, the format goes through beginning topics very nicely, and then gets you working on tougher topics very quickly. However, I have found that this book is much more valuable as a reference. If there's ever a time you say to yourself, "Hmm, how can I do that in Perl?" or "What can I do with that function?" then this book can help. It covers a HUGE amount of topics, from the basics of Perl, to cgi, to network programming, to Tcl/Tk, to.... well, just about everything. If you need to learn something, then there's a good bet this book will teach you everything you need to know about it. Invaluable.

Everythign I had looked for
When I discovered Perl, I was a C++ programmer. I wanted to more easily manipulate textual data, and let's face it, cgi programs are just not the happenin deal when it comes to web apps. Enter Perl. At the time I bought this book, I had seen a ton of Perl scripts doing what I wanted to do, but Perl as a language seemed so foreign to me. The Black Book bridged the gap wonderfully, and it is so well written that I managed to read most of it on a car voyage from Louisiana to California (I can't even read some of my favorite novels while traveling).

The book makes learning Perl a breeze, and it comes with a CD to check out any mentioned code you want (thought there is tons of code in the book anyway). The book and CD have tons of real world scripts that you can learn from and apply to the projects you are most probably already working on. I loved this book, and I think anyone who wants to learn Perl shoul start here.

Bottom line: Probably a better learning book than reference book (although it is still a good reference), this book made Perl easily accessible to me.

Essential desktop reference
I have quite a few books on Perl, but most of them only warrant an occasional reference.This book, on the otherhand, is well-worn because I refer to it frequently.The examples are clear and concise.The book is well organized and flows nicely from topic to topic.If you are looking for one good book to get you started with Perl, and one that will grow with you, this is the book to get. ... Read more

Product Description
This book teaches readers all they need to know to create custom programs for the World Wide Web. Introduction to CGI/Perl: Getting Started with Web Scripts begins with a complete review of communication technology and then introduces the essentials of the Perl language and the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). It features detailed coverage of all HTML form elements, text processing, management with Perl, receiving input and producing output, and customized client-server interaction with http; including explanations of protocol nuances such as GET and POST. All code and extra examples are available from an online appendix.Amazon.com Review
An important guide for developing dynamic content and forms to add impact and interaction to Web sites. Brenner is the author of cgi-lib.pl, the de facto standard library for creating CGI scripts with Perl.Used for everything from NASA space data to Byte Magazine's on-line comment box, this library makes CGI scripting intuitive and fun.

If you want to see an excerpt from this book, look below, or click on the title. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

An excellent intro to a tough topic
I was looking for a book which would get me started in Perl scripting as painlessly as possible. This book was all that and more. I am now thinking of taking up Perl scripting as a profession.

Good Book
This book was brief and informative, with enough tutorial scripts to get you going. The only drawback, is the only online reference (the author had set up a page with all relevant links) is to a page that has moved, due tothe publisher being bought out. (frustrating, but still worth it)

A great Intro to Perl!
I thought this book was excellent, it was a little short, but still good.My actual rating would be 4.5 stars, this is because once it gets into chapter 3 pretty deep, I lost my self and had to read it over a coupletimes, and instead of using cgi-lib.pl, I'd rather know how to do it fromscratch.

Overall though a great book! c'ya

A Good Introduction... Not a Tutorial
If you are bright, and you want to understand the concept of Perl, this book will get you started. You probably will not come away able to write any programs, although you will gain some tools for doing so. I have notyet found a single book to get people started with Perl, but a combinationof this book, "Learning Perl" and "The Perl CGICookbook" makes a good beginner library.

It's gives more code than explain.
This was a good book. I give 4 stars because it is an introduction. But i really wished i payed attention to the title "Introduction to cgi/perl" This book also did not explain things that well, especiallywhen they got deep into the tr/ / / parts. overall it's a good book though:) ... Read more

Product Description
The only book to address using cache to enhance and speed up Web application development

• Developers use Apache, MySQL, memcached, and Perl to build dynamic Web sites that store information within the MySQL database; this is the only book to address using these technologies together to alleviate the database load in Web development
• Covers each of the four systems and shows how to install, set up, and administer them; then shows the reader how to put the parts together to start building applications
• Explains the benefits of a base perl library for code re-use, and provides sample applications that demonstrate in a practical way the information covered in the previous chapters
• Examines monitoring, performance, and security, with a problem-solving chapter that walks the reader through solving real-world issues

  ... Read more

Product Description
I thoroughly enjoyed this...I write and maintain a fair amount of Perl, and matching and parsing patterns is often the largest part of the work.

