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Unwritten Perl Books

by Ovid (Cardinal)
on Jul 12, 2004 at 16:05 UTC ( [id://373639]=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

What unwritten Perl book would you like to read? I think I'd like "Perl AI Applications." Even though I know Perl's not the greatest fit for AI, it's still a great language for understanding concepts without letting too much synthetic code distract from the intent.

Cheers,
Ovid

New address of my CGI Course.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Jul 12, 2004 at 16:21 UTC
    Perl and Document Formats. There has been way to little press on the fact that Perl can generate documents in every single format in major use today (and nearly ever minor format). While it wouldn't go into detail on the various templating modules, it should give an idea of what's possible.

    ------
    We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

    Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose

    I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested

Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by stvn (Monsignor) on Jul 12, 2004 at 18:08 UTC

    • Perl Parsing Techniques

      But only as long as it wasn't just about using Parse::RecDescent (which admitedly could have its own book). Perl is so great for parsing, and most people know that, but not everyone knows how to do it and do it well.

    • Large Scale Programming in Perl

      With lots of good info on organizing namespaces and modules. Testing strategies, etc etc etc.

    -stvn
      How are these books lacking in what you are looking for?

      Perl Parsing Techniques -- "Data Munging with Perl" by David Cross.

      Large Scale Programming in Perl -- "Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules" by yours truly.

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
      Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

        Large Scale Programming in Perl -- "Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules"

        There's more to large-scale programming than just the smart management of modules and packages. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Alpaca book for the areas it covers, but it wouldn't be the only source to use in this particular case.

        --rjray

        How are these books lacking in what you are looking for?

        They are not lacking I guess, my bookshelf is lacking :)

        "Data Munging with Perl" is new to me, I had never seen that one before, but you can bet I will order it ASAP.

        As for your fine book, I have to admit, I skimmed over it several times, but never looked closely enough to see all that it was about. I suppose maybe I should pick that one up as well, unless of course you have some extra copies lying around you wanna give away :)

        -stvn
      Large Scale Programming in Perl

      I actually proposed something like this to O'Reilly last year. It would have been an overview of current software engineering best practices and how they apply to Perl. There would have been chapters on extreme programming, refactoring, design patterns, testing and many other similar topics.

      O'Reilly didn't think there was an audience for it (which is probably true as there doesn't seem to be much of an audience for many Perl books right now[1]). Maybe I should see if I can knock out a few samples chapters and submit them to perl.com as articles.

      [1] If my royalty statements are anything to go by :)

      --
      <http://www.dave.org.uk>

      "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
      -- Chip Salzenberg

        Yes, please! I'm sure we will be very glad to see something like that published on perl.com!

        Ciao, Valerio

        I second that, I would read those perl.com articles as well.

        -stvn
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by FoxtrotUniform (Prior) on Jul 12, 2004 at 18:12 UTC
    What unwritten Perl book would you like to read?

    What, besides Higher Order Perl? How about "XS in a Nutshell" -- I've never managed to fully wrap my head around XS, possibly due to a lack of knowledge about perlguts.

    --
    F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
    Found a typo in this node? /msg me
    % man 3 strfry

      I was under the impression that the Dominus book was done and on its way to the publisher. I, for one, welcome our new functional overlords.

      Cheers,
      Ovid

      New address of my CGI Course.

      It's been awhile since I skimmed it, but I thought 'Embedding and Extending Perl' was basically XS in a Nutshell.

      --Solo
      --
      You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.
        On subjects like this, I often turn to Writing Perl Modules for CPAN by Sam Tregar, from the Apress. It talks about the h2xs structure, and ways of doing automated testing and so on... Here's a Simon Cozens review (he's a bit more down on the book than I am).

        That doesn't answer the whole question though... very few professional software development environments would be based on the CPAN packaging system (it could probably be done, but would seem like a kludge). The ways people really do it would be interesting to hear about (just as an example: is there any standard at all outside of the h2xs world about where to put test files and what to name them? Myself, I lean toward putting the test for Modular::Stuff in a directory named "t" located in the same place as the Stuff.pm file, and calling it Modular-Stuff.t, but other choices are possible).

