If you are beginner to expert, this helps with simple methods that are tried and true. I find it most helpful in giving me ideas of how to address problems far beyond the scope of the book. Sometimes just simple reminders of cookbook methods stimulates thoughts in orthogonal directions that yield the best solutions to customer problems.

Your first book on PERL should be "Learning PERL", now in its second edition. It takes you through the basics of PERL in a crystal clear fashion with lots of explanations, exercises, and examples. This should be your second book after you've learned to speak basic PERL. When you want to know the most efficient way to approach specific problems, no other book beats it. A concurrent purchase should be Programming PERL. That book is the definitive book on the language, but you could no more learn to program in PERL from that book than you could learn to speak English by using a dictionary as your textbook.

Spread over five chapters, the first portion of this book addresses Perl's basic data types. Chapter 1 covers matters like accessing substrings, expanding function calls in strings, and parsing comma-separated data. It also covers Unicode strings. Chapter 2 tackles oddities of floating-point representation, placing commas in numbers, and pseudo-random numbers. Chapter 3 demonstrates conversions between numeric and string date formats and using timers. Chapter 4 covers everything relating to list and array manipulation, including finding unique elements in a list, efficiently sorting lists, and randomizing them. Chapter 5 concludes the section on basics with a demonstration of the most useful data type, the associative array. The chapter shows how to access a hash in insertion order, how to sort a hash by value, how to have multiple values per key, and how to have an immutable hash.

Chapter 6, includes recipes for converting a shell wildcard into a pattern, matching letters or words, matching multiple lines, avoiding greediness, matching nested or recursive patterns, and matching strings that are close to but not exactly what you're looking for. Although this chapter is one of the longest in the book, it could easily have been longer still since every chapter contains uses of regular expressions. It's part of what makes Perl the language that it is.

The next three chapters cover the filesystem. Chapter 7 shows recipes pertaining to opening files, locking them for concurrent access, modifying them in place, and storing filehandles in variables. Chapter 8 discusses storing filehandles in variables, managing temporary files, watching the end of a growing file, reading a particular line from a file, handling alternative character encodings like Unicode and Microsoft character sets, and random access binary I/O. Finally, in Chapter 9 there are techniques to copy, move, or delete a file, manipulate a file's timestamps, and recursively process all files in a directory.

Chapter 10 through Chapter 13 focus on making your program flexible and powerful. Chapter 10 includes recipes on creating persistent local variables, passing parameters by reference, calling functions indirectly, crafting a switch statement, and handling exceptions. Chapter 11 is about data structures. Here basic manipulation of references to data and functions are demonstrated. Later recipes show how to create elaborate data structures and how to save and restore these structures from permanent storage. Chapter 12, concerns breaking up your program into separate files. The chapter discusses how to make variables and functions private to a module, customize warnings for modules, replace built-ins, trap errors loading missing modules, and use the h2ph and h2xs tools to interact with C and C++ code. Lastly, Chapter 13, covers the fundamentals of building your own object-based module to create user-defined types, complete with constructors, destructors, and inheritance. Other recipes show examples of circular data structures, operator overloading, and tied data types.

The next two chapters are about interfaces: one to databases and the other to users. Chapter 14 includes techniques for manipulating DBM files and querying and updating databases with SQL and the DBI module. Chapter 15 covers topics such as clearing the screen, processing command-line switches, single-character input, moving the cursor using termcap and curses, thumbnailing images, and graphing data.

The last portion of the book is devoted to interacting with other programs and services. Chapter 16 is about running other programs and collecting their output, handling zombie processes, named pipes, signal management, and sharing variables between running programs. Chapter 17 shows how to establish stream connections or use datagrams to create low-level networking applications for client-server programming. Chapter 18 is about higher-level protocols such as mail, FTP, Usenet news, XML-RPC, and SOAP. Chapter 19, contains recipes for processing web forms, trapping their errors, avoiding shell escapes for security, managing cookies, shopping cart techniques, and saving forms to files or pipes. Chapter 20, covers non-interactive uses of the Web, such as fetching web pages, automating form submissions in a script, extracting URLs from a web page, removing HTML tags, finding fresh or stale links, and parsing HTML. Chapter 21 introduces mod_perl, the Perl interpreter embedded in Apache. It covers fetching form parameters, issuing redirections, customizing Apache's logging, handling authentication, and advanced templating with Mason and the Template Toolkit. Finally, Chapter 22 is about ubiquitous data format XML and includes recipes such as validating XML, parsing XML into events and trees, and transforming XML into other formats.