— A.P. Lawrence, Information and Resources for Unix and Linux Systems

Perl, one of the world's most diffuse programming languages, was born out of the need to resolve the creator's dissatisfaction with what were at the time standard data-parsing solutions. Indeed, since the 1.0 release in 1987, Perl has been heralded for its powerful parsing capabilities&emdash;features that are further enhanced through the thousands of Perl extensions made available through CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network).

Pro Perl Parsing begins with several chapters devoted to key parsing principles, discussing topics pertinent to regular expressions, parsing grammars, and parsing techniques. This material sets the stage for later chapters, which introduce numerous and powerful CPAN parsing modules, and provide an ample supply of example applications.

Customer Reviews (9)

Very good introduction to Parsing in General
Really enjoyed reading this book and am impressed by the simple way in which author could explain broad subject of parsing and language grammars. The examples are very simple to follow through and the best resource till date I have seen in explaining this complex topic in the simplest way possible. I write little bit of code in perl but largely am very impressed with built in bias and strength of the language towards parsing and data processing tasks.

Worth reading for anyone.

Experts guide to extracting the data you want!
Christopher M. Frenzhas put together a real how to manual for those who use Perl for parsing.
Grabbing the data you want from a file can be tricky but Frenz has taken parsing from the top shelf
and placed it where any Perl programmer can use it.

The opening chapter is great for anyone who has had trouble understanding how to use the regular expressions
as built into Perl. He explains Pattern Matching, Quantifiers, and how not to be Greedy with your pattern matching.
However, the book goes far beyond the basics of regular expressions in Perl to various libraries which can be used
for parsing HTML, XML, RSS, and any text based file.

Chapter 2 of the book seems very heady as he discusses the use of Generative Grammars which is foundational
for anyone wanting to truly understand parsing. From Chomsky's grammar to Type 1, 2, and 3 grammars,
he details these structures and how to use them.

Perl modules GraphViz::Regex, Regexp::Common, Parse::Yapp, Parse::RecDescent, HTML::TreeBuilder,
XML::LibXML, XML::SAX, and XML::RSS are all discussed in this book and clear examples are given on how
you can use them to parse files to get the data you want.

In the end of the book is a section on Data Mining well worth the read dealing with Descriptive Modeling and
Predictive Modeling.For anyone doing data mining work from Web based data or from Relational Databases
this section can be very helpful.

Excellent introduction
This is one of the easiest to take in and most informative books I've come across for a while.I freely admit to not being a Perl guru.I generally don't know ten different ways to perform a specific action in Perl - let alone have ideas on which way is best.But I use Perl daily to make my life easier.A big part of that is parsing information - in HTML, XML, from the command line output of tools and applications and from files and logs.Pro Perl Parsing pulled together and made much clearer many of my own hastily learnt techniques and processes, taught me some new ones and explained some of the odd results I've gotten in the past.The only criticism of the book is that it wasn't long enough - I'd love to see a 2nd Edition with a greater focus on parsing command line, configuration files and other 'administrative' style activities - it's not just programmers who parse. :)

A bit disappointing
Well, not was I was looking for. I would like to find something more than a description of what modules do, and that's mostly what it does. The last chapter is a smorgasbord of light descriptions of modules such as Text::Balanced, which have little or nothing to do with parsing, or with pro, and the chapter on XML processing looks like just a filler with little to add to the rest of the book or to the literature on XML+Perl.

Would have expected more
The first 108 pages of "Pro Perl Parsing" deal with basic parsing concepts and give examples on how to use a CPAN module to define parsers. It's not quite accurate at times, though: The author uses the terms 'precedence' and 'associativity' interchangably, although these are orthogonal concepts. And the parser on page 82 has a design flaw (hint: try parsing "(5*(3+4))+1)", which yields 40, ouch!).

Then come 30 pages with a manual-page style explanation of Damian Conway's Parse::RecDescent module, along with some interesting tidbits here and there.

However, I would have expected to read a better explanation of the underlying parsing theory, like a distilled and simplified version of the "Dragon" book (Aho, "Compilers"). I would have liked to read how to write a custom parser from scratch in Perl, like in Mark Jason Dominus' "Higher Order Perl". Also, I would have expected more practical examples on how to tackle common parsing problems.

However, the second half of the book starts with an explanation of the HTML language. We get to know how titles and lists and links are done in HTML. Then we learn how to fetch web pages with Perl. Also, we learn about web services via SOAP and XML-RPC, about formatting output in Perl and are getting a chapter on "data mining". These topics aren't related to "parsing" at all, though.

