New User .. Need help with some tutorials or books

[Rohit Jain]

Hello PerlMonks.. So, here I am, a new Programmer in the world on Perl and PerlMonks.. It's been 2 days since I have started reading a book on Perl named "Programming Perl".. Now that I have read a few pages, I realized that it's not going well..

So, I just need help with some tutorials or good books to get started.. I have quite a good experience in programming Java. So, not necessarily a book for complete beginner.

[marto]

• perlintro
• http://learn.perl.org
• http://perldoc.perl.org
• Modern Perl
• The tutorials section of this site.

[zentara]

Try Ovid's Beginning Perl book

[toolic]

The book I started out with, and highly recommend, is Learning Perl (O'Reilly).

See also:

• perlintro
• Tutorials

[Happy-the-monk]

Go for perl-tutorial.org for community-reviewed perl tutorials.

Cheers, Sören

[fluffyvoidwarrior]

The Perl Black Book is my all time favourite Perl tutorial book. It's huge and covers most basic stuff with good conceptual explanations and real-world-ish cookbook like examples. It's a much easier read than the Perl standards but is not dumbed down for all that. You can get everything online but if you're like me, you'll need that one killer book to pull it all together.

[BillKSmith]

Don't throw away "Programming Perl". It is a great choice for your second perl book.

[Rohit Jain]

Yeah you are right.. Programming Perl seems to be a good book.. It's just that it jumps into "should be described later" topic quite early for a Perl Beginner.. Definitely will count it as the best companion, once I get comfortable with the language..

Thank you for your reply anyways.. :)

[sundialsvc4]

Another thing that really helped me was to locate where the CPAN library modules on your system are located, open up a (read-only!) editor or browser, and skim through the code.   I prefer to learn by example.   (And the operative word here is skim.   You won’t understand everything you have seen, but you will have seen it.)   I think that this will be an important adjunct to the books, perldoc topics and other sources previously mentioned.

You can find the locations by entering perl -V with an upper-case “V” and looking through the (rather voluminous) output.

[davido]

As you've now witnessed, there's more than one way to do it.

A couple weeks ago I was at a Perl Mongers meeting where someone new to Perl was in attendance. After the meeting he was looking for suggestions on how to go about the learning process. I asked "Are you reading a Perl book? Which one?" He replied that he has been working his way through the exercises in "Learning Perl." I and the three others participating in the discussion each nodded and said, "That's where I began with Perl."

Not everyone starts with Learning Perl. Obviously you can do it without, and there are other options. But it's a good book, and a good place to start. As a matter of fact, every so often I update my copy to the latest version just to see what the authors consider important "now" in an introductory book. I recommend it.

[Rohit Jain]

Thanks Dave..

And just to make your comments more commendable, I have already started reading Learning Perl a few hours back.. And I found this book really worth being preferred as the first book..

So pleased with the decision and all yours suggestions..

[GrandFather]

Not for learning as such, but as a quick reference at any level of Perl experience the Perl Pocket Reference is excellent.

[Rohit Jain]

Thank you everyone.. I'll certainly keep the perl documentation along my side while I start reading some other book..

[Rohit Jain]

Where can I find the pdf format of Perl Documentation.. All in one pdf file?? Because, the one I downloaded is divided into so many files, and I don't know where to start.. :(

[Athanasius]

I don’t know where to start.

Start with perl and (especially) perlintro. Then tackle the two central Perl topics: references in perlreftut, and regular expressions in perlrequick and perlretut.

Also take the time to read through the FAQs — not for close study (at first), but to get an overview of the various questions and topics that arise in learning Perl.

You will want to follow up perlreftut with perldsc and perllol. Also study perltrap to learn the common pitfalls. After all that, you can safely pick and choose as your interests and needs direct :-)

Hope that helps,

[marinersk]

I've taken a different approach to learning languages.

I find the most recommended book for learning and the most recommended book for reference; they are not always the same thing, and they are not always in book form.

I have, over the years, built a list of basic tasks I generally need to be able to accomplish in any home project. It starts with really basic tasks, like displaying output and performing computations; it moves on to doing arrays, processing command line parameters; it builds toward things like reformatting timestamps in various ways; and winds up with things like performing database operations, network interfacing, and graphics manipulations.

One by one, usually in the order listed, I proceed to write a program that does the thing, whatever "the thing" is. If I can, I try to learn how to write it as a library subroutine (the term in Perl lingo is "Module", BTW), and do that.

When I get through my checklist, not only have I done most of the things in the new language which experience has taught me I need to know how to do, I've written a library of routines to accomplish the tasks which either make it easier to do later (almost an interlingual abstraction layer, really), or at least provides sufficiently-documented examples of how to get it done.

For me, the Perl guide book was "Programming Perl", and the reference was the HTML perl reference guide that came with ActiveState Perl, more specifically the "perlfunc" entry.

Everything after that was experimentation. After a bit longer than I would have liked, my code started looking like it was written by a Perl programmer and not like a C programmer clawing his way through Perl.

[pvaldes]

As toolic has said yet, you have some good beginner Tutorials here also.

Also you can enter keywords in the search function in perlmonks (up-left) to find quickly how the others solve a lot of problems or doubts that you could also find in your way.

Two days is too little to grasp it, start learning basic tasks and be stubborn.

[sth]

Also check out http://perl5maven.com/

[Anonymous Monk]

I'm somewhat new as well... have used some one-liner perl for years, and am now forced to expand my perl... Just went through you-tube training and really liked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KMIglf83o0&feature=relmfu