Most O'Reilly Perl titles imply you'll learn something useful. Only Learning Perl and the Perl Cookbook fully come through in that regard.

The Perl Cookbook features some very practical solutions to some very practical problems (in Perl).

I find myself coming back to this one again and again - more so than Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Programming the Perl DBI, or Perl Best Practices. This is The One. The book to use to learn the Right Way to perform quite a large number of useful functions or tasks in Perl.

yummy perl recipes; easy to prepare! very helpful for working with date and time data.

Very useful, well worth it. Getting a book like this and having it save you the time of working out how the (yes, come on, admit it, a lot of perl syntax etc. is quite arcane) actual program should be set out, formatted or whatever, is fantastic. Several times this book has done that for me, so one of the best computer book purchases I have ever made.

Once you've learnt the syntax of a language, you want to learn the idioms, and how it's used most effectively. And given Perl's famous 'There's More The One Way To Do It' motto, you'll need all the help you can get. Perl Cookbook is that help.

Neither a reference nor a tutorial, if you've ever read another cookbook, you'll know what to expect -- after all, this is the daddy of them all. Themed chapters, consisting of short tasks that most people will find handy e.g. trimming white space from a string, or populating a hash. What makes Perl Cookbook so valuable is not just finding out how to do it, but finding out what the most efficient and idiomatic way to do it is. This is where you'll see the Perl way of doing things in action, and it's an immensely valuable learning experience, even if you never need to do exactly any of the things in the book.

For me, the most vital material is the earliest stuff, which takes you through how to use the string, array and hash, the guts of any Perl program. The final half of the book explores Perl's libraries for the use of databases, and a lot of network and web-related stuff, from simple socket programming, to CGI, and the use of mod_perl.

This is a cornucopia of Perl lore, firmly established in the Perl Canon, and deservedly so. You want it on your bookshelf if you want to really call yourself a Perl programmer.

As a programming cookbook, this book presents a bunch of problems that you, as a Perl programmer, may encounter in your everyday development work and then shows you both the code that solves the problem and a lengthy discussion on how the code works. So far none of the problems has applied to my everyday Perl development chores, but by simly reading through some of the more interesting problems, I've learned a great deal more about Perl than before.

So this book works well as a learning tool for someone who already knows Perl but is still intrigued by its vast arsenal of powerful features -- and arcane usage. Any serious Perl programmer can be helped by this book, whether he or she finds the examples in the book directly applicable or not.

This book is filled with great examples by very experienced authors, which will not only show you how to do that exact thing you want to, but also point you to the Perl ways of solving problems.

As any other cookbook it's not intended for complete beginners (If you are a beginner look at "Learning Perl" by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and Brian D Foy), but rather for programmers with some experience in Perl.

This book is a great recipe book which will spare you a lot of issues if you keep it at your hand while coding.

I've got both the 1st and 2nd edition of this book. While my perl skills are strong, I'm not a guru my any stretch of the imagination. I've found this book useful on many occasions. Every time I've wanted to do something but wasn't sure of a good approach, I could always find examples in this book. The problem and solution approach is great. For the beginner it will help them get started right away, even if they don't quite understand what they are typing. For the intermediate user, it provides a good base of quick examples. For the advanced user, you probably wont need it, but is a handy item to hand to the guy who is always asking you perl questions.

Index is very good. This book sometimes just provides small sections of code instead of complete examples. You might also want to consider "PERL: Essential Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith.

