Intermediate Perl
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Intermediate Perl (ISBN 0-596-10206-2) is a book by Randal L. Schwartz, Brian D Foy and Tom Phoenix, published in 2006 by O'Reilly. It was released as a retitled second edition of Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules (ISBN 0-596-00478-8) by Schwartz and Phoenix, published by O'Reilly in 2003.
Intermediate Perl is a follow-up to Learning Perl. Just as Learning Perl features a llama on its cover, its follow-up features an alpaca. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as, respectively, "the llama book" and "the alpaca book".
This book is written in very much the same style as its predecessor. It picks up right where Learning Perl left off, and takes the reader from the most basic features of Perl references all the way through to creating Perl modules and distributing them to CPAN.
For this book, rather than using Fred and Barney as metasyntactic variables again, Schwartz used the names of characters from Gilligan's Island, a theme originally used by Joseph N. Hall in the training material he developed for Schwartz while working with Stonehenge Consulting. Those materials formed the basis for the book.
Critical reception
The book's review in The Perl Journal said:
"It really is an outstanding book that will improve the quality of your code by leaps after reading each chapter. Every serious Perl fan should buy a copy."[1]
. A review in the same month in the technology blog Slashdot said of the book:
"In the world of Perl there was once only the 'camel book,' held in perhaps as much reverence as 'K & R' among C programmers. It certainly appealed to roughly the same audience, those who wanted a short, sharp introduction to a programming language. It was with a problem that needed solving and a copy of the camel book that I started as a Perl programmer. Then for those that wanted a introduction to Perl and programming Randal L. Schwartz wrote Learning Perl, a book that has arguably become the definitive textbook for teaching Perl. The one weakness was that it left off before really getting to the guts of building large, complex projects in Perl. It did not cover classes, objects, breaking your code up into pieces or the more arcane aspects of variables, references. For this we had to resort to the last few chapters of the 'camel book' and I, for one, have never really been totally comfortable at this end of the language; when I'm reading someone else's code it might take a couple of reads to fully understand the process. Now this weakness has been well and truly addressed. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix, has written "Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules", a volume that takes the same steady approach to teaching you the more advanced topics as the earlier 'Learning Perl'. Schwartz has spent the years since writing 'Learning Perl' teaching and writing. You can tell, this is a superbly written book, not that Learning Perl wasn't well written; it's just that this volume is far better... I think this may well become a classic, I may well in ten years time talk of Schwartz's books with the same awe I now talk of Brian Kernighan's. I'll certainly eagerly await his next book and keep this one close until it comes."[2]
The book was also well reviewed in Linux Journal:
"Many years ago, I found a copy of Randal Schwartz's Learning Perl, which I really loved. I've suggested it to a number of Perl neophytes since then. I even bought a copy for my daughter last year so she could get a feel for what Perl can do. I'd always wanted a follow up that was more approachable, and now Randal and Tom have provided exactly the book I was looking for...I'm giving this book a solid 9 stars--and I'm giving a copy of it to my daughter as soon as she finishes Learning Perl. "[3]
References
- ^ "Learning Perl Objects, References, & Modules". The Perl Journal. 2003.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules". Slashdot. 2003.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "February Mini Book Reviews - Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules". Linux Journal. 1 March 2004.