There's an example on page 202 on how to parse command line arguments by lumping them all together to form a single string and then firing up an expensive recursive descent parser to tear them apart.Experienced Perl programmers would solve this common problem elegantly in a single line of Perl, using the Getopt::Std module.

So, I'm somewhat ambivalent on this book. Since there's not many books on Perl parsing, I was excited about it, but I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of depth, accuracy, and the filler-style second half of the book. I would have liked to read more about parsing in Perl and less about how to use CPAN modules dealing with parsing-related topics. Had the book maintained a strong focus on plain "parsing", it could have been a slam-dunk five-star. So, it's only three -- worth reading, but not a potential classic. ... Read more

Product Description
Geared toward Perl users and webmasters, Perl Graphics Programming focuses on open-source scripting programs that manipulate graphics files for use on the Web.The book demystifies the manipulation of graphics formats for newcomers to the Web with a practical, resource-like approach.You'll begin with a tour of the most common web graphic file formats--PNG, JPEG, GIF, SWF, SVG, Postscript and PDF--then you'll explore the most powerful tools and Perl modules available for manipulating these graphics, such as GD, PerlMagick, and GIMP. Included in this part of the book is a thorough description of the Ming module for creating on-the-fly Flash files. Next, a "cookbook" section includes practical, all purpose recipes: GIF animation, generating images within a dynamic application, communicating between SWF front-end and Perl back-end, XSLT transformations, compression, and much more. Perl Graphics Programming provides all the tools you need to begin programming and designing graphics for the Web immediately. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Google has more!
I have decided, this is the last book on software tools I'll ever buy.It didn't have anything that I didn't find while googling the subject. There are no brilliant insights from the author or cookbook recipes that save you time. At best, it's an abridged collation of internet sources on the subject.

Only Relevant Book I Could Find
I was attempting to write some Perl scripts for graphics manipulation in Linux, and could not find much in the way of relevant documentation.This book supplied the information that I needed.

many supported formats
Wallace explains how Perl has evolved to have an impressive image reading and writing ability, for the most common graphics formats of GIF, JPEG, PNG and X bitmap. A lot of the heavy lifting has been done for you in two modules - GD and ImageMagick. The chapters on those expose you to simple subroutines that you'd expect in any graphics package.

But Wallace extends the scope to the usage of Postscript and PDF modules. Some Perl developers recognised the need to output in these formats, for compatibility with much professional documentation. So here too, you can take advantage of a lot of prior sweat.

For completeness, the book also has a section on supported vector graphics and animation. Specifically how to use SVG and Flash in Perl. This is perhaps a more specialised need than the previous modules. But good to have here, for some of you.

It should be noted that the book is not really about teaching graphics programming, per se. Wallace assumes you're already up on this. Rather, the book is about the modules and subroutines that give you the elementary graphics implementation vocabulary. ... Read more

Product Description
Version 4.0 of O'Reilly's The Perl CD Bookshelf gives programmers convenient online access to their favorite Perl books, all from their CD-ROM drive. We've updated this best-selling product with electronic versions of six popular books. Included are the second editions of Perl in a Nutshell, and Mastering Regular Expressions; the third editions of Learning Perl and Programming Perl; and 2 new titles: Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules, and the long-awaited second edition of Perl Cookbook. A paperback version of Perl in a Nutshell rounds out this incredible package. It also includes valuable content straight from the O'Reilly Network.Formatted in HTML, The Perl CD Bookshelf, Version 4.0, can be accessed with any web browser. In addition to individual indexes for each book, there is a master index for the entire library. With this CD Bookshelf, programmers get a complete Perl library they can easily carry anywhere.Amazon.com Review
This review only needs four words. O'Reilly's Perl compendiumis, without a doubt, the ultimate Perl resource.

Containingelectronic editions of Perl in a Nutshell,Programming Perl (2ndEdition), PerlCookbook, Advanced PerlProgramming, Learning Perl, andLearning Perl on Win32Systems, together with a hardbound edition of Perl in a Nutshell,this immaculate collection is a winner in terms of depth and value forthe money. If you're looking for something to do with Perl, it will behere somewhere.

Releasing books on CD-ROM is an intelligent movefor O'Reilly, since it means that hints, tips, and syntax guidance canbe easily found, code snippets pasted straight into working documents,and multiple electronic bookmarks set and referred to within a coupleof clicks.

LearningPerl's patient, leveled approach is perfect for the beginner,while the example-packed Perl Cookbook is anessential resource for intermediate users. True techies can cuddle upwith Advanced PerlProgrammingand the excellent Learning Perl on Win32Systems. There's something for everyone here.

