Re: So what is your Perl book "Trilogy" anyway?

[ww]

1. Llama (Learning Perl)
2. Bighorn (The Perl Cookbook)
3. Owl (Mastering Regular Expressions

Cookbook provided higher value for me than Camel, perhaps mostly because of the way it's organized. But both are invaluable.

So can we make this a quartet, or -- better yet -- a quintet?

If so, Camel joins my list, along with either Perl Debugged or the Debugger Pocket Reference

Ooops. Sextet, anyone?

No, make that "septet" because I'm sure to think of another as soon as I post this.

Seriously, Perl is blessed with what seems to me an extraordinarily wide selection of excellent books (and, of course, a few that would have better served the world had the trees chopped down to make paper to print them had been left to grow.

Update (in response to the comments above re MRE): Regexen are but one tool among those that make TIMTOWTDI a watchword for Perl.. but they are a tool. The Perl coder without broad and deep knowledge of regexen is suffering a handicap on the same order as the proverbial fighter with one arm tied behind his back.

[apotheon]

I agree with your statements about the importance of regular expressions for a Perlist, but I have also learned a metric crapton about regular expressions in general (and Perl regexen in particular) without ever having read Mastering Regular Expressions.

Would I learn more if I read that book? Oh, certainly -- and I may well read it some day. Is it one of the core three books of a central trilogy of books that anyone getting into Perl should probably read first, specifically for purposes of learning Perl? I don't really think so. I'm of the opinion that learning enough about regexen to get by, and spending some time learning some other concepts that are also important, is more important for such a student of Perl. A deeper understanding of regexen than can be had by getting familiar with Perl in general and learning to navigate perldoc is a matter of specialization rather than of general Perl competence, I think.

I suppose your mileage may vary -- but that's kinda my point.