        There's nothing wrong with Randal Schwartz "Learning Perl Objects" (I bought a copy to read on vacation once.) It could easily be that going through that book would be a step in the direction of learning how to do large scale programming, but it's a pretty early step.
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by kvale (Monsignor) on Jul 12, 2004 at 19:13 UTC
    I would agree that an AI book would be useful. Modern AI fields, such as machine learning and statistical learning theory, are barely represented in the Perl world and a book including them would be useful for the new modules and module tutorials, if nothing else.

    As long as we are wishing, I would like a book on Numerical Methods and Scientific Computing for Perl. Between PDL and the many mathematical modules on CPAN, I think one can make a good case for Perl as a scientific scripting language (I have done so for many years). Mastering Algorithms with Perl touches on numerical topics, but can't be considered a full numerical manual.

    -Mark

      ++Numerical Methods for Perl.

      I never got beyond college-level algebra. A perl tour of various mathematical fields would be invaluable to me: Perl For Geometers, Differential Equations Explained Using Perl, etc. would definitely help me understand some of the mysterious maths that are required background for most CS programs.

      Belden, who studied Spanish and Chinese instead

Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by valdez (Monsignor) on Jul 12, 2004 at 22:02 UTC
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by dws (Chancellor) on Jul 12, 2004 at 19:32 UTC

    What unwritten Perl book would you like to read?

    Perl: The first 100 years

    ... assuming I'm still around to read it.

Re: Unwritten Perl Books -- "Perl for the non-programmer"?
by Ovid (Cardinal) on Jul 12, 2004 at 19:40 UTC

    No one mentioned "Perl for the non-programmer." I see this for many other languages but the closest I can think of Perl is the awful "Perl for Dummies." Is this book out there? "Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web" comes close (second edition only!), but it's for a specific niche.

    Cheers,
    Ovid

    New address of my CGI Course.

      Focusing on the Web, O'Reilly's Perl for Web Site Management provides an excellent introduction to Perl and Unix for people new to these things. I would recommend it over any Peachpit or Dummies book without hesitation.

      Programming Perl by Simon Cozens is a gentle intro to programming in perl for people new to programming.

      Belden
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by enoch (Chaplain) on Jul 12, 2004 at 20:13 UTC
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by Solo (Deacon) on Jul 12, 2004 at 20:35 UTC
    Two I'd buy if I saw 'em on a shelf. I'm drawing a blank on large Perl apps for the 2nd idea, and I'm in class at the moment... no time to surf (a lot).

    Game Programming with Perl

    Enterprising Perl

    • OpenInteract
    • Bricolage
    • ...
    --Solo
    --
    You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.
      Game Programming with Perl

      I don't know about a book, but would a couple of articles on Perl.com do for now?

        Articles would be great, chromatic! I've heard one of the Perl Journal compilations includes a bunch of the game articles. I don't even know what I'm looking for really... I've always wanted to dig into the CPAN Games:: modules, but there are so many I don't know where to begin!

        --Solo
        --
        You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.
        UPDATE: Never mind Solo beat me to it.

        You could get the TPJ article collection on games etc published by the animal folks.

        --
        I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.

Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 12, 2004 at 16:45 UTC
    Perl & SDL that does not segfault.
      Maybe that book should have atleast a chapter about Frozen Bubble?
        As we know, it's the only one that doesn't segfault. It cheats by shipping everything it needs with it, and implements many needed features not in SDL by itself, using extra frame buffer libraries. FrozenBubble is a miracle. It's very nice, but it's astounding it even works at all. Ugly code, bad design.
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by artist (Parson) on Jul 12, 2004 at 17:47 UTC
    I second the idea about Perl AI applications. Being good at Perl language, compared to other languages, and a good interest in AI has prompted me for same. Some good websites with articles would be nice too.
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by WhiteBird (Hermit) on Jul 13, 2004 at 00:58 UTC
    The book I would like to read (or maybe someday write) is "Perl/Magic Programming". There's a limited audience for the subject matter, so I'll probably never see it, but I like the opportunity to dream.

