5 comments about XML For Dummies.

1. If you want to kill your time without learning anything, this book is absolute right for you.



2. As a complete newbie to XML this was a good starter. As I got deeper into XML I found several mistakes/deficiencies in the book, and sometimes the author just flat out seemed to not know what he was talking about. For instance, the claim on page 86 that (#CDATA) is a valid DTD element content definition is flat out wrong. His description of Schema element declarations (pp. 114-115) teaches that using globals/refs is the only way to define complex elements, and is inappropriate for his example. He makes no mention of globals at all, leaving the reader confused. I have ceased to trust this book as a valid source of XML information.



3. These reviews are all very misleading as they refer to a previous edition of the book which is no longer available, the third edition of XML For Dummies. XML For Dummies, 4th edition, the book featured here, addresses many of the concerns raised in the reviews of the third edition.



4. I'm never disappointed with Dummies books and this one is no exception. Great read, easy to learn.



5. I usually read just to get a big picture. I thought this did the job. Dummies Books are a lot more palatable than other books on topics as dry as this.

5 comments about Wicked Cool Shell Scripts.

1. WICKED COOL SHELL SCRIPTS is a collection of pre-made bash scripts for various tasks similar to one of O'Reilly's "cookbooks". All scripts here use bash--the author rejects csh because of Tom Christiansen's classic essay "Csh Programming Considered Harmful" and the Korn shell because he considers it fine for interactive use but not so good for scripting.
   
   The basic format of each entry is first the problem--what the user wants to do--then the code, followed sometimes by an explanation and advice on hacking the code. The book is not really an introduction to Bash scripting. If you want a systematic primer I'd recommend O'Reilly's LEARNING THE BASH SHELL or any of a dozen libre tutorials.
   
   Some of the scripts are useful and solve problems I've occasionally faced. For example, the GNU units program can't do temperature conversions, but a script is given here which uses bc to provide a solution. Quite elegant is a script with which the user can find the time anywhere in the world by querying in a friendly manner the system's zoneinfo files. In spite of some neat gimmicks, however, I don't think I can really recommend the book unless you're someone about to take a voyage on the south seas and won't have Internet access. Many of these scripts can be found on the Web, and far too many scripts here solve problems already long solved by available programs. The author describes a secure version of locate, when slocate is already easily installable on most *nix systems. A script for rotating log files is done when metalog and other common log programs do this automatically. Take out all these unnecessary scripts, and the amount of useful content in the book turns out to be very low indeed.



2. I have spent thousands of dollars on computer and technical references; I have a library full of them. There is one book however that sits on my office desk and has never made it to the library - Wicked Cool Shell Scripts. I have read, referenced and recommended it many times.
   
   The book is extremely informative and is written in such a way that it can be very valuable, whether your a brand new shell script programmer or are an experienced administrator looking for a better way to accomplish a task. I have used ideas and methods from the book to streamline tasks that I do regularly and to improve the scripts I already use. It has been, by far, the best investment in a reference book I have ever made and was enjoyable enough to read cover to cover.
   
   If your IT reference shelf is full, throw something out and fill the space with this book.



3. Taylor does some neat stuff with shell scripts, but he doesn't spend much time explaining what goes on in them. Each is accompanied by a terse paragraph explaining "how it works", which generally only addresses one particular aspect of the script (ie, POSIX-style "variable slicing"). Shell syntax is terse and many of the reserved keywords and functions are not self-evident. If you don't know, for example, what "${#remainder}" returns, Taylor won't help you; you will have to look it up in a tutorial or a reference work elsewhere.
   
   According to the blurb on the back of the book, Taylor has an MA in education, but there is little evidence of his didactic skills in this text. On the face of it, he is more a geek than a teacher, and hence this book more useful to his fellow hackers than people new to Bash.



4. This is a collection of very basic shell scripts I found completely useless. The author presents the book in an advanced format, not giving much underlying information or hand-holding; however the information contained is very beginner level.
   
   The author David Taylor also has many bad habits in his scripting and tends to take a wordy approach. Many of the scripts Taylor advertises in his book can be compiled into a command or two on a single small line of code. For example why would you pipe a grep command to awk when awk has a more powerful search function than grep already built in?
   
