Two thoughts:
1. It's not the cross section I would choose, and
2. It really depends on what you're planning to do with Perl.

Having a copy of Programming Perl (the "Camel book") within reach can be very handy. It's arguably the canonical Perl reference, and you'll see people referring to it a lot. While climbing the learning curve, I got a lot of mileage out of Effective Perl Programming. Now, I keep a copy of The Perl Cookbook within reach.

If you're planning to use Perl objects, or want to be able to understand a lot of the stuff that comes off of CPAN, Damian Conway's Object Oriented Perl is a nearly essential read.

Beyond that, it really depends on what direction you're heading. There are good mod_perl books, DBI books, data munging books, and so on.

If you're aiming for proficiency, there are some excellent non-book resources available. Randal Schwartz (merlyn) keeps his past articles on-line. I got a lot out of studying his early Web Techniques articles when I was getting started.

Makeshifts last the longest.

• Perl and CGI: 21576, 59589, 97890
• Perl in 24 Hours: 262603

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web (2nd Ed)

This is the only book I've actually looked over on your list. From my initial impression, it sucks. Never uses strict, doesn't make use of CGI.pm or even cgi-lib.pl. It's a wonderful book if you aspire to be the next Matt Wright.

Keep in mind that I only glanced over it. I consider strict to be something very fundamental that should be covered in the first (or at least the second) chapter of any Perl programming book, so its lack of it is a good indicator of the quality of the rest of the book, IMNHO.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

Did you notice the part where the poster mentioned they were talking about the second edition. This is a completely different book and addresses all of your criticisms.

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

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

Whether or not they're adequate is a completely subjective opinion. For instance, I'd say you could easily replace all of those with the Camel but you find it difficult to learn from. I don't think we can answer that for you.

Actually, I think the man pages are adequate.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Thanks muchly.

-ted-

Of the books you mentioned, the only one with which I have experience is Perl Debugged which I find to be well-written and good both for its Perl content and its general how-to-think-about-debugging-and-testing content.

Other than that, dws said about exactly what I would, though I'd add Mastering Regular Expressions to my short list.

Updated: Whoops, didn't catch that <cite> isn't allowed.

I can see I should have said I am mostly interested in using Perl to automate & maintain a small web site or two.

In that case you really need Perl for Web Site Management. It's a great book that does exactly what you want.

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

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

Given your interest in Perl and the web, I would strongly recommend two of the O'Reilly books:

• CGI Programming with Perl
• Programming the Perl DBI

I started web-programming with these two books and they gave me most of what I needed to get a good start on the subject. If you add the Camel book for reference and follow all the links recommended on this node you'll be up and running.

You might find http://books.perl.org a useful source.

I have seen there is a preference O'Reilly books, but I have discovered that their style is difficult for me to learn from.

It might be worth giving some of the O'Reilly books another look. Various O'Reilly books are aimed at quite different audiences, so you may find some easier going than others. For example, I personally wouldn't recommend the Camel book for somebody new to programming. Learning Perl, on the other hand, is quite approachable in my opinion.

I would recommend that you take the earlier books (especially the 1996 book) with a pinch of salt -- Perl 5.8 is a different animal than the version that was available back before 1996. I started using Perl in 1998 and that was when Perl 5.4 was still relatively new.

In addition, browsers now behave differently than they did in 1996 -- if you find a lot of references to Internet Explorer 2 or 3, that book may not be much use.

Finally, some rules of thumb have changed -- in 1996 broadband was fairly rare and dial-up was the rule. Processing speeds, disk size and available memory were also smaller. These days we don't think twice about downloading megabytes of data.

Get the latest edition of the Camel (Programming Perl, from O'Reilly) and have that to hand as a reference book. When in doubt, that's the gold standard.

And to quote Larry Wall, "Have the appropriate amount of fun."

These days we don't think twice about downloading megabytes of data.

Some may not think twice: I live out in the "sticks", far enough from the telephone central office that DSL isn't available and my 56K modem can only get up to 28.8 (on a good day).