    I work with Meditech, a very proprietary hospital system that is programmed in a language called "Magic". (Are any of you Monks familiar with it?) It's a difficult system to interface with, but it is possible to do some scripting into it using Visual Basic and some windows dlls.

    One of my goals is to write a Perl scripting interface into Magic. I suspect that if VB can communicate with Meditech then Perl should be able to as well. And I suspect Perl could do it with less code and less overhead. But since the book hasn't been written yet, I guess I'll have to figure out how to get it done and write the book myself.

      I work with Meditech, a very proprietary hospital system that is programmed in a language called "Magic". (Are any of you Monks familiar with it?) It's a difficult system to interface with, but it is possible to do some scripting into it using Visual Basic and some windows dlls.

      I had a similar problem once, although rather than Magic I was stuck with a rather awful (er, "beginner-friendly") scripting language for a thankfully-mostly-forgotten IVR system. The first project I had to write was a nightmare. The second one was easier: prompted by the local guru, I'd written a set of Perl scripts to translate an XML descriptiom into a code framework. By the time I left that job, my Perl scripts were generating all the code I needed, as well as all of the supporting documentation and even the test suites.

      The moral of that story: if you can't write code to solve your problems in a sane language, write code that writes code to solve your problems in a sane language.

      --
      F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
      Found a typo in this node? /msg me
      % man 3 strfry

Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 12, 2004 at 22:44 UTC
    How Perl Can Help Your Sex Life: There's More Than One Way To Do it.

    Diving for Perls: Sexual Secrets From Perl Monks

    Geeks Make Good Lovers, and other tidbits your local Perl hacker never told you.

    (okay, that was childish)

Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by graff (Chancellor) on Jul 13, 2004 at 03:51 UTC
    The Year's Best Perl Essays (a diverse anthology)

    ... kinda like "The Year's Best Science Fiction Short Stories"...

    Am I the only one with a short attention span? A lot of the particular things I'd like to read regarding Perl shouldn't have to be book-length. (Maybe that's why I spend so much of my free time roaming through the Monastery, instead of reading books.)

    I was tempted to say "who needs books when you have perldoc?" But I can't deny that some documentation authors seem to be less equal to the task than others, and some supplemental reading can be handy in certain cases. I couldn't read a whole book about "pack/unpack", but something a bit more "expository and demonstrative" than the description in perlfunc -- e.g. having the length of serious journal article -- would be nifty. (Mind you, I don't blame the author of that man-page section, or demean his/her efforts: I doubt I could do better on such a vast topic.)

      The Year's Best Perl Essays (a diverse anthology)

      Not quite this years best, but the Best of The Perl Journal collections are definitely worth a look.

      -stvn
      I agree with what you say, but I just wanted to point out that recent versions of perl (such as 5.8.x) come with a "perlpacktut" document, among other new tutorials. I know it was just a random example, but my point is that perldoc does improve over time, as people volunteer to write documents that they think may be helpful for others.
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by toma (Vicar) on Jul 13, 2004 at 06:54 UTC
    I like the AI idea. I've been looking at Fast Artificial Neural Network Library lately.

    I would also like to see something on POE.

    Here are the ones that I would like to read:

    • Perl Antipatterns and Refactoring Tools
    • Statistical Analysis and Modeling in Perl and R
    • An Enterprise Framework in Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl
    It should work perfectly the first time! - toma
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by periapt (Hermit) on Jul 13, 2004 at 13:22 UTC
    I think I would like to see a couple of mid-level practical perl books more along the lines of Data Munging With Perl. Maybe something like a Perl Cookbook 2 I've been working with Perl for three or four years now and I think I've got the basics down but I still find that I spend a lot of time either reinventing the wheel or leafing through sites like PM searching for that one trick that solves the problem. How about The Best of PerlMonks ... ?

    This doesn't apply specifically to Perl but I would dearly love a book on object oriented programming that was useful. Something that gives the reader an idea of how to use OOP in everyday program life. The examples in most books I've read have been fine for getting the idea but too far removed from real life to help when trying to apply the principles. Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules (merlyn) was good but a bit too technical for my level of experience.