   I did not find any advanced commands in his entire book. There were a couple very basic 'sed' and 'awk' commands but nothing which made me think anything about them was 'wicked cool'



5. This is a great book for learning by example, particularly as a follow-on to something more geared toward complete beginners to get you started. It provides a number of useful scripts (even though some of them duplicate functionality of common system utilities), with explanations of how and why they work, and even notes on how you might alter the code to suit your own purposes. If you're a relatively new programmer or system administrator that already has the basics of shell scripting in mind, but find yourself at loose ends wondering what to do next to help cement what you know and start learning more, this book may be exactly what you need. It's also useful for figuring out some of the basic principles of translating code to or from some other programming language, thanks to the code explanations.
   
   The scripts themselves, however, are not exactly what I would call "wicked cool". The title is an obvious marketing conceit, designed to make the book seem more enticing. Most of the scripts, in fact, are surprisingly mundane -- but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. You may actually find yourself using some of them, with minor alterations, in your day-to-day life. Just don't expect to be wowed by the scripts themselves.
   
   If you've read my review of Wicked Cool Perl Scripts, you may note that this is an almost word-for-word duplication. That was intentional: the books are very similar in quality, format, and usefulness, right down to the "wicked coolness" (or not) of the scripts.

5 comments about Developer's Guide to the Windows SharePoint Services v3 Platform (Charles River Media Programming).

1. I have read more than half of the book and am very disappointed with the content. He spends far too much time explaining how things were done in SharePoint Services v2 and then how they are different in v3. I was hoping for more information about how to do things in SharePoint v3 but there is not enough meat to actually get in and do anything.



2. For WSS v3, the new version of SharePoint product, it's not easy to find a good book. Yes, you can download the SDK. But somehow it's not a good start point for beginners! This book was the first one did a good job on providing guidance for the beginners of WSS developers. Even over, it show us many different aspect of programming for WSS, such as Event Receiver, Custom Field Type, and Web Part.
   But this book contain many typos error! The publisher did introduced many error!? Very often, you must go to the CD to find the correct code or Fig.
   But I still recommend this book. Very valueable! True.



3. Todd Bleeker is enthusiastic about SharePoint, and it shows. This book is a great resource for people wanting to get up to speed with programming in SharePoint 2007. Todd gives a lot of examples and lots of background on the subject covered. I'm not a developer and I could understand the book and was able to follow along and even use some of the examples.
   
   If you want to get your feet wet with SharePoint programming, you can't go wrong with this book.



4. I would recommend "Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 " instead of this book. That book feels more upto date with the subject.



5. The author is to be commended for getting this published as quickly as he did. For a time (first half '07) this was the best, most in-depth coverage of deep development of SharePoint features with .NET. However, these topics receive more current and relevant treatement in "Inside Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Pattison and Larson) and I would recommend that book instead. Hence the three star rating.

5 comments about Visual Basic 6 from the Ground Up.

1. This isn't a bad beginners book. Anyone who needs more 'basic' information than this book probably shouldn't be in the IT industry in the first place.

   The book has alot of typos, i.e. missing parantheses in code examples, missing function arguments etc. I've found it to be somewhat troublesome, but you should be able to go to msdn online to figure out the typo. For example on page 487 the move method requires 4 arguments when anyone of the optional 3 are there but he only includes 2. There is also a missing parantheses there as well.

   This book does not go into ADO in any kind of depth that is needed. The Murach book, 'VB6 beginner to database pro' does ADO much better. There does seem to be a complete lack of ADO books for VB6. I imagine there are alot for VB.net. If you want this book, you will need another book to learn ADO programming in VB6. Database manipulation is what many people use VB for. However this lack of ADO depth may be because the book went to press before MS finalized ADO (just a guess there).

   Don't get me wrong, I thought this book was very informative and helpful, the fact that ADO is not covered in depth is a definite drawback. Also the code examples don't include every example from the book, just the complete programs. There were many code snippets that you could put in blank vb6 project to illustrate something that were not in the downloadable code from osborne. I would have preferred a CD to downloading as well.

