Learning Perl, 5th Edition

Usually, the "Learning" series from O'Reilly is written for the beginner (of whatever topic is being covered) with little or not prior experience in the technology. That's true of the Schwartz/Phoenix/Foy book as well, but as it says in the intro, "Perl is easy to use but hard to learn". My suggestion for potential readers of this book is to have at least one other programming language under your belt before tackling Perl. A grounding in just about any other language will give you a general understanding of programming principles and give you a leg up in learning Perl.

This is the 5th edition of this book and the prior editions, by and large, have been quite successful, both in terms of the stated goal (teaching people how to use Perl) and, of course, selling well (which I imagine goes hand in hand). So why a new book? This is technology, remember? Time and newer versions march on and Perl is no exception. The 4th edition was current up to Perl 5.8 and the most recent edition (for now) is current up to Perl 5.10. Is that really so important? That is, if you shelled out your hard earned dough and bought the 2005 book (because it can be had for less than $7.00 online used, depending on where you buy it from), would it make that much difference?

Full Story