in reply to Search File

Elements of Programming with Perl by Andrew L. Johnson is a really nice book (although a little older) that is meant for people getting started in programming. The author walks you through many projects similar to the one you are trying to accomplish while teaching you how to plan and think like a programmer. That said, it moves at a pretty good pace and you will not find yourself getting bored.

Learning Perl is widely recommended to new Perl programmers and those new to programmers alike but that's a mistake. The book was written for experienced programmers with a strong UNIX background to get up to speed with the language. Given that, it actually moves at a slower pace than one would expect.

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Re^2: Search File
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 08, 2011 at 20:55 UTC
    No. _Programming Perl_ is for programmers with some experience.

    _Learning Perl_ is definitely suitable for beginners.

[reply]

      From the preface of Learning Perl:
      "Although you don't need to know a single bit about Perl to begin reading this book, we recommend that you already have familiarity with such programming concepts such as variables, loops, subroutines and arrays..."

      Elements of Programming with Perl goes covers all of these fundamental concepts as well as teaching beginners how to break down problems into pseudo code and translating it to Perl. There are 'real life' projects in the book like figuring out payroll as opposed to playing fetch with Dino for a few hundred pages.

      I know it's a popular book, written by a popular Perl personality but I wish people would stop recommending Learning Perl to beginners with little to no programming background.

[reply]

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