   8/20/2003 - I hadn't realized this before becuse the book does not cover it at all, but there is a complete lack of coverage of interface classes. I had to go to a new riders book MCSD TRAINING GUIDE: VISUAL BASIC 6 EXAMS for a good discussion of this. Even the mspress book is somewhat confusing on this topic. If you can get this book used than do that. Don't pay full price though, especially since the binding seems to come apart after alot of use.




2. I should like to point out that the comment above regarding typos is not correct. True the example is missing a parenthesis (which the reviewer misspelled), however the move method DOES NOT require 4 arguments when anyone of the optional 3 are there. The arguments are left, top, width and height. You must specify all arguments that appear in the syntax before the argument you want to specify. For example, you can't specify width without specifying left and top. Any trailing arguments that are unspecified remain unchanged.



3. Two cents from a rank amateur/beginning programmer. At the moment, I'm on page 179 of this book and the main problem I have so far is with the way the information is communicated. Personally, I now know that I should have picked up a book that taught VB concepts via small projects and tasks. A "in chapter 1 we'll build a simple tool to get familiar w/ the IDE. In chapter 2 we'll improve our skillset by building a slightly advanced tool to learn about declaring variables, etc." approach would work better for me. Unfortunately, this book doesn't really do that. The concepts here are explained mostly with bits of standalone code. Hopefully, perhaps by page 200, we'll commence with some "learning by doing." Yes, hopefully. In the meantime, I'll grit my teeth and continue with the book, but right now it simply isn't working for me.



4. Perhaps this book would prove useful to an experienced programmer, but for a novice it is not a good choice. Cornell "assumes no previous programming experience", then goes on to write in huge, sweeping generalities without adequate explanations. Also, the code in the book is often written so the reader cannot fathom the type of event the code is associated with, and no explanations are forthcoming in the body of the text.
   There really is a lot covered in this book, but unless you do indeed have "previous programming experience", not worth the cash.



5. I bought this book in Year 11 (2000), after reading reviews of it. I was a beginner to programming - not only did this book introduce me to programming, it goes into VB6 in detail. The examples are all useful - not just toy examples. I have created many useful VB6 projects - this is the ONLY VB6 book you need.

5 comments about BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting (2nd Edition) (Eclipse Series).

1. Every once in awhile, I get to review a book on a technology or software package I've not heard of before. That was the case with BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting by Diana Peh, Alethea Hannemann, and Nola Hague. I'm stunned at the quality and depth of this open-source Eclipse reporting tool. Oh, and the book's pretty good, too... :)
   
   Contents:
   Part 1 - Installing BIRT: Prerequisites for BIRT; Installing a BIRT Report Designer; Updating a BIRT Installation
   Part 2 - Getting Started: Learning the Basics; Planning Your Report
   Part 3 - Connecting to a Data Source; Retrieving Data; Binding Data
   Part 4 - Designing Reports: Laying Out a Report; Displaying Text; Formatting Report Content; Sorting and Grouping Data; Aggregating Data; Writing Expressions; Filtering Data; Enabling the User to Filter Data; Building a Report That Contains Subreports; Using a Chart in a Report; Displaying Data in Charts; Laying Out and Formatting a Chart
   Part 5 - Enhancing Reports: Designing a Multipage Report; Adding Interactive Viewing Features; Building a Shared Report Development Framework; Localizing Text; Glossary; Index
   
   BIRT stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, and it runs on the Eclipse platform. Running as a plug-in or using the Rich Client Platform, BIRT will allow the user to create reports from various data sources like JDBC-enabled databases, text files, and XML files. The authors start out with the basics on how to download and install the software (it's dead simple). Then using a few tutorial exercises and plenty of screen prints, they walk you through the basics of connecting to a data source and building a report. The features available in BIRT seem endless, and I was completely amazed at the quality and depth that the software offers for both simple and complex report generation. Throughout the entire read, I kept thinking about a number of applications I wanted to try this out on. Normally to get something of this magnitude, you have to buy reporting packages that cost thousands. Peh, Hannemann, and Hague have completely twisted my world view when it comes to reporting. Great job!
   
