Instant Perl Modules

Item Description: Yay, printed POD.

Review Synopsis:

I bought this book because I thought it would be an excellent adition to Conway's book. In fact, this is what Amazon had to say:

This is the ultimate collection of ready-to-use code and expert techniques. Instant Perl Modules shows you, step-by-step, how to create your own Perl modules to extend the capabilities of this already flexible scripting language. Plus, you'll get more than 100 ready-to-run Perl modules on the bonus CD-ROM.

This book actually does nothing of the sort. It actually shows you how to use the OO methods of quite a few modules. It's rather like Lincoln Stein's Network Programming With Perl, in that it goes over (what was for me) very familiar territory -- the modules already on CPAN. There are sections that are taken, verbatim, from the POD of these modules.

I felt rather gypped.

So the actual "chapter" on creating modules is all of 1.5 pages long and doesnt teach you anything.

I guess it is hard to find a good book on OO Perl... but keep looking. This isnt one of them.

brother dep

Comment on Instant Perl Modules

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Instant Perl Modules by clscott (Friar) on Aug 28, 2001 at 16:59 UTC
brother dep said: "I guess it is hard to find a good book on OO Perl... but keep looking. This isnt one of them." I wouldn't say that, however, I would say it's definately hard to find more than 2 books that cover OO perl well: Object Oriented Perl by Damian Conway Advanced Perl by Sriram Srinivasan Both of these do a good job. -- Clayton aka "Tex"	[reply]
Re: Instant Perl Modules by tachyon (Chancellor) on Aug 28, 2001 at 21:09 UTC
So the actual "chapter" on creating modules is all of 1.5 pages long and doesnt teach you anything. So is my Simple Module Tutorial :-) but it covers all the basics (sorry just vanilla modules, not OO ). I agree this book is just a list of modules with a bit of explanatory text - some of which has been Uhmm Agh Mmm 'borrowed verbatim' from the pod. You can get the modules free on CPAN with the pod so unless you like hardcopy or want a few (dated) modules on CD.... cheers tachyon s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print	[reply]
Re (tilly) 2: Instant Perl Modules by tilly (Archbishop) on Aug 28, 2001 at 21:21 UTC
If it borrows verbatim, I hope that they checked the licenses of the modules that they borrowed from. Otherwise if someone wants to raise a stink, the book might be found in serious violation of copyright...	[reply]
Re: Instant Perl Modules by Hanamaki (Chaplain) on Sep 06, 2001 at 20:18 UTC
Additional Information: The TOC and the introductionary Chapter 1 you will find as pdf files at the publishers product page. Hanamaki	[reply]