More perl tutorials

Hi all, this appears to be the right spot to post this.

I'm teaching myself Perl, after learning about the language thanks to the
Linux Gazette. I've been reading through the perldoc and perltut, and
have downloaded a few ebooks on the subject, and am working through them.

I was wondering what materials, either online or offline, you would
recommend for me to read? Something along the lines of what a self-
teaching high-school level student would find useful. Thanks!

--
clarjon1
clarjon1 at gmail dot com

Re: More perl tutorials

>>>>> "c" == clarjon1 writes:

c> Hi all, this appears to be the right spot to post this. I'm
c> teaching myself Perl, after learning about the language thanks to
c> the Linux Gazette. I've been reading through the perldoc and
c> perltut, and have downloaded a few ebooks on the subject, and am
c> working through them.

c> I was wondering what materials, either online or offline, you would
c> recommend for me to read? Something along the lines of what a
c> self- teaching high-school level student would find useful.
c> Thanks!

first off ignore almost every single perl tutorial on the web. there are
dozens and they just about all suck. they are full of errors,
mistatements, misunderstandings of the docs, and just awful writing. one
day when i rule the world, i will post reviews of them all and flog their
authors with python printouts.

there is a decent free book called beginning perl and you can find it on
beginners.perl.org.

i will guess that the ebooks you downloaded are bootlegs so you should
either pay for them or not use them. i have only seen bootlegs of
o'reilly books or bad books (not that there aren't good perl books that
aren't o'reilly but i haven't seen bootlegs of those).

you can buy ebooks cheaply enough of most of the quality perl
books. there are places which list many good perl books and you can ask
here for more recommendations.

uri

--
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----- Perl Architecture, Development, Training, Support, Code Review ------
----------- Search or Offer Perl Jobs ----- http://jobs.perl.org ---------
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Re: More perl tutorials

clarjon1 writes:

> Hi all, this appears to be the right spot to post this.
>
> I'm teaching myself Perl, after learning about the language thanks to the
> Linux Gazette. I've been reading through the perldoc and perltut, and
> have downloaded a few ebooks on the subject, and am working through them.
>
> I was wondering what materials, either online or offline, you would
> recommend for me to read? Something along the lines of what a self-
> teaching high-school level student would find useful. Thanks!
>

The O'Reilly "Learning Perl" and "Programming Perl" books are widely
regarded as good. Programming Perl may not have the right structure for
a beginner, and it's definitely more of a reference book, but it's very
readable and I actually preferred it to the Learning Perl book, but that
was when Learning Perl was in the first edition, and I'm told it's
improved a lot since then.

For both books, you should make sure you get the latest editions.

Note that none of the books AFAIK have info on perl 5.8 and higher. So
for reliable/up-to-date docs on ithreads, unicode (5.8ish) and the new
operators in 5.10, you're probably best off reading the man pages (but
as a beginner the only thing you may *need* is more info on the
unicode/utf8 system - depending on the kind of data/languages you're
dealing with).

From the man pages, you may want to check out:

perldata, perldsc, perlrequick, and maybe other things mentioned under
tutorials in the "perl" man page. And personally, I find perltoc very
useful when I want to find the right man page for some subject. As are
"perldoc -q something" and "perldoc -r something".

Joost.

Re: More perl tutorials

Uri Guttman writes:

> beginners.perl.org

That doesn't seem to work. I think this is the same book:

http://www.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/

Joost.

Re: More perl tutorials

>>>>> "JD" == Joost Diepenmaat writes:

JD> Uri Guttman writes:
>> beginners.perl.org

JD> That doesn't seem to work. I think this is the same book:

my brain fart. i knew it was up on perl.org

JD> http://www.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/

that is the book. the OP should read that first.

uri

--
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----- Perl Architecture, Development, Training, Support, Code Review ------
----------- Search or Offer Perl Jobs ----- http://jobs.perl.org ---------
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Re: More perl tutorials

clarjon1 wrote:
> Hi all, this appears to be the right spot to post this.
>
> I'm teaching myself Perl, after learning about the language thanks to the
> Linux Gazette. I've been reading through the perldoc and perltut, and
> have downloaded a few ebooks on the subject, and am working through them.
>
> I was wondering what materials, either online or offline, you would
> recommend for me to read? Something along the lines of what a self-
> teaching high-school level student would find useful. Thanks!

What really brought my attention to the interesting facets of
Perl programming were the perlgolf tournaments, that have sadly
(almost?) ceased activity. The goal in perlgolfing is to solve
a given problem in a given time frame with the least number of
keystrokes. A real golfing course also comes with a test suite
that makes sure that no side constraints get overlooked. There
have also been quite a number of minigolf challenges organized
by Terje Kristensen that make for an interesting read.

It's often astounding how easily really complex problems can be
solved. And though most golf solutions include the one or other
"dirty trick" to spare keystrokes, there's a lot to learn
about Perl's builtin variables and efficient data manipulation.

