Beginning Perl
by Simon Cozens, Peter Wainwright
I have gone through several Perl tutorials in the past, and I have to admit that this is the best one I've seen, especially if you already know how to program. I came from a C++ world, so it was relatively easy to pickup. The syntax was easy to pick up and also concepts such as hashes and lists. The tone Simon uses is very social, so it keeps you awake and interested. I also enjoyed the large amount of examples.
I think, without a doubt, the first half of the book was good - the basics (syntax, logic, scalars, arrays, hashes, basic functions, and files). The second half may seem a little weaker to many (OOP, Network Programming, CGI and databases)- but that's just because it's way too much for the book to handle. This just encourages you to continue to learn on your own. I'm glad he did mention it though. He provides code and gives you the very basic of these.
Overall this is a very good book. I agree with many that it has some errors throughout the book, but not too many (you can check the Wrox website for errata). No book is perfect. This book, however, is better than a lot of other tutorials out there that just seem to copy and paste the boring Perl documentation. If you're a beginner to Perl and have a programming background, I recommend it. If you're a beginner to programming, you will struggle a little, but that's just because it's your first programming language.
