PERLBOOK

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (1)
Updated: 2017-06-30
Index Return to Main Contents

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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 Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall with Jon Orwant
 ISBN 978-0-596-00492-7 [4th edition February 2012]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-9890-3 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004927

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]
 ISBN 978-0-596-15888-0 [ebook]
 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 978-1-4493-0358-7 [6th edition June 2011]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0458-4 [ebook]
 http://www.learning-perl.com/

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 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0459-1 [ebook]
 http://www.intermediateperl.com/

 

References

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

Perl 5 Pocket Reference

 by Johan Vromans
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0370-9 [5th edition July 2011]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0813-1 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920018476/

Perl Debugger Pocket Reference

 by Richard Foley
 ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]
 ISBN 978-0-596-55625-9 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/

Regular Expression Pocket Reference

 by Tony Stubblebine
 ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [2nd edition July 2007]
 ISBN 978-0-596-55782-9 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/

 

Tutorials

Beginning Perl

(There are 2 books with this title)

 by Curtis 'Ovid' Poe
 ISBN 978-1-118-01384-7
 http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-1118013840.html

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

Learning Perl (the Llama Book)

 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0358-7 [6th edition June 2011]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0458-4 [ebook]
 http://www.learning-perl.com/

Intermediate Perl (the Alpaca Book)

 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
         foreword by Damian Conway
 ISBN 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-0459-1 [ebook]
 http://www.intermediateperl.com/

Mastering Perl

    by brian d foy
 ISBN 9978-1-4493-9311-3 [2st edition January 2014]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-6487-8 [ebook]
 http://www.masteringperl.org/

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 & ebook]
 http://www.apress.com/9781590590188

The Perl Cookbook

 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
     with Foreword by Larry Wall
 ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
 ISBN 978-0-596-15888-0 [ebook]
 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]
 ISBN 978-0-596-80251-6 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396

Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl

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

 

Special Topics

Regular Expressions Cookbook

 by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan
 ISBN 978-1-4493-1943-4 [2nd edition August 2012]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-2747-7 [ebook]
 http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023630.do

Programming the Perl DBI

 by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes
 ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-8670-2 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998

Perl Best Practices

 by Damian Conway
 ISBN 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]
 ISBN 978-0-596-15900-9 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735

Higher-Order Perl

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

Mastering Regular Expressions

 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
 ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]
 ISBN 978-0-596-55899-4 [ebook]
 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]
 ISBN 978-1-4493-8647-4 [ebook]
 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 & ebook]
 http://www.manning.com/conway/

Data Munging with Perl

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

Mastering Perl/Tk

 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
 ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]
 ISBN 978-0-596-10344-6 [ebook]
 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162

Extending and Embedding Perl

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

Pro Perl Debugging

 by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
 ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005 & ebook]
 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/>

Modern Perl: <http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/>  

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. <mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org>

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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