Re: Thanks, Ben...

Post #47,777 by broomberg 8/1/02 5:58:57 PM Reply	Re: Thanks, Ben... Don't bother with the Llama book. Get the big Coriolis Black book (there is also a small hand book)
Post #47,788 by ben_tilly 8/1/02 8:51:07 PM Reply	Why not? And isn't the big Coriolis Black Book the one that Ben Kosse loved which didn't bother doing error checks on open? Which is the kind of shortcoming that means that I would never even consider recommending it? Am I mixing it up with something else? As for the Llama, it is simple I admit. But it doesn't do anything stupid without reason. Programming Perl I am more ambivalent about. If you are the kind of person who can do that, starting in with "perldoc perl" and working from there gives basically the same material, only guaranteed to match whatever what is on your machine, and including various useful modules as well. OTOH it is an important book to have, even if I haven't touched either of my copies in a couple of years (except to settle arguments about what it says). And if online documentation isn't you... But the Perl Cookbook I would add as a must-have for learning common idioms and techniques. Random example: C programmers do not generally think of having a hash whose values are irrelevant. (Why would you do that you ask? Well does the name %is_found suggest anything?:-) Cheers, Ben "Perl is like vice grips. You can do anything with it, and it's the wrong tool for every job." --Unknown
Post #48,026 by broomberg 8/4/02 10:08:32 AM Reply	Dunno I't been so song since I've made that decision I don't remember why. Sorry. It has gone from a reasoned decision to cargo cult programming. I just flipped pages until I saw an open example and it included an 'or dir' construct. I won't claim all of them do. You MUST have Programming Perl (CAMEL). There is no choice. Nobody wanders perldoc and hits on things serendipitiously. But you can do that in flipping around in the book in the bathroom. Just commit to carrying the book for a month, and you become amazed what the language can do. Also, yes on the Cookbook. I still pull it out occasionally. I love it.
Post #48,104 by ben_tilly 8/5/02 6:56:34 AM Reply	Perhaps... I will admit that my introduction to Perl was picking up Programming Perl, getting less than a half-dozen pages through it, and my wife asked me what I wsa laughing about. After that I was clearly doomed. (Appreciating the humor is essential. For instance they have a simple test-grader and a comment about how it won't work properly if "Carol" appears twice. Carol was one of the few names that didn't appear twice in the sample input.) But after a couple of years I went from Programming Perl to perldoc. You can grep online documents, and there is more there. And when I picked up a "free" copy of the third edition, I never read it. However I still know the second edition well-enough to pick up a copy and quickly find the right page to settle arguments. (OTOH I am more likely to give people the appropriate perldoc command an instructions on what string to search for.) Cheers, Ben "Perl is like vice grips. You can do anything with it, and it's the wrong tool for every job." --Unknown

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