Book review : “Programming Perl” by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant

For those of you who are not familiar with my blog, my favorite language is Perl. “Programming Perl” (aka “the Camel Book”) is probably the most used / most useful reference book about this Perl.

First it’s worth mentioning that the authors of “Programming perl” are
the author of the Perl language itself (Larry Wall) and the main contributor to the perl documentation (Tom Christiansen)  so it’s a bit difficult to find more authoritative people to write such a book.

This book covers most aspects of the Perl language from a reference point of view, so it might not be well suited to beginners (who might prefer “Learning Perl” by Randall L Schwartz — another Perl Hero).

Reading this book is a lot like reading all of the Perl man pages and all of the perldoc documents, so let’s say this is a book I like to keep on my lap while programming in Perl.

It covers in great details topics like perl syntax, patterns, object programming, standard modules… over 1000+ pages which, I guess, makes it be a sort of Perl Bible.

I wouldn’t say it is a book you’ll have fun reading (even if the style is good) but it’s safe to bet that you’ll find an answer to most of your questions related to Perl.