in reply to RE: The sad state of Perl documentation
in thread The sad state of Perl documentation
When I learned Perl there were no books about Perl. I learned by reading the documentation that came with Perl. I was quite happy with it.
Soon after that the first book about Perl came out and we all bought copies. I read it, enjoyed it, and thought it was a good book. I did learn a few things from reading the book but I think most of those I would have also learned from rereading the standard documentation.
Since then I've bought several books on Perl. Several of them are very good books. I've never finished reading any of them and I don't ever turn to them when I need to look something up.
When I need to look something up I read *.pod files, the source code to modules, the source code to Perl, try something (usually in the Perl debugger), or search the internet or some part of it.
So I think there are quite a few fine books that you could buy to help you learn Perl. But I don't think there is any need to buy a book.
There are certainly some parts of the standard Perl documentation that I believe could stand some major improvements. For example, I find the explanations on pack() and unpack() confusing and worse. But it isn't hard to submit patches to the documentation so I don't bitch much since it just means I haven't bothered to fix the problem. (:
- tye (but my friends call me "Tye")