Advanced Perl programming

摘要

I am not an everyday Perl programmer; that said, since learning it in the mid-90s from an excellent book by Randal L. Schwartz [1], I am always on the lookout to expand my knowledge of the language to see what else I need to acquire to become an expert. This book meets my expectations in every respect. Before reviewing its contents, however, a couple of disclaimers. First, it has to be mentioned that the volume reviewed here is the last book in the author's series on Perl. The previous ones, Beginning Perl programming: from novice to professional [2] and Pro Perl programming: from professional to advanced [3], appear to have been published almost simultaneously. The author often refers to them in the contents of the current book, but only to refresh the reader's memory on certain topics, which they would have to know anyway if reading this advanced book. Second, from the multitude of books on Perl that are available, I've had on my shelf for a long time another book of exactly the same title [4]. However, the time difference between the publication dates of the books seems to be so huge in the lifetime of the programming language that their comparison will not make much sense.