I am in the process of teaching myself Perl, and found this book to be a helpful reference to look to when something was not clear to me in Perl & LWP (another good web automation book). It contains a large number of useful code snippets that apply to many common web automation situations.

As a reference for the novice/intermediate Perl programmer - I would highly recommend it. As a complete tutorial in web automation, I would say that it is a bit lacking, and would recommend "Perl & LWP" and "HTTP: The Definitive Guide", both by O'Reilly, as a more comprehensive introduction to the subject.

To gather more information about this book, or to purchase it, you can go here:
O'Reilly Media: Spidering Hacks

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