The links are
http://terje2.frox25.no-ip.org
http://perlgolf.sourceforge.net/

There's also the fun-with-perl mailing list, that takes a
similar approach without the tournament characteristics:
http://lists.cpan.org/showlist.cgi?name=fun-with-perl

-Chris

Re: More perl tutorials

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:40:17 +0100, Christian Winter
wrote:

>What really brought my attention to the interesting facets of
>Perl programming were the perlgolf tournaments, that have sadly
>(almost?) ceased activity. The goal in perlgolfing is to solve
>a given problem in a given time frame with the least number of
>keystrokes. A real golfing course also comes with a test suite
>that makes sure that no side constraints get overlooked. There
>have also been quite a number of minigolf challenges organized
>by Terje Kristensen that make for an interesting read.

I personally believe that golf is cool, and I wholeheartedly disagree
with those that see in it a major risk for Perl. However I would also
shy away from recommending it as a *learning tool*.


Michele
--
{$_=pack'B8'x25,unpack'A8'x32,$a^=sub{pop^pop}->(map substr
(($a||=join'',map--$|x$_,(unpack'w',unpack'u','G^ ..'KYU;*EVH[.FHF2W+#"\Z*5TI/ER 256),7,249);s/[^\w,]/ /g;$ \=/^J/?$/:"\r";print,redo}#JAPH,

Re: More perl tutorials

Joost Diepenmaat wrote in news:874pd7htjh.fsf@zeekat.nl:

> Uri Guttman writes:
>
>> beginners.perl.org
>
> That doesn't seem to work.

ITHM http://learn.perl.org/

Sinan

--
A. Sinan Unur <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid>
(remove .invalid and reverse each component for email address)
clpmisc guidelines:

Re: More perl tutorials

Michele Dondi wrote:
> However I would also shy away from recommending [Perl golf]
> as a *learning tool*.

I agree with that. In fact, I would recommend almost the opposite -
read Perl Best Practices by Damian Conway. It should be the second book
that any Perl learner reads. _PBP_ and the techniques used in golf have
few intersections.

Re: More perl tutorials

>>>>> "DF" == David Filmer writes:

DF> _PBP_ and the techniques used in golf have few intersections.

oh, but those are amazing crossroads. ever see damian's selfgol program?
it plays the game of life and is a quine and a couple of other big
things in a single page of very dense code. not best practices but from
the same insane mind of damian conway. :)

uri

--
Uri Guttman ------ uri@stemsystems.com -------- http://www.sysarch.com --
----- Perl Architecture, Development, Training, Support, Code Review ------
----------- Search or Offer Perl Jobs ----- http://jobs.perl.org ---------
--------- Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix ---- http://bestfriendscocoa.com ---------

Re: More perl tutorials

Uri Guttman wrote:
> oh, but those are amazing crossroads. ever see damian's selfgol program?

No, but it was easy to find. And somewhat shorter than a page - it's
less than 1000 characters (18 lines, most of which are much less than 80
bytes long). I find it amusing (and somewhat relevant to this thread)
that the good Dr. Conway teaches a half-day seminar in "Perl WORST
Practices" which is built around selfgol
(http://damian.conway.org/Courses/WorstPractice.html).

Re: More perl tutorials

>>>>> "DF" == David Filmer writes:

DF> Uri Guttman wrote:
>> oh, but those are amazing crossroads. ever see damian's selfgol program?

DF> No, but it was easy to find. And somewhat shorter than a page - it's
DF> less than 1000 characters (18 lines, most of which are much less than
DF> 80 bytes long). I find it amusing (and somewhat relevant to this
DF> thread) that the good Dr. Conway teaches a half-day seminar in "Perl
DF> WORST Practices" which is built around selfgol
DF> (http://damian.conway.org/Courses/WorstPractice.html).

i have seen that talk as he gave it to boston.pm during one of his
visits here. mind boggling is a kind way of describing it. in sept 2006
he gave 2 talks here and to protect our weak little minds we gave out
aluminum foil and had a hat making contest:

http://boston.pm.org/kwiki/index.cgi?Damian2006Mementos

uri

--
Uri Guttman ------ uri@stemsystems.com -------- http://www.sysarch.com --
----- Perl Architecture, Development, Training, Support, Code Review ------
----------- Search or Offer Perl Jobs ----- http://jobs.perl.org ---------
--------- Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix ---- http://bestfriendscocoa.com ---------

Re: More perl tutorials

Michele Dondi wrote:
> I personally believe that golf is cool, and I wholeheartedly disagree
> with those that see in it a major risk for Perl. However I would also
> shy away from recommending it as a *learning tool*.

I'd say that depends on the type of learner. If one is the type
that needs a structured approach, then you're hundred percent
correct. For myself, I've found that a balanced mixture of
well-written books, practical applications and just-for-fun
puzzles works best. For the latter I've often picked some older
golf challenges because they're by design not overly complex and,
as the solutions show, can be heavily optimized. Solving those
has taught me some bits about memory efficiency or execution time.
Of course, I also admit that bringing up the topic of golfing was a
reason in itself for my posting ;)

-Chris