Besides thecomplete and unabridged text, the package contains fully hyperlinked,cross-referenced indexes, which are fully searchable, and an overallindex that covers all six volumes in one easy-to-use file.

It'sdifficult to express just how good this package is. For this reviewer,nothing else on the market today can touch it. --Chris Russell,amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

The only Perl book you need to buy
What could I add to all these favourable reviews? Well, I can only tell you that I was introduced to Perl by a friend in 2005 and, since I knew nothing about it, he suggested me to buy this book. I did. Although in the introduction clearly states that this was a "merciless" introduction to Perl I had no problems picking up the essentials and at once started programming myself. I do not claim to be an expert, but I have used Perl, and this book, everyday ever since and my (professional) life have changed for good because of that.

Perl Resource Made Easy
You can't beat the search feature of this resource. Saves a lot of time!

electronic copy book is handy at work but not handy to carry around
I wish I have a copy I can read on the road.

Disappointed to see MRE is PDF, not HTML

I am a happy owner of Versions 1 and 3 of Perl CD Bookshelf. I finally decided to purchase a copy of Version 4 in order to have access to Perl Cookbook 2nd edition, Learning Perl Objects, and Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd edition (I already owned the first edition of MRE in hardcopy book form).

I was quite disappointed to find that MRE 2nd edition is in PDF format, not HTML. This is a departure from every other book on these three editions of the Perl CD Bookshelf, and makes it significantly less useful, in my opinion.

One of the features I use extensively on the other CD's is the master index, with links to all books on the CD. The master index on Version 4 does not include any links to MRE 2nd edition. The search engine also does not include any capability to include MRE in its results.

I did not see any mention of this change in the promotional material about Version 4, making this loss feel like somewhat of a bait and switch.

Bill Starr
Mon, 20 Jun 2005, 4:45pm EST

Better than paper
A programming book in paper can be good, but an electronic version is much better. The ability to search, copy-and-paste makes this bookshelf the best perl reference you can have. All the pages are HTML, so you could put it in your intranet to share it with colleagues. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
Web Client Programming with Perl shows you how to extend scriptingskills to the Web.This book teaches you the basics of how browserscommunicate with servers and how to write your own customized Web clientsto automate common tasks.It is intended for those who are motivated to develop software that offers a more flexible and dynamic response than a standard Web browser.Using this book, you'll learn how to:

• Automate repetitive queries on the Web
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your site
• Write simple "robots" that traverse hyperlinks across a site, and across the Web in general

Customer Reviews (18)

WCP? No experience? Start here.
When I found this book years ago, it opened up a new door for me.There was literally nothing out there on the subject, let alone one that addressed the needs of a novice like me.The writer clearly knew who his audience was.If you are the kind who has a firm grasp of GET, POST and so on, you probably don't need this book.Otherwise, if you want to DRIVE on the internet on your own, this book is the one.I'm sure it's still very relevant.It skips the stuff that might confuse you (and there is a lot more of that nowadays).

Great book for learning and a bargain
The book is a bit outdated now but still good for learning Perl and HTTP/web client programming that can be adapted for other languages as well. And since it's old, you can get it for cheap online and at used bookstores.

And for those stingy folks out there, you can read it online instead at the O'Reilly Open Book project:

http://oreilly.com/openbook/webclient/

Before, during, and after the Civil War
Living in the Shenandoah Valley, the book made a lot of sense to me and provided information as to J. Hotchkiss' early life and his life after the war. I grew up in Roanoke, Va. which was the headquarters for the Norfolk & Western RR, and reading about how Hotchkiss helped the RR to expand into SW Va. and into W. Va. was interesting.Also about his desire to get a physical map of Va. published and how he worked with William B. Rogers the State Geologists (namesake for the highest mountain in Va.).The bottom line is this book is a history book and it follows the title in its content.

Oh My good lord!What happened?
I see little that could improve upon this book.Its examples are awful and assume a knowledge of Perl not expected of similar entry-level texts.

Avoid this book unless you have a great solid background in Perl.But then again, if that's the case you probably wouldn't need this book.

Too shallow.
I personally found this book much less informative than I was hoping.

Most of the book is dedicated to explaining the ins and outs of HTTP. There is not enough sample code, and the code that is given is pretty basic.

As far as information about programming web clients with perl, I have found that it is more helpful to just do web seraches, and read the examples available on various web sites.

The book does do a good job of explaining HTTP and the how web clients operate. I just wish there had been more information about Perl clients specifically.

I wouldn't pay [as much] for this book. Look for it used, it's not hard to find. ... Read more