   The only thing that wasn't covered too much was how to roll this out to an end-user base without having to make your audience experts in Eclipse. It seems as if there must be some way to package these reports up to shield the user from the internals. There's a follow-on book that covers integration and extension of BIRT, and I'm hoping that deployment is covered more there. But that in no way takes away from the value and quality of what the authors did here...
   
   This is subject matter that has me excited for some potentially cool applications. If things work the way I hope they will, I'll owe a debt of gratitude to this book...



2. Purchasing this book is a great way to reward the authors and publishers. While this may be a noble cause, it is not necessary for you to understand BIRT. The software is so powerful and easy to install and use, that a user guide is not necessary for most developers. After installing BIRT you'll find most of the contents of this book in the Help documents under "BIRT Report Developer Guide -> Field Guide To BIRT". Here's how the TOCs line up:
   
   Book TOC only:
   Prerequisites
   Installing
   Updating
   Planning your Report
   
   Book TOC and Help TOC:
   Learning the Basics
   Connecting to Datasource
   Retrieving Data
   Binding Data
   Laying Out a Report
   Displaying Text
   Formatting Report Content
   Sorting and Grouping Data
   Aggregating Data
   Writing Expresssions
   Filtering Data
   Enabling User to Filter
   Reports with Subreports
   Using a Chart in a Report
   Displaying Data in Charts
   Chart Layout / Formatting
   Designing a Multipage Report
   Add Interactive Features
   Shared Development Framework
   Localizing Text
   
   Help TOC only:
   Scripting in Report Design
   JavaScript Event Handlers
   Java Event Handlers
   Scripting Reference
   
   If you would rather read this information on paper than the help documents, I recommend this book. If you can install it and use a help page, don't bother.



3. So Eclipse is migrating slightly... Hitherto, much of Eclipse was used by programmers. Mostly Java programmers, at that. A very nice development and runtime environment. But this book shows that some Eclipse developers want to extend the scope of who can use Eclipse.
   
   The extensive reporting abilities in this book can be implemented by someone who wants to write a report, that will have tables or graphs derived from some data source, typically a database. Unlike most previous books in this Eclipse series, there is less need for the reader to program. BIRT is more akin to a layout or declarative language, like HTML. Not everyone has the aptitude or inclination to be a programmer. And just as HTML is considered easier to understand than C, say, so too is BIRT to outreach to a broader crowd.
   
   However, BIRT is not quite a complete declarative approach. There is indeed scope for programmatic customisation, using scripting languages. Though the only such language described in the text is JavaScript. Most BIRT users won't have to go to this extent, but it is available for special needs.
   
   Unlike other reporting packages, BIRT's output is written as an XML file, with a particular set of XML tags. Instead of being in a proprietary binary format. Much easier to fit into other processing for some extended workflow, if desired.
   
   The blurb on the back cover is a little intriguing. It says that the authors have a combined 165 years experience in various technical fields. But with 3 authors, that amounts to 55 years each?! Really? Is there some double counting going on?



4. "BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting" is a great tutorial for learning how to use BIRT. BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools" is described including its relationship to Eclipse. After covering how to install BIRT, the book goes into great detail on how to use the report designer.
   
   The target audience should be familiar with HTML, SQL and JavaScript as stated in the introduction. The book describes functions used, but you are expected to know the basic syntax.
   
   As expected, the book covers how to use each of the features of BIRT. They are all described with step by step instructions. There are also a few tutorials walking you through the process from start to finish. I liked the "how to" style for tasks.
   
   The book includes tips on how to plan a report and what to consider. It also includes common code snippets that you may want to use and lists available functions.
   
   I was particularly impressed with the abundance of screenshots and the excellent glossary. If you are thinking about using BIRT, this book is a valuable addition to your library.



5. The book arrived in a timely manner. It was just what I needed. It help me develop reports and graphs that impressed my boss right away. Birt will be very competitive to high cost vendor solutions for business intelligence reporting. Right now it is a sleeper, best kept secret.

5 comments about Professional Visual Studio 2005.

