tlug: Re: O"Reilly perl Books

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Maynard" == Maynard Hogg <maynard@example.com> writes:

    Maynard> It's also one of those 900-page tomes that takes forever
    Maynard> to read. My tastes run to K&R's The C Programming
    Maynard> Language

Which is one of the best books on Perl anyway.  Also Lisp (Yow!) and
Pascal.

For my money, rather than getting a Perl book, you should get general
books on programming domains.  In the case of Perl, Friedl's
_Mastering Regular Expressions_ is essential.  Also K&R; much of
Perl's syntax looks like C, and their advice on programming style is
excellent.  Stroustrup's _The C++ Programming Language_ is similar
(but not the reference manual with Margaret Ellis, which is
fascinating reading but doesn't tell you much about programming).
Winston and Horn's "Lisp" is a classic on the functional programming
style.  Adobe's _Postscript Tutorial and Cookbook_ and _Postscript
Program Design_ are pretty far afield but I found them readable and
useful (even in Japanese), and the _Numerical Recipes in <language>_
series sparks interesting comparisons.

Flipping through a few Perl books in the book store (I dislike Perl on
principle, but I'm always interested in learning) I was rather
disappointed in their coverage of Perl's object-oriented and modular
programming features.  That's something you would probably want a
Perl-specific text for; unfortunately, I don't know one to recommend.

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