NAME
perlbook - Books about and related to Perl
DESCRIPTION
There are many books on Perl and Perl-related. A few of these are good, some are OK, but many aren’t worth your money. There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at <https://www.perl.org/books/library.html>; . We list some of the books here, and while listing a book implies our endorsement, don’t think that not including a book means anything.
Most of these books are available online through Safari Books Online ( <http://safaribooksonline.com/>; ).
The most
popular books
The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of
Perl, is Programming Perl:
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
by Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall with Jon Orwant ISBN 978-0-596-00492-7 [4th edition February 2012] ISBN 978-1-4493-9890-3 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004927
The Ram is a
cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to
accomplish specific tasks:
The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, with Foreword by Larry Wall ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003] ISBN 978-0-596-15888-0 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/
If you want to
learn the basics of Perl, you might start with the Llama
book, which assumes that you already know a little about
programming:
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy ISBN 978-1-4493-0358-7 [6th edition June 2011] ISBN 978-1-4493-0458-4 [ebook] https://www.learning-perl.com/
The tutorial
started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which
introduces the intermediate features of references, data
structures, object-oriented programming, and modules:
Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
foreword by Damian Conway
ISBN 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
ISBN 978-1-4493-0459-1 [ebook]
https://www.intermediateperl.com/
References
You might want to keep these desktop references close by
your keyboard:
Perl 5 Pocket Reference
by Johan Vromans ISBN 978-1-4493-0370-9 [5th edition July 2011] ISBN 978-1-4493-0813-1 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920018476/
Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
by Richard Foley ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004] ISBN 978-0-596-55625-9 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/
Regular Expression Pocket Reference
by Tony Stubblebine ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [2nd edition July 2007] ISBN 978-0-596-55782-9 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/
Tutorials
Beginning Perl
(There are 2 books with this title)
by Curtis 'Ovid' Poe ISBN 978-1-118-01384-7 http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-1118013840.html by James Lee ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010 & ebook] https://www.apress.com/9781430227939
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy ISBN 978-1-4493-0358-7 [6th edition June 2011] ISBN 978-1-4493-0458-4 [ebook] https://www.learning-perl.com/
Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
foreword by Damian Conway
ISBN 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
ISBN 978-1-4493-0459-1 [ebook]
https://www.intermediateperl.com/
Mastering Perl
by brian d foy ISBN 9978-1-4493-9311-3 [2st edition January 2014] ISBN 978-1-4493-6487-8 [ebook] https://www.masteringperl.org/
Effective Perl Programming
by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010] https://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/
Task-Oriented
Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
by Sam Tregar ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002 & ebook] https://www.apress.com/9781590590188
The Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
ISBN 978-0-596-15888-0 [ebook]
https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/
Automating System Administration with Perl
by David N. Blank-Edelman ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009] ISBN 978-0-596-80251-6 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396
Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
by Linchi Shea ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003 & ebook] https://www.apress.com/9781590590973
Special
Topics
Regular Expressions Cookbook
by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan ISBN 978-1-4493-1943-4 [2nd edition August 2012] ISBN 978-1-4493-2747-7 [ebook] https://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023630.do
Programming the Perl DBI
by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000] ISBN 978-1-4493-8670-2 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998
Perl Best Practices
by Damian Conway ISBN 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005] ISBN 978-0-596-15900-9 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735
Higher-Order Perl
by Mark-Jason Dominus ISBN 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005] free ebook https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ https://hop.perl.plover.com/
Mastering Regular Expressions
by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006] ISBN 978-0-596-55899-4 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126
Network Programming with Perl
by Lincoln Stein ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001] https://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Network-Programming-with-Perl/9780201615715.page
Perl Template Toolkit
by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003] ISBN 978-1-4493-8647-4 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004767
Object Oriented Perl
by Damian Conway
with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999 & ebook]
https://www.manning.com/conway/
Data Munging with Perl
by Dave Cross ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001 & ebook] https://www.manning.com/cross
Mastering Perl/Tk
by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002] ISBN 978-0-596-10344-6 [ebook] https://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162
Extending and Embedding Perl
by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002 & ebook] https://www.manning.com/jenness
Pro Perl Debugging
by Richard Foley with Andy Lester ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005 & ebook] https://www.apress.com/9781590594544
Free (as in
beer) books
Some of these books are available as free downloads.
Higher-Order Perl: <https://hop.perl.plover.com/>;
Modern Perl: <http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/>;
Other
interesting, non-Perl books
You might notice several familiar Perl concepts in this
collection of ACM columns from Jon Bentley.
The similarity to the title of the major Perl book (which
came later) is not completely accidental:
Programming Pearls
by Jon Bentley ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]
More Programming Pearls
by Jon Bentley ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]
A note on
freshness
Each version of Perl comes with the documentation that was
current at the time of release. This poses a problem for
content such as book lists. There are probably very nice
books published after this list was included in your Perl
release, and you can check the latest released version at
<https://perldoc.perl.org/perlbook.html>; .
Some of the books we’ve listed appear almost ancient in internet scale, but we’ve included those books because they still describe the current way of doing things. Not everything in Perl changes every day. Many of the beginner-level books, too, go over basic features and techniques that are still valid today. In general though, we try to limit this list to books published in the past five years.
Get your
book listed
If your Perl book isn’t listed and you think it should
be, let us know. <mailto:perl5-porters [AT] perl.org>