Perl in a nutshell

[Plato]

Item Description: An O'Reilly desktop quick reference

Review Synopsis: 2nd Edition (Covers Perl5.8) Perl in a Nutshell is for readers who want a single reference for all their needs

Authors: Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, Nate Patwardhan
Publisher: O'Reilly
Availability: Barnesandnoble
Price: $39.95

Here are some of the topics covered in this book:

Basic Perl Reference

Quick Reference to built-in functions and standard modules

CGI.pm and mod_perl

XML and SOAP modules

DBI, the database-independent API for Perl

LWP, the library for web programming in Perl

Network programming with the Net modules

Perl/Tk, the Tk extension to Perl for graphical interfaces

Modules for interfacing with Win32 systems and ODBC

I can't believe this book is not already covered in the book reviews here at Perlmonks. Having a copy of this myself, I felt it was my duty to add a review. I was browsing in a second hand book store about a month ago and I happened on this book. Let me just say that I have always been a fan of the O'Reilly books (and the nutshell series), so I quickly found the style easy to deal with. I got the book myself at about half the market value, but even if I paid the full price I would've been happy with the purchase. It covers a wide range of topics (as listed above), and I find it most useful as a quick desktop reference (which is how it describes itself). If you're new to Perl, don't buy this, get the Camel book instead (or the Llama book if your new to programming). But if you're beyond the stage of being a complete newbie, then this could be a worthwhile purchase.

Plato