http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=21584

Item Description:

Review Synopsis:

Perl 5 Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition
by Johan Vromans
O'Reilly and Associates, 2000

Capsule Review

Excellent book. 5 stars out of 5.

Who should be interested in this book?

Full Review

I got the Perl 5 Pocket Reference as a gift from the Perl Conference 3.0, and it's been within arm's reach at all times since. It's an invaluable reference for those who find themselves searching through perldocs or Programming Perl for tidbits on a daily basis.

Johan Vromans cuts stacks and stacks of Perl documentation down to the most essential at-your-fingertips facts. The book is organized like a series of appendices, covering subjects like command-line options, pragmatic modules, special variables, and regular expressions. That last one is the most dog-eared and thumbed through section of my copy; it boils the sometimes-cryptic regular expression bestiary down to the essentials and is worth list price all by itself.

You won't learn Perl from this book. It doesn't take the place of bibles like Programming Perl or Learning Perl, but you'll certainly want to keep it handy if you're an absent-minded programmer like me. I use it when I can't remember the argument order for push or the formatting codes for sprintf, or even if I want to thumb through a list of the standard modules to jog my memory when working on a problem.

The 3rd edition has been published recently in order to cover Perl 5.6, so make sure you get the latest edition. I know I will...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Perl 5 Pocket Reference (add publisher link)
by ybiC (Prior) on Jul 11, 2000 at 12:46 UTC
    I like your review Cmonster.

    You've got my ++ if you add an Update: reply with your review formatted like what's becoming a defacto standard. node_id=21811 is one example, node=Book Reviews has others. If I could I'd give double ++ for including a link to the publisher :^P

    Here's a case where being able to edit a root node might be A Good Thing.

    Update: wow, that was quick, CMonster. Looks like the venerable Site Documentation Clan allows some form of Reviews editing. :^)

      Okay, let's see if this works...

      Don't blame me if the fabric of the universe starts to unravel once I start updating. ;)

      Okay, that worked. How is it now? I didn't seem to have any trouble editing it, but that's just me.

      It's hard to think of a case where "being able to edit" a root node would be a bad thing (tm).

      Nuance

        The Site Documentation Clan tells us in node 17557 why Monks must jump through these hoops to have a root node edited or deleted. It's not my call, but looks like the lesser of evils to me.

        Here's a recent thread on the subject, started by Kozz's post "Give Maintainer Permissions to delete their own nodes?".
            cheers,
            ybiC