Advanced Perl Programming: The Worlds Most Highly Developed Perl Tutorial

In his preface to Advanced Perl Programming, 2nd Edition, Simon Cozens says that the focus in Perl programming has shifted, since the first edition, from techniques to resources. Rather than write really good new code, authors rely on the CPAN to find existing code and use that to solve the unoriginal parts of their problems. To cater to the discerning Perl programmer, then, the book has been completely rewritten. Instead of covering the parts of the Perl programming language that are often unexploited by more novice hackers, APP2 focuses on providing an overview of some of the major solved problems in Perl, and the modules that provide some of the solutions.Only Chapter 1, "Advanced Techniques," bears much resemblance to the previous edition of APP. It covers subject matter closer to the language than to the modules involved: globs, CORE::, objects, B, and compilation. Each subsequent chapters discusses a common programming problem, shows off a few existing solutions (in the form of code on the CPAN), and sometimes demonstrates how to put those existing solutions to use. Among the topics covered are parsing, templating, serialization, unicode, and testing. POE, Inline, and Acme also get a chapter each.Simon's writing is, as always, lucid and easy to follow. He provides good example problems, and he builds solutions that tend to do a good job of selling the modules on display. I must admit to feeling compelled to go do more with POE and some of the Lingua:: tools, after finishing their respective chapters.In the end, though, I felt unfulfilled. While APP1 was not one of O'Reilly's best Perl books, it delivered what it promised: advanced techniques for writing Perl code. What APP2 delivers is a guide to avoiding the need for advanced techniques. It will save you from needing to use the strangest bits of Perl, not show you how. (The back cover quotes Andy Wardley as saying, "This book of spells goes a long way to unlocking those secrets [of advanced Perl code.]" I think, rather, that it just teaches the incantations.)Perhaps my disappointment is predicated entirely on my incorrect expectations. If this book had been called "Leveraging the CPAN," I'd probably consider it a great success. You may, instead, be interested in  Intermediate Perl  or  Mastering Perl .

This is advanced Perl, so lots of quirky and tricky things you can accomplish with Perl. i.e. my ($kernel) = $_[KERNEL]; sleep 5; $kernel->yield("hello"); or $kernel->delay_set("hello", 5) instead of sleep 5. If you want to learn how to program Perl, this isn't the book for you. Get the Learning Perl and Intermediate Perl and Programming Perl instead.

I have read several books about Perl, such as, Learning Perl, Programming Perl 3/e 4/e, PBP, ... etc. And this book is exactly I want and I need now.If you wanna improve your Perl tech. This is the must you should have.

This book was slated to come out for a long time before it actually did, and I naturally assumed that Simon was working on something ambitious and that it was taking him longer than he planned. I bought it sight-unseen, but quickly discovered it was more of a tour of CPAN than an in-depth book deserving of the title Advanced Perl Programming. I know from his blog that Simon was wrapping up his life to go be a missionary in Japan, so now I think the book was late because he was working on *that* project after he had agreed to write this book. Just speculation.It reads more like an article on Perl.com or in the Perl Journal, and could easily have been several articles spread out over a few months. I have to wonder if he started the book with the idea that "advanced" means "knowing about useful modules on CPAN" or if the idea came to him sometime after it was clear the book was running late.Regardless, consider looking at it if you see it in the store. It's not without its value, but I can't see paying for a book that mostly says, "Here's someone else's work to check out." An advanced book ought to be getting into -- well -- advanced techniques, useful info that's hard to come by, something that isn't ALREADY AVAILABLE ELSEWHERE.

This is one of the standard references for Perl, with good reason. It takes a deep dive into the things that make Perl different (IE better) than similar languages.

This book was very disappointing. It is more a tutorial on various modules available on CPAN. After finishing (and loving) the O'Reilly Intermediate Perl book, I was expecting to learn more techniques in this book, but this book was simply about different modules that you can use in your programs. I don't think this qualifies as "advanced" perl at all.I found a sample of the first edition of this book on Google and it seems to be more of what I was looking for. Not sure why they went this route for the second edition, but it's unfortunately disappointing.

This book will grow on you after a while.I liked the first edition a lot. It took me a while to catch up to that one and now, the same experience with this one. It has taken me a while to catch up to it.Get both editions of this, they are different authors and different books, you can learn from each. Read them, let it settle, and read them again.

i just received a fresh copy of "Advanced Perl Programming." i will update this critique as I work my way through the coding examples.I leafed through the entire book before diving in and I see code snippets. BUMMERCode snippets are not the same as code examples so I'll give the book a chance and update this critique as I go.On page 94...I have spent a lot of time working the examples. I HATE this book and I am not wasting any more time with it!

Très bien. Très content.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Bien livré.Très bien. Très content.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Bien livré.