in reply to Perl Programs

Perl Best Practices is a great book for novices as well, even though the title implies one already knows a lot about Perl. Using just one example: how to open a file. Looking at reference docs gives you 20 different ways to open a file. Perl Best Practices tells you the two best ways to do it and why (for most cases confronting beginner to medium level users).

Also, when you are writing small programs to teach yourself things, nothing beats reading how others do it in the PerlMonks Q&A section.

EDIT: Added some conditional text to my assertion.

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Re^2: Perl Programs
by JavaFan (Canon) on Dec 10, 2010 at 13:36 UTC
    Perl Best Practices tells you the two best ways to do it and why.
    No, it does not. Please, do read the introduction of the book, and act upon it.

    PBP discusses two ways of opening files, and gives reasons why you may pick these ways in your style of programming.

    So many people wield PBP and act as if it's gospel. I seriously believe the Perl community would have been better off if the book was never written. (Not because of its content, but because of religious zealots treating it as word of god).

[reply]

      I don't know about the Perl community, but this Perl user has benefited greatly from PBP. I would not be better off if it had never been published.

      Also, no zealotry here. Obviously, stray from rules when you need to once you know what you are doing and why. Until then, a simple set of rules is a great aid.

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom