I'd say go to the library then and check out some books ( have them get them other libraries if they don't have them ) and when you find one you jive with go buy it.
I love 'The Black Book of Perl' and have learned most all I do from it and I to do a lot of Unix Administration. One reason I didn't jive real great with the O'reilly books is that the ones I Had available to me where sort of vague while being desciptive at the same time Especially with modules. Example : Page 114 of 'Perl in a Nutshell' It is describing the pack function and does so quite well and informative like. But if I'd never used pack before I'd have no idea what it is for. How am I supposed to understand what 'taking a list of values and packing it in a binary structure' is supposed to mean if I've never come across it before. There are no examples of situations you might use this or samples of usage beside at the top It has Pack template, list Then explains what pack does and what template and list are but how do you know if you are supposed to do pack($template, @list); Or exactly like they have it pack $template, $list; Or both or can I do Pack abBA, list Or only one character where template is? And I can see that for template I might use any number of things a,A,b,B, etc and I can even see what they mean a - An ASCCI string, will be null padded. That's a great reminder if you've used this before and understand what 'An ASCCI string, will be null padded' means. What is list, an array or a string? What can it be, a file, input, what good would you get from using pack? Why not thrown in : You may want to use pack if you are ..... And have at least one example $value = "Example Of actual data you might want to use in pack"; pack(a, $value); This would return ... So that you could ... So, to me, these books are much like Microsoft Tech Support : There was a helicopter flying in Seattle and it became too foggy to see. Desperatley tring to find out where they were the pilot yelled out of the window to some people in a building nearby ," We're lost! Where are we?" and the people said, "You're in a helicopter!". The helicopter landed safely and the crew asked how the pilot knew where to go based on what those people said and he replied, "Well, I knew we were by the Microsfot building because their answer was technically correct but completely useless. ". So basically are the Orielly books I;ve seen good books. You bet, they are informative and acurate but they are very difficult to learn new stuff from! So instead of learning something new it kind of makes you avoid learning new stuff because then you have to ask a list what this or that means and risk a pummeling at the ignorance you've shown! I'd take one for free but I wouldn't pay for it. But that's just me. Dan > I am a network administrator maintaining strictly Unix boxes > of some type or another. I want to become as proficient at > Perl as I possibly can because I see scripting as the week > point on my resume. I have the Oreilly book "Perl for System > Administrators" but I want to read another book before I get > in to that one so I have a good base. > > I think the main thing I want to get out of the next book is > more familiarity with modules because Learning Perl doesn't > really cover them well at all. > > Dylan > > -----Original Message----- > From: Dan Muey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: January 15, 2003 11:32 AM > To: Dylan Boudreau; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Perl book > > > The black books are very nice. I like them better than the > Orielly ones. > > Not to start a flame war, I just like em better. > > Also there's the 'using perl' for specifci jobs, system > admin, web programming, database, algorythms, etc > > Can't remember the publisher off hand, sorry. > > Depends on what you want to use perl for now that you've done > Learning Perl. > > You could do one of my favorite things and go into Barnes and > Noble and read all of them, or check them out form the > library and start it and if you don't like it take it back > and get another!! > > Basically you can't go wrong with anything perl!!! > > Dan > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Dylan Boudreau [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 9:06 AM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Perl book > > > > > > I have already read Learning Perl and am looking to get > another book > > to learn more what would people recommend? > > > > Thanks, > > > > Dylan > > > > > > > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