Index is very good. This book sometimes just provides small sections of code instead of complete examples. You might also want to consider "PERL: Essential Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith.

for a beginner like me this book was a second read after I finished the llama book.. bit bulky but worth the money

I have been using Perl for many years and consider myself an advanced user. I own well over a dozen Perl books (8 published by O'Reilly), and this is the one that continually gets cracked open (it has tape on the spine -- always a good sign). The book is a little more accessible than the Programming Perl book, and it covers tons of various solutions. It's a valuable addition to the toolbox.

The book, excelent.. but I had problems with the delivery. Fortunally I bougth it to Amazon and they sended to me another book. When I have used UPS or FEDEX I have not had any problem, but with the normal mail, please I don't want it anymore..

Mine is the strength of 10 - for I know perl.

This book is enjoyable to read - warm and chatty. This book has recipes you can clip and modify. This book is my favorite perl book.

Hey, y'all - I am usually agnostic when it comes to languages and platforms and such - after all, what good does it do to denigrate somebody's favorite programming language?

But I am a lover of perl and turn to it first, if possible.

A reasonable mastery of perl will increase your sysadm, programming, and scripting powers manyfold. Launch a process and monitor it! Grind thru humugously huge log files! In the words of the immortal Steve Wittie "I'll never write shell script again!"

Larry Wall - the great Larry Wall, Tom Christianson and the rest have the grace and good humor of Donald Knuth and Dennis Ritchie in the days of old.

And perl is so 'cool' so flexible, so fun.

This book has many techniques that help you solve your date to date problem using Perl. if you are familiar with Perl's syntax, you should have no problem picking up this book. The solution for each problem also has great detail on How and Why to solve a problem this way, plus the related Perldoc.

oh, even though this book published 3 years ago, all knowledge applied ( since we are still facing the same kind of problem ;)

The Perl Cookbook is very comprehensive, compared to other Perl books that we've come across. We would agree with the back of the book in saying that it is one of the best programming textbooks we have ever read. The book's receipt is very timely, for us, since we were having an issue with storing data structures to disk at the time we read the book. The Perl "Recipe" in the book helped us greatly in our application development. We especially like the regular expression grab bag in the middle, we use it all the time. Our students have been very eager to soak up the Perl help that the book provided.

This guide provides lots of ready-to-use solutions for all sorts of tasks - a great compliment to the "Learning Perl" and "Programming Perl" titles, also from O'Reilly.

Perl is a flexible but often cryptic programming language, with so many uses that regular computer/UNIX users would do well to learn to use it. Over the last six years, I have probably written 200 different perl scripts to suit a myriad of purposes. I have found this book to be the best resource of examples and starting points, far superior to other perl and scripting books. The success of the O'Reilly "cookbook" concept appears to have resulted in similar books about Java, C++ and Linux administration. I have not even looked at about half of this resource and probably never will, but it has been a truly worthwhile investment.

Perl is a beautiful language and I speak many languages. Perl cookbook is an excellent way to start leaning the language in a sprint. Reading this book alone will not make you a guru, but if you have a short time to solve a problem, try perl cookbook.

Having this book on my shelf have proven very usefull on several occassions in the past and I can see it coming handy in the future.

The book though has its limitations , i find the web automation recipees a nuisance and often have to look elsewhere for guidance on that, but as a whole its a volume worth having

This book is not about teaching you the theories or nuances of each command. Rather, it provides EXAMPLES on how to write certain section of code that prove invaluable. When you want to write a routine to do a little something, but not sure how to go about it most efficiently/elegantly, or just plain clueless (often my case), this book is a godsend. Also contains many uses for handy modules that most of us never even knew existed. I suggest getting the newer 2nd ed. and complement it with O'Reilly's excellent Programming Perl book.

OREILLY does it again with another book in their Perl line!!

This is a fantastic companion reference to have on the book of any developer's desk, absolutely fantastic. I am continually impressed by the Perl series of books more than any other (I gave glowing reviews to 'Learning Perl') and 'Perl Cookbook' is no different.

When I open a book with the title 'Cookbook' I expect a whole myriad of recipes and while this is the case some of the time, it's not always true. For the retail price of $49.95 you are getting an absolute BARGAIN with the amount of material that is enclosed in this book (over 900+ pages). It is quite possible with the amount of examples and blurbs in this book that you might never need another programming reference for Perl.

