I wanted to respond to this review mainly because it is a good opportunity. As an author (albeit a new one), to respond to a reviewer, as well as other (possible) readers, about nits and such can be useful to a reader and myself. I am very happy with this review by footpad, as I told him privately. But, I wanted to answer a few of his points, mainly Editing, using CGI::upload(), and the Rat book.

Editing

Misprints and errors happen! Most (if not all) tech books will have errors in the first (and many times later) printings and editions. We, as with other books, have a web site where we post the errata. When we find a problem, or one is reported to us, we post it there. These problems will be fixed in future printings. If anyone finds any, please report it to me! But, from what I have seen in other books, we are below par for misprints, which has made me happy. You mentioned that one overly-commated (commated?) sentence.. it is things like that I am surprised the professional editors didn't catch. But, as you mentioned, there are deadlines and things squeak by.

CGI::upload()

This happens to be of one of the chapters I didn't write. So, I asked Brent why he didn't include it in this chapter. His response is:

"I didn't use it, because I had been doing file uploading for a while and Lincoln snuck that function in when I wasn't looking! ;o) The way that it is in the book *is* well documented in the CGI.pm docs. The upload function really just helps you deal with the filehandles of the uploaded files....
Yes, if I rewrote/revised the chapter, I would incorporate it - it looks to be useful."

So, mainly an oversight. However, in a sense it works out nicely because somone can learn how to do it themselves and learn about upload() while reading the CGI.pm docs. It doesn't hurt to know how to do things that are masked by method calls. But I agree, the use of upload() should have been there, and I will see what I can do about making it find its way in there (at least as a footnote for now, or small 'Or do it with upload() like so..' example).

Rat book

One of the things I was not looking forward to is being compared to the Rat book. One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was that all the Perl/CGI books out were either terribly outdated (like the Rat 1st Ed., at the time) or just terrible. During the process of writing I learned about the 2nd Ed. of Rat (Rat2), and about some of what they were going to cover. Honestly, what I didn't want to do is compete with Rat2. "Compete" to me means that people will want WCAwP or Rat2. I wanted people to want both, to learn different things (where we don't overlap, like search engines or Mason) and to learn different perspectives (on anything we may overlap on). A main goal was to help people learn, not just get another Perl book on the market.

Unfortunately, WCAwP will be compared to Rat2, even though I feel they are different books, in different styles.. which just happen to cover the same meta-topic (Perl/CGI). Two (or three) good books in Perl/CGI is a Good Thing. They are both good books to learn from, and both can be used for reference after reading.

One thing I did disagree with in footpad's review is the reasons to buy Rat2 over WCAwP. There is roughly a $5 difference in price, which is relative to the extra content. Buying a 1st Ed. of a book vs a 2nd Ed. of another.. well, that is personal preference. More idiomatic? Well, that I don't know about. It is what I call the 'report card syndrome'. You get four A's and a D, and the parents harp on the D! We didn't cover CGI::upload() in the book for the reasons noted above.. but (as footpad did note) did cover security, installing scripts, mod_perl, general programming style, etc.. all as idiomatically as we possibly could. I think both books are equally idiomatic, and comparable in quality. I would dare say they are currently the best Perl/CGI books on the market.

In my opinion (being the author of one of the books or not) if you can only afford one book, look through them both. Which one covers the topics you care most about? Which one is written in a style you will enjoy reading? Does the TOC look interesting? Can you find what you want in the index? Do the appendix include useful information? Assuming the quality is comparable, these are what I base a single book purchase on.

Summary

I am happy with footpad's review, as well as the reviews on online bookstore websites and emails I have gotten. I hope that those of you who purchase the book learn something, and find the book to be worth your time and money.

Cheers,
KM

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