I've got a rep

[trochee]

I just had an EE professor ask me for advice on how he can go learn Perl.

Sometimes I think I must actually know what I'm doing.

Comments

[trochee.livejournal.com]

he was asking me for what were good books to learn it from. "I hear you're a Perl hacker," he wrote. "I need a book to learn perl with, and have around as a reference. I've got an extensive programming background."

except the email had the header "Perle book?" which was a warning flag for me. It's not Richard Perle, for cryin' out loud.

Here was my advice:

I would recommend the Learning Perl book -- minimum third edition. (Second ed. is okay, but third is much better; if the 4th is coming out soon then you could wait but I wouldn't!).

If you've got an extensive programming background you'll whip right through it, but get a pretty good survey in the process. For getting stuff done on a day-to-day basis, I use the Perl Cookbook occasionally, and the Programming Perl book is a great reference but is kinda too much to deal with as a learning book.