This is probably more than people wanted to know, but... >>>>> "N" == aphro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: N> can anyone reccomend a good book so i can start the task of learning perl N> ? :)
N> i have virtually no programming experience, although i have managed to N> hack some perl scripts up at times. I agree with others that 'Learning Perl' is the best book for people with little programming experiencing. Be certain to get the second edition that has been updated to Perl 5 (which is VERY different from Perl 4 that the first edition was based on.) I haven't seen the second edition so I don't know how Randal starts it off but in case he doesn't or for those who learn from the man pages or by looking at scripts I will give an unsolicited edict: !!!! Start every program with !!!! #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w use strict; use diagnostics; The '-w' turns on warnings. This catches a lot of bad practices before they become bad habits. The 'use strict;' catches a bunch more bad things. The 'use diagnostics;' provides detailed descriptions of what you might have done wrong to cause the warning or error, which is great for learning. But comment out or remove the 'use diagnostics;' before you put your script into production because it really slows the program down. Finally for people that are experienced programmers that want to learn Perl I would recommend AGAINST "Learning Perl" and recommend "Perl: The Programmer's Companion" by Nigel Chapman. For experienced programmers "Learning Perl" moves very slowly and barely touches interesting material. "Programmer's Companion" is just the opposite. HTH and Hope you have a very nice day, :-) Tim Ayers ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Norman, Oklahoma