    PJ
    unspoken but ever present -- use strict; use warnings; use diagnostics; (if needed)
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by tbone1 (Monsignor) on Jul 16, 2004 at 12:35 UTC
    Tuesdays with Larry - The story of how a young man spends time once a week with the creator of Perl and learns Important Life Lessons (TM).

    Who Moved My Script? - A guide to Perl for the kind of idiot managers who think reading a book will make them competent.

    The Regular Espression Diet - Difficult to get used to, but soon you can't remember how you were able to live without it.

    I'm Okay, You're Not - The psychology behind "-w" and "use strict".

    The Four Camelmen - The biography of four Perl hackers at Notre Dame who overcome adversity from a sysadmin named Rocky Canute, "a true testament to the human spirit".

    Much Ado about Nothing - Random thoughts from the Chatterbox.

    --
    tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub)
    And remember, if he succeeds, so what.
    - Chick McGee

Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by Discipulus (Canon) on Jul 13, 2004 at 08:08 UTC
    Hi Ovid

    one year ago I wanted to read your CGI-course but now I have read it..

  • Perlmonks idioms and snippets explained
  • Perl for low access to physicals ports (crossplatform edition) (AKA perl 4 robots )
  • Perl to hack MS api (dada edition)
  • Perl games and 3D animation for online games
  • how use Perl to work from home (Cookbook of Lazyness)

    Please inform me when you have wrote one book from the list.

    cheers from sunny Roma Lorenzo*
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by zentara (Archbishop) on Jul 13, 2004 at 14:00 UTC
    I would like "The Cookbook of Practical Perl AI ".

    Or "Perl, Automation, and Port Control" .

    Covering things like data aquisition thru ports, data logging, remote control of relays, web cams and security, X10 and Perl, reading and writing serial, parallel, usb ports, controlling external microcontrollers. Sort of the "perl Coffee Machine" on steroids.

    I bet Perl would have done pretty good at the "recently failed" computer controlled cross-country car race competition.


    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh
      Covering things like data aquisition thru ports, data logging, remote control of relays, web cams and security, X10 and Perl, reading and writing serial, parallel, usb ports, controlling external microcontrollers. Sort of the "perl Coffee Machine" on steroids.

      There are a couple of articles that focus on home-automation and such in Best of the Perl Journal : Games, Diversions & Perl Culture. It has a bunch of good articles, and some even have been updated for this edition.

      -stvn
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by gwhite (Friar) on Jul 19, 2004 at 14:51 UTC

    How about Perl for High School Kids? Then we would have a decent influx of new blood wanting to program in Perl (and buy more books). Chapters on managing mp3 files, cool ways to update their blog, building their own instant messenger client and report writing search engines could get them going.

    g_White

      This idea is fantastic. What an obvious spin on the "new programmer" book.

      Cheers,
      Ovid

      New address of my CGI Course.

        Send me one when you get it written!

        g_White
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 15, 2004 at 08:49 UTC

    "One-man sw-projects with Perl"

    or

    "How to earn money with Perl"

    ToC I. How to setup/extend/maintain.. - A large news website like slashdot.org - A large service website like ebay.com - A large inet-shop website like amazon.com II. How to make big profits of them. III. What to do with all the money you gained from your projects. ... XY: Why there is no application server for perl (like JBoss). - Reason: perl geeks fear projects outreaching a 1-liner. Appendix: Sourcecode examples with Mason, Bricolage, ...

    Before writing the book one has to solve the enigma: How could one dare to write this book without beeing damn rich.

    Hihi, Murat
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by gregor42 (Parson) on Jul 17, 2004 at 23:52 UTC
    "How to pick up chicks with Perl"

    I'm quite sure it would sell at least one copy for every two monks on the site. :)



    Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!
Re: Unwritten Perl Books
by r11132a (Scribe) on Jul 16, 2004 at 01:13 UTC
    Poetry Perls: The Best of Perl Poetry

    This way we keep the Literature majors happy...

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