Learning Perl

[xmassey]

I have been learning Perl now since Christmas this year and I feel I have achieved a great deal. One day shopping in Reading I found a book called Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web (Visual Quick Start Guide) and it gave me an excellent start. Since then I have brought 5 O'Reilly books...

Perl Cookbook
Learning Perl
Intermediate Perl
Mastering Perl
Advanced Perl

I have read them all from cover to cover, and tried to gain a good understanding of every aspect...

I am interested to know how long you guys have been learning for because I often don't understand alot of problems posted in this forum and it almost seems like the solution is second nature to some of you. What do you think my next steps should be to continue learning in order to learn every aspect. Lots of what I see isn't covered in any book I have read and i'm thinking that its just because I have a short term experience with Perl.

 

[PeterCharles]

Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web (Visual Quick Start Guide)

There's interesting, that's the very book that got me started using Perl. I did a few scripts for my web site, but then started using PHP instead.

 

[travs69]

I have the perl bookshelf and programming perl (included in the bookshelf). The book shelf gives you all the books below on cd and you can search through them and a small refernce book that covers the basics (I never use it though).

- Perl in a Nutshell (2. Edition)
- Programming Perl (3. Edition)
- Perl & XML
- Mastering Perl/Tk
- Learning Perl (3. Edition)
- Perl Cookbook
- Perl & LWP

I have learned a lot on this site from different people. If someone posts something and the answer someone else gives doesn't make sense to you ask them to explain it and they will. I have learned a lot of about regular expressions from Miller and Kevin and learned about the Ternary operator from one of them.

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Travis - Those Who Say It Cannot Be Done Are Usually Interrupted by Someone Else Doing It; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[xmassey]

I will have a look for the bookshelf. You mentioned that the site has helped you alot, I was wondering which site you mean?

 

[travs69]

This site

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Travis - Those Who Say It Cannot Be Done Are Usually Interrupted by Someone Else Doing It; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[xmassey]

ahh, its being blocked out by "~~~~" so i can't see the site.

 

[travs69]

No.. that's part of my signature..
This site.

http://www.tek-tips.com

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Travis - Those Who Say It Cannot Be Done Are Usually Interrupted by Someone Else Doing It; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[brigmar]

Hrmmm... there's only so much "book learning" you can do.
Those are all good books, both for learning and to use as references later on.

However, the majority of my learning is done by 'doing'. When there is something I have to write a solution for, I try to solve it using different technologies, one of which is perl.

Coming and perusing sites like tek-tips is also useful; if you see a solution that you don't understand, go ahead and ask. You can garner quite a bit by osmosis; I know I have.

Also, perldoc.perl.org and cspan are great resources.

 

[KevinADC]

I have a good library of perl books too, but the forums are the icing on the cake. I have about 10 years of self-learning and programming with perl under my belt. I still have large gaps in my perl knowledge and programming in general.

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- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!