Best Perl and CGI Book

[TheOrange]

I am about to buy a book or two on PERL and CGI. I have no prior experience with PERL or CGI, what would be the best book to buy. I'm looking at "Learning Perl" and "CGI Programming for the WWW" both by Orilley, and I already have access to the "Programming Perl" book.

 

[jamesh]

IMHO...<br>
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"Learning Perl" is probably the best start. Takes it easy to start.<br>
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"Programming Perl" tends to be a little to assumptive of your ability and understanding of perl. Learning curve tends to be steep.<br>
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I have a copy of "Advanced Perl Programming" also by O'Reilly, which I found of more use than "Programming Perl".<br>
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Really worth a mention is "Perl Cookbook" (O'Reilly). A great book if you can get access to install the modules that it uses. Many of the recipies rely on them.<br>
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Don't forget to use the man pages and perldoc (if available in your enviroment).<br>
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CGI.. Check out the perldoc for the CGI module. It's cheaper than taking a gamble on the many perl/CGI books.<br>
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Perl isn't the only CGI language. Check out /bin/sh and tcl.

 

[Octalman]

Laura Lemay's "Teach Yourself Perl" is one of the best books I have ever used for learning any language, bar none. I already knew two dialects of C, so it only took four days to learn enough perl to rewrite two Linux bourne shell scripts in perl, to get them to do new and better things. I got TYP in a package deal from LCIS or SCBC -- don't recall which -- with Perl Core Language, by Steven Holzner, which is a good reference, but not so hot as a tutorial. At least one of Holzner's examples is wrong, but Lemay furnishes the correct code in her book.<br>
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I think of perl as C with a dash of spice and a twist of lemon. As far as I am concerned, sh, bash etc. may run fast, but perl is faster to code and a lot easier to read and understand (documentation, documentation, ...). And if I want a perl script to run fast, I can compile it.<br>
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[AndyBo]

Learning Perl" had me up and writing (and completing ;^) quite complex Perl scripts within a week. Highly recommended.<br>
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I've also got the O'Reilly "CGI Programming for the

http://WWW".

This is also good, although some of the examples got on my nerves. (I can't face Kumquats any more...)<br>
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"Perl Cookbook" is highly recommended. I borrowed this for a couple of minutes off a colleague about four weeks ago, and he's not seen it since :^)

 

[jpmckay]

for a indepth tutorial on PERL try <br>
Jon Orwant's Perl 5 Interactive Course. It's very complete

 

[deadpan]

I myself am just starting with perl and have found the online Perl 5 Interactive course very helpful .. you can take a look at it as a guest user at ..<br>

http://www.mcp.com/distance_learning/frame_ezone.html