Re: Scrounged books are not always good.

[Popcorn Dave]

The only one on your list I can speak to is the black book.

I like having a copy of that around as a quick reference when I'm having a brain fart about a particular function, but it's not something I'd necessarily give someone to learn Perl. And I'd only keep it if it's the large fat copy, and not it's slimmed down cousin.

Of course it's a few years old, so that may factor in to your decision as well.

[grantm]

I like having a copy of that around as a quick reference when I'm having a brain fart about a particular function

If I was having a brain fart about a particular function, (e.g.: the order of the values returned by localtime) then I'd use perldoc with the -f (for function) option:

perldoc -f localtime

Not only would this be quicker than grabbing a book and locating the correct page, I'd be able to cut-and-paste the example code as well.