The Chapter List is so impressive it's worth listing:

01. Strings
02. Numbers
03. Dates & Times
04. Arrays
05. Hashes
06. Pattern Matching
07. File Access
08. File Contents
09. Directories
10. Subroutines
11. Reference and Records
12. Packages, Libraries, and Modules
13. Classes, Objects, and Ties
14. Database Access
15. Interactivity
16. Process Management and Communication
17. Sockets
18. Internet Services
19. CGI Programming
20. Web Automation
21. mod_perl
22. XML

I don't usually list out chapters like I have done here because I don't know what purpose it really serves, but in this case I have done so to hopefully point out the amount of material that is in this book. Co-Authored by the same person that wrote the incredible "Learning Perl" Tom Christiansen, the only question is if you write Perl at all in your daily life.

If the answer is YES and you don't already own 'Perl Cookbook' what are you waiting for?!?!

Is it that good??

Yes folks, it really is.

***** HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION

PERL Cookbook 2nd Edition O'reilly
By: Tom Christiansen & Nathan Torkington

Well I have the complete PERL library. From the PERL Black book to the PERL bookshelf and all between. When I first ordered the PERL Cookbook I was looking for a god resource for quick scripts to help me in My OpenMosix development. I received the book at our April Meeting and was immediately surprised by it's heft at 927 pages it is well packed with technical information on a wide range of subjects and code snippets to get you on you way.
I was let down by the complex nature of the language...While well done for a PERL or Programming Guru it was not easy comprehend able by the average user that I felt would be looking to purchase this book. The code snippets are a God send thou and more than make up for the overly technical writing.
I personally used the network and file scripts and was able to put them to work immediately. I would not recommend this book to Novices, But all others would surely gain a valuable edge by having this in there library.
Brett hoff
Pensacola Linux User Group.
bhoff@pcolalug.org

Invaluable text that offers quick and varied solutions to the most common perl tasks. I like the variety of solutions; generally the first one they suggest is the one of the ideas you'll have had for solving the problem; then they refine it into most robust, idiomatic perl, which means you have the option of learning how the pros do it.

Oh, and the index is well laid out, which is absolutely essential in the must-finish-this-program-by-tonite sort of book that this is.

I consider myself a beginner Perl-hacker. I use Perl to accomplish directly applicable tasks for my work (Logic Designer). I hack as little as needed to get the job done.

Having said that, when I have a new problem to solve, this is the first book I peruse for ideas... and more often than not I find something very useful and applicable.

I love Perl. I am almost obsessed with it. I have even left love messages for my wife in the mirror written in the best Perl I can manage. That's not to say that I am a Perl expert--not by any means. I think I shall forever remain a student as there is always more to learn. I am always searching for the latest Perl tidbit and I usually turn first to an O'Reilly book. One of the latest publications to come from O'Reilly on the subject of Perl is the second edition of the Perl Cookbook. Five years have passed since the last edition was published and a lot has changed in that short time span.

For those of you looking to improve your physique without leaving your desk, you'll find hefting this latest edition better suited to the task. It's about 200 pages thicker and about 543 pounds heavier. Okay, so the weight is an exaggeration. There are 80 new recipes (and two new chapters) covering technologies such as Unicode, XML and mod_perl. Even if you own a copy of the first edition, you will find the new recipes and the updated recipes of great value.

For those of you unfamiliar The Perl Cookbook, you will discover a rich treasure trove of excellent solutions to vexing problems. While the Perl Cookbook won't teach you the basics of Perl, beginners can benefit from not having to reinvent the wheel for addressing common tasks such as sorting, traversing, printing or deleting hashes. Advanced Perl Mongers may find the updated discussion on process management, object orientation and module creation enlightening.

This is a first and best of the O'Reilly cookbooks. A few people have told me, "I don't know Perl, I just use the cookbook." It's sad but true. But it shine well on the book that has recipes for literally all the basic stuff you will need on a daily basis with multiple version of each solution so that you can pick the one that works best for you.

This book is useful in a 1000 ways.

I go back to it at least 3 times a week.

If you code in PERL, get this book.