On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 00:27:29 -0700 , David Christensen wrote: > On 07/08/2011 06:26 PM, Robert wrote: > >I have currently wrote a simple script to attempt to create a list of > >every letter combination this is a rough outline of what I want my > >program to do . . . > > For climbing the Perl learning curve, I recommend the following three > books (in order): > > 1. "Learning Perl" is the place to start: > > http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920018452/
Does the sixth edition still encourage bad practices like calling subs with &, not using three-arg open with lexical filehandles, and the like? Best to avoid it for the bad practices newbies will have to unlearn. Maybe start with Modern Perl if you're okay with the basics. > 2. "Perl Cookbook" has useful, idiomatic code snippets with great > explanations. It gives you the building blocks and confidence you > need to start writing useful scripts: > > http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/ A lot of the cookbook has been outdated by CPAN. I've been programming Perl professionally for about 5-6 years and have never looked at the cookbook: CPAN has always* had what I need. As for idiomatic, maybe that was true at the time the book was published, but things have changed a lot since then. > 3. "Programming Perl" is the language reference manual. It's for > when you need hard core information. I'd recommend waiting for the > new edition, due out in October: > > http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004927/ > Programming Perl is for... what, 5.8? We're on 5.14 now, with both 5.8 and 5.10 EOLd (http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpolicy.html#BACKWARD-COMPATIBILITY-AND-DEPRECATION) Even when the new version comes out, it'll soon be outdated as well. Printed references for software are always subpar due to how fast-moving any non-moribund software project is. > Perl works the best and is the easiest to use on Unix or Unix-like > machines. If you're on Windows, get virtual machine software and > pick a Linux distribution (I use Debian). This pretty unilaterally discards the efforts Adam Kennedy and others have put into Strawberry Perl, and completely ignores business requirements to run on Windows. While it may be nice to stubbornly say "I refuse to work with Windows" (and I'm spoiled in that I have that freedom as part of my employment), it's not always the case that others have such freedom of choice. To be clear, if I had my way, there would be no more Windows. But PHBs tend to want it for some reason I cannot discern. So it's better to help those stuck with such decisions. *: With one notable exception, though somehow I doubt the cookbook would have examples for dealing with the ebxml standard. :) -- Chris Nehren | Coder, Sysadmin, Masochist Shadowcat Systems Ltd. | http://shadowcat.co.uk/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
