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# perlbook

Perl 5 version 16.0 documentation
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# perlbook

- NAME
- DESCRIPTION
  - The most popular books
  - References
  - Tutorials
  - Task-Oriented
  - Special Topics
  - Free (as in beer) books
  - Other interesting, non-Perl books
  - A note on freshness
  - Get your book listed

# NAME

perlbook - Books about and related to Perl

# DESCRIPTION

There are many books on Perl and Perl-related. A few of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at http://books.perl.org/ . We list some of the books here, and while listing a book implies our endorsement, don't think that not including a book means anything.

Most of these books are available online through Safari Books Online ( http://safaribooksonline.com/ ).

## The most popular books

The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:

- Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):

      	by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant	ISBN 978-0-596-00027-1  [3rd edition July 2000]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000271/

The Ram is a cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to accomplish specific tasks:

- The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):

      	by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,	    with Foreword by Larry Wall	ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/

If you want to learn the basics of Perl, you might start with the Llama book, which assumes that you already know a little about programming:

- Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")

      	by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy	ISBN 978-0-596-52011-3 [5th edition June 2008]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520113

The tutorial started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which introduces the intermediate features of references, data structures, object-oriented programming, and modules:

- Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")

      	by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix		foreword by Damian Conway	ISBN 978-0-596-00478-1 [1st edition March 2006]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004781/

## References

You might want to keep these desktop references close by your keyboard:

- Perl 5 Pocket Reference

      	by Johan Vromans	ISBN 978-0-596-00374-6 [4th edition July 2002]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003746/

- Perl Debugger Pocket Reference

      	by Richard Foley	ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/

- Regular Expression Pocket Reference

      	by Tony Stubblebine	ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [July 2007]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/

## Tutorials

- Beginning Perl

      	by James Lee	ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010]	http://www.apress.com/9781430227939

- Learning Perl

      	by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy	ISBN 978-0-596-52010-6 [5th edition June 2008]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106

- Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")

      	by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix		foreword by Damian Conway	ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102067

- Mastering Perl

      	by brian d foy	ISBN 978-0-596-10206-7 [1st edition July 2007]	http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242

- Effective Perl Programming

      	by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy	ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010]	http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/

## Task-Oriented

- Writing Perl Modules for CPAN

      	by Sam Tregar	ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002]	http://www.apress.com/9781590590188

- The Perl Cookbook

      	by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington	    with foreword by Larry Wall	ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [2nd edition August 2003]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135

- Automating System Administration with Perl

      	by David N. Blank-Edelman	ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396

- Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl

      	by Linchi Shea	ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]	http://www.apress.com/9781590590973

## Special Topics

- Regular Expressions Cookbook

      	by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan	ISBN 978-0-596-52069-4 [May 2009]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520694

- Programming the Perl DBI

      	by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes	ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998

- Perl Best Practices

      	by Damian Conway	ISBN: 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735

- Higher-Order Perl

      	by Mark-Jason Dominus	ISBN: 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005]	http://hop.perl.plover.com/

- Mastering Regular Expressions

      	by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl	ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126

- Network Programming with Perl

      	by Lincoln Stein	ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]	http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Network-Programming-with-Perl/9780201615715.page

- Perl Template Toolkit

      	by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley	ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004767

- Object Oriented Perl

      	by Damian Conway	    with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz	ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]	http://www.manning.com/conway/

- Data Munging with Perl

      	by Dave Cross	ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]	http://www.manning.com/cross

- Mastering Perl/Tk

      	by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh	ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]	http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162

- Extending and Embedding Perl

      	by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens	ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]	http://www.manning.com/jenness

- Pro Perl Debugging

      	by Richard Foley with Andy Lester	ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]	http://www.apress.com/9781590594544

## Free (as in beer) books

Some of these books are available as free downloads.

Higher-Order Perl: http://hop.perl.plover.com/

## Other interesting, non-Perl books

You might notice several familiar Perl concepts in this collection of ACM columns from Jon Bentley. The similarity to the title of the major Perl book (which came later) is not completely accidental:

- Programming Pearls

      	by Jon Bentley	ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]

- More Programming Pearls

      	by Jon Bentley	ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]

## A note on freshness

Each version of Perl comes with the documentation that was current at the time of release. This poses a problem for content such as book lists. There are probably very nice books published after this list was included in your Perl release, and you can check the latest released version at http://perldoc.perl.org/perlbook.html .

Some of the books we've listed appear almost ancient in internet scale, but we've included those books because they still describe the current way of doing things. Not everything in Perl changes every day. Many of the beginner-level books, too, go over basic features and techniques that are still valid today. In general though, we try to limit this list to books published in the past five years.

## Get your book listed

If your Perl book isn't listed and you think it should be, let us know.

Page index

- NAME
- DESCRIPTION
  - The most popular books
  - References
  - Tutorials
  - Task-Oriented
  - Special Topics
  - Free (as in beer) books
  - Other interesting, non-Perl books
  - A note on freshness
  - Get your book listed