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Re: [MacPerl] How To Perl

On Wed, Jun 23, 1999 at 11:23:40AM -0800, cetasix@erols.com wrote:
> 
> Ken,
> 
> I'm at work so I don't have access to all my books, but I use
> the following books
> 
> Learning Perl 5 (the camel book) by o'reilly
Isn't that the Llama? (Pedantic person that I am ;)
> CGI Programming Unleashed (lots of good examples) by sams.net
> Web Programming with Perl 5 by sams.net
> 
> These are good resource books. I don't have the Perl 5 Cookbook,
> but I did a once over and it looked good. (Would any one on the
> list recommend it?)
I got my copy of the Perl Cookbook (Ram on the cover) only a month ago,
and I've been nothing but impressed.  Being a stubborn sort, preferring to
work everything out on my lonesome, I don't usually go for Tutorial and
example style books (Usually I just stick to reference manuals). This
one, however, has changed my opinion.  More than anything else I find the
thing inspirational;  if I'm stuck for ideas on anything I can just pick
it up and borrow someone elses ideas.  The organisation makes it (relatively)
reference like, so I can also use it when I need help with a particular
problem.  Best yet though, I usually learn something new on almost every
page.  There must be tens of things which I've toiled on for many an
evening which are laid out in this book in a very easy-to-understand
fashion.  I guess I only wish I'd bought it before =)

I can imagine that a lot of people (including myself in fact) will get lost
and perhaps even a little discouraged by the more complex examples, but 
this just gives the book a bit more longevity: you can come back to it once
you've learned a little more.

Of course, the worst thing as far as this list is concerned is that many
of the examples are for UNIX (though I've been able to work out ways of 
adapting a few of them to MacPerl).  Things involving fork() and suchlike 
would probably be glossed over by people who only use MacPerl, but on the
whole there's still more than enough for people using non-UNIX platforms
(and since I'm another of those people who prefer to have a mongrel 
computer with more than one OS, this *doesn't* apply to me).

If you're bored with your current Perl books, buy it.  If you're not, then
still buy it, because it's likely to cover more things than the ones you
have at the moment.  Even if you think you're an expert you'll probably
still learn a few things from this book.

(No, Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington did *not* pay me to write this,
I just happen to love the book, that's all)  
> 
> Does anyone else have any suggestions for books?
I like the Camel (Programming Perl) a lot, since it's the one which I *keep*
coming back to, especially the chapter on regexps.  Another O'Reilly,
'Programming Regular Expressions' by Jeffrey Friedl is one of my
favourites (but it isn't exclusively limited to Perl, and most Mac users
will find it a bit too UNIXy).  I'm not so keen on the Panther book though,
since I don't really deal with a lot of the things which it covers, and
a lot of the rest is covered elsewhere.  Beyond the O'Reilly lot, I haven't
really dared venture when it comes to Perl (although MacPerl: Power and Ease 
is looking like an essential purchase now that I've started using MacPerl a 
lot).
> 
> Also visit www.perl.com and read up on some of the literature
> there. Some one on the list pointed me to the FAQ on sorting
> and it was very helpful.
There are also loads of useful CGI pointers lieing around there one
place or another.  One of my favourites being the CGI programming
MetaFAQ on: http://www.smithrenaud.com/public/CGI_MetaFAQ.html

> 
> The book "How To" that began all these emails was originally
> written for Perl 4 users and did not support any of the Perl
> 5 modules. Maybe one day the author will get around to upgrading
> the book.
It sounds like (warning: I've not read the thing, so I don't really know)
one of those huge, tempting-looking books which sit so prominently in
bookshops just waiting to be purchased, and which turn out to be a bit
of a disappointment.  I've been burned by this so many times now that I
now tend to ignore anything that doesn't have one of those unassuming black
and white animals on the front (Unless I hear otherwise from friends and
mailing lists of course ;).

Cheerio,

--
Mark

> 
> Anyways, good luck.
> 
> alan :)
> 
> 
> --- Original Message ---
> "ken towry" <ktowry@austin.rr.com> Wrote on 
> Wed, 23 Jun 1999 11:12:43 -0500
>  ------------------ 
> Christian,
> I sent the last two emails plain text, did that not straiten
> it up? If
> not I'm sorry! Please let me know, I don't want to be like Richard
> said
> a "Hell's Programmer".
> 
> Alan,
> After being discouraged @ this book I went down to the book store
> to see
> if I could find another book. There was the other "How To CGI"
> book you
> have by the same authors. They are very similar. Thank you very
> much for
> sending me the code you have that works. I can't wait to to play
> with
> it.
> 
> Matt,
> The Text::Template of Chris's sounds very interesting, I'll study
> it
> asap.
> 
> Ron,
> I will keep studying the code you sent and try to implement it.
> It makes
> sense, I just couldn't get it to work with this script for some
> reason.
> I know it's my fault, i'm green, but trying to learn very hard.
> 
> Richard,
> I hope this email explains what's going on. It seems to me that
> this
> script is a convoluted way of getting things done (very large
> and busy
> script) but, I just don't know any better, but trying.
> 
> The reason I bought this 1000 page book is primarily because
> I wanted to
> be able to call/run scripts from within an HTML/DHTML document
> and
> replace a form within that document at will.
> I thought by studying this book, it would help me understand
> the
> principals involved so I could then write my own scripts to interact
> with my HTML/DHTML forms.
> I know graphic design very well. I know HTML/DHTML fair (2 years).
> I don't know Perl very well at all, although that's all I've
> been
> working on learning for the last 3 months. I could not build
> the fancy
> forms I want in Perl so I thought I might be able to call scripts
> from
> the html and then replace certain information within the html
> doc.
> My first Perl book didn't go into this at all. But I've seen
> it done.
> Am I going down the wrong road?
> I didn't think I would ever get into Perl, but I did, and it's
> very
> cool. I want to learn this, very much. I seem to have no other
> desire as
> strong, this is probably the Perl way.
> 
> Thanks All!
> ken t.
> 
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-- 
--
-=-           Mark Hulme-Jones (Recoil) ceemahj@cee.hw.ac.uk           -=-
-=-                 http://www.jumper7.dhs.org/~mark                   -=-
-=- "You love it, you hate it, you spit it out, the bitter pill" - REM -=-

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