- NAME
- DESCRIPTION
  - The most popular books
  - References
  - Tutorials
  - Task-Oriented
  - Special Topics
  - Free (as in beer) books
  - Other interesting, non-Perl books
  - A note on freshness
  - Get your book listed

# NAME

perlbook - Books about and related to Perl

# DESCRIPTION

There are many books on Perl and Perl-related. A few of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at http://books.perl.org/ . We list some of the books here, and while listing a book implies our endorsement, don't think that not including a book means anything.

Most of these books are available online through Safari Books Online ( http://safaribooksonline.com/ ).

## The most popular books

The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:

Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):

              by Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall with Jon Orwant
              ISBN 978-0-596-00492-7 [4th edition February 2012]
              ISBN 978-1-4493-9890-3 [ebook]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004927

The Ram is a cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to accomplish specific tasks:

The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):

              by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
                  with Foreword by Larry Wall
              ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/

If you want to learn the basics of Perl, you might start with the Llama book, which assumes that you already know a little about programming:

Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")

              by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
              ISBN 978-1-4493-0358-7 [6th edition June 2011]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920018452

The tutorial started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which introduces the intermediate features of references, data structures, object-oriented programming, and modules:

Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")

              by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
                      foreword by Damian Conway
              ISBN 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920012689/

## References

You might want to keep these desktop references close by your keyboard:

Perl 5 Pocket Reference

              by Johan Vromans
              ISBN 978-1-4493-0370-9 [5th edition July 2011]
              ISBN 978-1-4493-0813-1 [ebook]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920018476/

Perl Debugger Pocket Reference

              by Richard Foley
              ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/

Regular Expression Pocket Reference

              by Tony Stubblebine
              ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [July 2007]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/

## Tutorials

Beginning Perl

              by James Lee
              ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010]
              http://www.apress.com/9781430227939

Learning Perl

              by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
              ISBN 978-0-596-52010-6 [5th edition June 2008]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106

Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")

              by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
                      foreword by Damian Conway
              ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102067

Mastering Perl

              by brian d foy
              ISBN 978-0-596-10206-7 [1st edition July 2007]
              http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242

Effective Perl Programming

              by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy
              ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010]
              http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/

## Task-Oriented

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN

              by Sam Tregar
              ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002]
              http://www.apress.com/9781590590188

The Perl Cookbook

              by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
                  with foreword by Larry Wall
              ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [2nd edition August 2003]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135

Automating System Administration with Perl

              by David N. Blank-Edelman
              ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396

Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl

              by Linchi Shea
              ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
              http://www.apress.com/9781590590973

## Special Topics

Regular Expressions Cookbook

              by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan
              ISBN 978-0-596-52069-4 [May 2009]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520694

Programming the Perl DBI

              by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes
              ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998

Perl Best Practices

              by Damian Conway
              ISBN: 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735

Higher-Order Perl

              by Mark-Jason Dominus
              ISBN: 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005]
              http://hop.perl.plover.com/

Mastering Regular Expressions

              by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
              ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126

Network Programming with Perl

              by Lincoln Stein
              ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
              http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Network-Programming-with-Perl/9780201615715.page

Perl Template Toolkit

              by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley
              ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004767

Object Oriented Perl

              by Damian Conway
                  with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
              ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
              http://www.manning.com/conway/

Data Munging with Perl

              by Dave Cross
              ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
              http://www.manning.com/cross

Mastering Perl/Tk

              by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
              ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]
              http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162

Extending and Embedding Perl

              by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
              ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
              http://www.manning.com/jenness

Pro Perl Debugging

              by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
              ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]
              http://www.apress.com/9781590594544

## Free (as in beer) books

Some of these books are available as free downloads.

Higher-Order Perl: http://hop.perl.plover.com/

## Other interesting, non-Perl books

You might notice several familiar Perl concepts in this collection of ACM columns from Jon Bentley. The similarity to the title of the major Perl book (which came later) is not completely accidental:

Programming Pearls

              by Jon Bentley
              ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]

More Programming Pearls

              by Jon Bentley
              ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]

## A note on freshness

Each version of Perl comes with the documentation that was current at the time of release. This poses a problem for content such as book lists. There are probably very nice books published after this list was included in your Perl release, and you can check the latest released version at http://perldoc.perl.org/perlbook.html .

Some of the books we've listed appear almost ancient in internet scale, but we've included those books because they still describe the current way of doing things. Not everything in Perl changes every day. Many of the beginner-level books, too, go over basic features and techniques that are still valid today. In general though, we try to limit this list to books published in the past five years.

## Get your book listed

If your Perl book isn't listed and you think it should be, let us know.