Re: heavy perl

[Russ]

My favorites:

• Effective Perl Programming (teaches idiomatic Perl)
• Advanced Perl Programming (just like it sounds)
• Object-Oriented Perl (discusses many cool advanced topics, not just OO)
• Mastering Algorithms with Perl (any MP3 code will likely make use of concepts in this book)

Now, that said, I'm not sure there's much that any book can do to help you understand difficult Perl. My advice for how to learn to read difficult Perl: write difficult Perl. Make every line of your code count. Learn something in each construct you fashion. There's always some way to write it shorter, so go find it.

Of course, this will largely result in the opposite of easily readable, maintainable code. But, you'll be surprised at how much of that "difficult" code becomes just "normal" after a short time of writing "power Perl." Constructs you used to consider obtuse will soon be just common.

Russ
Brainbench 'Most Valuable Professional' for Perl