Hi,

A friend of mine asked how and where to learn Perl. I have often suggested that Perl is a better solution to some of his problem than c/c++ or Java, but he normally retorts that their customers demand c/c++ or Java solutions so he has managed to avoid learning Perl to date...

His company has recently secured a new customer, and they use Interwoven CMS on Unix, and though the interface to the web is J2EE, a lot of the back end in Perl, and he needs to get up to speed on it very quickly.

Unlike myself he is actually professionally trained, and has a decent chunk of experience with c and c++, and a smattering of Java and shell (Korn I gather). He works with Solaris and NT/2K, and has Linux and 2K systems at home to play with too.

As I often say how good Perl is, and I worked in the CMS sector for some time, he has naturally asked me where to start. However I've never actually trained anyone to use Perl, and while I know the basics I still think of myself as only a keen amateur.

I told him where to look for source code and binaries, that's easy enough, and to have a look at some of the O'Reilly books, but I'm not sure what the best way to learn quickly is.

So given that my friends has many years c/c++ experience, and has easy access to Unix, Linux and NT/2K systems, and some budget - I think they may have enough money for books and maybe a training couses, what's the best advice:

• Which books for a Perl newbie, but trained programmer? Is Learning Perl (ISBN 0596001320) too basic, or is it a good start?
• Good sites to look at? Here is an obvious place, but where else?
• Training, I know davorg does formal training, and my friend is London based.

I did a search on Super Search but got rather a lot of hits, none quite right, "Learn" is a common word. Well, I'm sure many are useful, but there was so many other off topic matches...

As ever, thanks in advance.

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