Re: [MacPerl] Programming Perl (2nd ed) (fwd)

[Terje Bless <link@tss.no>]

I'm a bit confused here. Is this thread on topic or ...?
I seem to recall that Perl stuff that doesn't involve anything MacPerl
specific is off-topic on the MacPerl list.


>At 11:54 AM 8/20/96, Tim Ringwood wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>There are a couple of books out on Perl5 right now plus plenty of
>>Web resources. I found all of these to be more helpful that the last
>>Camel book dealing with Perl 4 code.
>[...]
>>The Camel book I have looks like it's still new (compared to my Perl
>>by Example and Learning Perl in 21 Days which have pages falling out)!
>
>Personal preference, I guess.  *shrug*  Personally, if the New Camel is a
>Weighty Tome, then so be it.  I tend to use the original Camel more as a
>reference book anyhow: I cut my Perl teeth on the Llama, and don't expect
>to sit down and read the new edition cover-to-cover any more than I read
>the 1st edition front to back.

AFAIK the Camel is supposed to be the Perl equivalent of "the C language
reference". i.e. a reference manual (as opposed to a tutorial/introductory
type book) while the Llama was to cover all the learning stuff.
My introduction to Perl was to read the first 3 (or so ;->) chapters of the
Llama and proceede to hack togheter my first "Hello World". After a few
simple hacks I read the rest of the book and started using Perl for real
world applications and only at this point did I read the Camel (which I
actually read cover to cover and I expect I'll do the same with the 2nd
edition).

>I'll certainly be going through it pretty
>hard once I gets my greedy little mitts on it, but I don't plan on needing
>to flip through the whole thing every day.

Having read through it once (good reading BTW  Larry, Tom, Randall, etc
should be commended for _very_ good writing skills ;->) I find it easy to
go directly to the bit I want. I don't use the man pages because looking
stuff up in the Camel is faster (IMO of course. Espescially since I'm still
doing Perl 4 (sorry Tom ;->)

>Seriously, though: I
>like the suggestion of splitting up the book into two volumes, with the
>second as a library reference, though not at the cost of making the edition
>come out much later!

My personal prefernce here would be leaving the Camel 2nd ed as it is and
publishing a _detailed_ reference to the library as a separate book. I can
even picture a disk/tape/cd-rom with some of the more popular modules from
CPAN include with such a book.

>- Mike, owner of a tatty llama and a ragged camel

Aren't we all ;-)
I just hope my Camel 2nd ed isn't ragged before I get _my_ "greedy little
mitts" on the Aplaca.

#!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL
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2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print
pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2)