1. Yes this book is riddled with typos and coding errors, but it's still a very well written and informative introduction to VB 2005.
   The chapters are really easy to read (not like normal textbooks), with solid examples and small end-of-chapter exercises to reinforce ideas.
   If it had been properly proofed, it would easily get 5 stars.



2. Try as hard as I can, I cannot find a purpose in this book other than for the authors to make some money. It barely touches on the options in VS2005 without any concrete direction or in-depth description of why to use the features. I have found that the VB2005 book I purchased at the same time as this ("Visual Basic 2005 : The Language") provided much better coverage than this book
   I would NOT reccommend this book to anyone. You would find a much more effective use of your money by buying the above book or a book on the targer language in VS2005 you are using



3. Too much of this book has no depth and is repeating what is written on the screen.



4. I received this book within a few days and the book was in great shape. Nice job.



5. I was expecting a more detailed book on VS 2005, but it wasn't. However some people might find this book useful.

5 comments about Ruby Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)).

1. This book is a handy reference and guide to the Ruby programming language. Small and lightweight, it would be at home in a laptop bag.
   
   I program in several languages (lately: Ruby, Java, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript). A quick reference book like this is helpful when switching contexts, reminding me of the syntax or method call that has slipped my mind.
   
   The explanations and examples concisely illustrate the language concepts. Tables list (often all of) things like pre-defined variables, global constants, etc.
   
   An experienced programmer could learn the important basics of Ruby in a quick scan of the first 60 pages. However, I would still recommend reading one of the thorough tutorial books to get an in-depth understanding of some of the more unique Ruby techniques.
   
   In addition to the items covered in the product description, the book includes:
   
   * The most commonly used areas of the File and IO classes.
   
   * A glossary of Ruby specific terms.
   
   * RDoc, the utility for extracting documentation embedded in comments in Ruby source, and the basics of formatting your comments for RDoc.
   
   * A thorough 20 page index including all of the special characters (punctuation) in use in Ruby. Very handy when trying to read someone else's code.
   
   * Many links to Ruby resources on the web.
   
   Note that the Amazon book description should read "sprintf and time formatting *directives*". That is, the special character combination for formatting strings and the output of time.



2. You probably could learn Ruby from this handy little pocket guide, but I wouldn't advise trying it. The examples are much too short and sweet to really do a good job of it. For the experienced Ruby programmer, though, it is a great reference on all aspects of the language. It even has introductory material on how to get started running Ruby, plus some bonus material at the end on RubyGems, Rake, and a listing of additional Ruby resources - some online and some that are books. RubyGems is a package utility for Ruby that installs Ruby software packages and keeps them up to date. It is even easier to use than tools like the Unix/Linux tar utility or Java's jar utility. Rake is a build tool that helps you build, compile, or otherwise process files, sometimes large numbers of them. Rake is similar to "make" and Apache ant, but is written in Ruby. Rails operations use Rake frequently.
   
   The only negative thing I can say is that it seems like the book was hastily edited. I haven't seen any errors in the technical directions yet, but I have caught more than a few grammar errors and odd repetitions in the regular text that might have you scratching your head and wondering what the author meant. The following is the table of contents:
   
   Chapter 1. Ruby Pocket Reference
   Section 1.1. Conventions Used in This Book
   Section 1.2. Comments and Questions
   Section 1.3. Acknowledgments
   Section 1.4. Running Ruby
   Section 1.5. Reserved Words
   Section 1.6. Operators
   Section 1.7. Comments
   Section 1.8. Numbers
   Section 1.9. Variables
   Section 1.10. Symbols
   Section 1.11. Predefined Variables
   Section 1.12. Pseudovariables
   Section 1.13. Global Constants
   Section 1.14. Ranges
   Section 1.15. Methods
   Section 1.16. Conditional Statements
   Section 1.17. Classes
   Section 1.18. Files
   Section 1.19. The IO Class
   Section 1.20. Exception Handling
   Section 1.21. Object Class
   Section 1.22. Kernel Module
   Section 1.23. String Class
   Section 1.24. Array Class
   Section 1.25. Hash Class
   Section 1.26. Time Formatting Directives
   Section 1.27. Interactive Ruby (irb)
   Section 1.28. Ruby Debugger
   Section 1.29. Ruby Documentation
   Section 1.30. RDoc Options
   Section 1.31. RubyGems
   Section 1.32. Rake
   Section 1.33. Ruby Resources
   Section 1.34. Glossary



3. Michael Fitzgerald's RUBY provides an excellent quick programmer's reference to Ruby which is organized for speedy consultation. From lists of methods to predefined variables, RUBY POCKET REFERENCE is not only a top pick for libraries, but for working Ruby programmers who want a pocket at-a-glance guide.



