I won this book at a KPLUG general meeting. This is a good one. I have been learning and working with Perl for about 2 years now and this book seems to just fit my current level of proficiency. I almost never read a computer book cover-to-cover these days, but this one might inspire me enough to do that.

Topics include:

• Packages and Namespaces
• References and Scoping
• Manipulating Complex Data Structures
• OOP
• Writing and Using Modules
• Testing
• Contributing to CPAN

The book gets right to it. There is little fiddling around and fluff. Sections describe a concept, tell how to do it (with cautions about pitfalls) and then give example code. At the end of each chapter are exercises for the reader to do on her/his own, with solutions in an appendix. I like that it includes an estimate of how long the exercise should take.

I do have one beef. The very first exercise in the book wouldn't compile on my system when entered as shown in the solution in the appendix. This certainly could be due to a different compiler version and fortunately I knew right away what to do to fix it. But this is the kind of thing that one doesn't need when struggling to understand underlying concepts.

Overall a good book, especially for where I am in learning Perl.