> > Where could I find a good reference wrt starting Perl?
For a beginner I'd highly recommend the Peachpit Press Visual Quick Start Guide to Perl By Elizabeth Castro ( I think ). It starts by not assuming you are already a 30 year unix veterin and explains everything in plain english and gives you examples of using the different things. Examples you can do right then and there and learn by doing, very helpful. That's something most of the oreilley books don't do really. They just basically Copy stuff straight from perldoc and assume you're going to understand What to do with that. So basically once/while you learn perl, instead of buying Oreilley books just go to your unix prompt And type 'perldoc' , look at the options then you can use that to look up anything that you'll find in the oreilley books, Although you won't have the cool looking animals but oh well. It's free and it's the same thing. Again, not to offend any Oreilley fans, but if anyone remembers the post before about perl books I mentioned the pack example of how oreilley gives facts but doesn't tell what to do with those facts. I E good references if you've done it before and just need to see the exact syntax but bad teacher if you've never used it. Well perldoc -f pack is the exact, word for word, text that Oreilley has in the book I mentioned in that post. The formatting wasn't even much different. Not to say that the perldoc info isn't good, it's great. I'm just saying I wish I had a job where all I had to do was Type perldoc and copy and paste it in a book and make tons of cash as a writer for not writing anything. To me Oreilley has made their line seem very fashionable by the nice colors and cool pen and ink animals. However it's just a marketing ploy to get tyou to think they're special, much like Microsoft has everybody thinking that their computer can't run any programs without windows when in fact windows can barely run itself! I will say though that the oreilley Topic Specific books are more helpful but I'd get it form the library instead of shelling out $30 +/- to make sure it's what you want. Still mostly just copies of perldoc but some usefull real world examples to help you grasp what is going on and why/when/how you may want to use it. Sorry, > > > > -- > 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]