4. I'm always tempted by pocket references, and nearly always disappointed. The Ruby Pocket Reference is no exception.
   
   It is not clear who the target audience is. Beginning ruby programmers would not find enough tutorial information here to get started. Experienced ruby programmers will not find anything here that isn't more easily (and more accurately) found in ri or rdoc documentation.
   
   To make matters worse, I found a number of errors. For instance, in sec. 1.16.1.1 the examples given of the 'not' operator (!) are incorrect - the examples repeatedly are of the form !x == y where what was intended was !(x == y). Sec. 1.16.5 claims that the ruby case statement uses the semantics of == to evaluate the 'when' expressions, then goes on to show examples that illustrate that it is actually the === operator that is used.
   
   Other parts of the book are simply not helpful. For example, sec. 1.16.6 talks about the "for var in container" construct, but the examples only show this being applied to Ranges, and the text never mentions that the construct will work on any implementer of Enumerable.
   
   In all, I cannot recommend this book to anyone. If you need a portable ruby reference, then get the PDF of the Pickaxe book and carry it on your stick. If you need a good beginner's tutorial, there are plenty of them online (check out Why the Lucky Stiff, for example).



5. 150 pages, really fits in a pocket. Well written, great reference, could serve as a tutorial in a pinch.

5 comments about Pro PHP Security.

1. PHP applications written without a concern for security risk cross-site scripting, SQL injection, session hijacking, and a multitude of other potential problems. This book examines how to setup a secure environment including encryption, hashing, SSL and using PHP to connect to SSL servers. The authors also examine how to install and configure OpenSSH and using it with PHP applications. Of course they also deal with the usual concerns of user authentication, permissions, restrictions, validating input, preventing SQL injection, preventing cross-site scripting, preventing remote execution (including PHP code injection and embedding), security for temporary files, and preventing session hijacking. The Pro PHP Security is written specifically for PHP programmers working in the Apache, MySQL, and PHP 5 environment and is highly recommended



2. Unless you're already very well-versed in the subject matter, ( sql injection, cross-site scripting, session hijacking, remote execution, sanitizing user data/input, ssh, encryption, ssl, dangers of shared-host scenarios, bulletproofing db installations, user verification, captchas, remote procedure calls ) this material is relatively comprehensive and valuable. Well-organized, well thought out, I won't hesitate to recommend this one.



3. The book is entitled PHP security. But the actual content covers very little PHP at
   all: less than 20 percent. It tries to cover everything from UNIX permission,SSH
   and all other security issues, but really doesn't have much to do with PHP. So I
   think the title is highly misleading. For someone interested in the general
   security issues, it might be a fine book. But not for programmers want to know
   the security about PHP.



4. Like the title states this book tells you about a lot of security issues you should be aware of, but doesn't go in depth for many solutions. Especially xss which is the only reason i bought the book. For how much the book costs i figured it would include some really good php solutions. I mean the thing is in black and white, what's with the price tag that doesn't tell me anything that i can't find on the web.



5. I found Pro PHP Security a very informative book. I received this book around the same time that I began developing online financial software. This book lived up to the name and answered a lot of my questions.
   
   I found the chapter on encryption and hashing very interesting. I knew what each system of protection accomplished but not how. Next the authors proceeded to discuss Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and how certificates are created. It was fun to be able to create my own certificate and keys, and gain a better understanding of how the whole process works.
   
   After covering server security and connection security, the authors moved onto secure programming. The first chapter covers user input validation. This is one area that many programmers, myself included, do not devote much time. If you can sanitize the data you get from the user, you have overcome one of the largest hurdles of securing your code.
   
   After that chapter, each following chapter begins with the presentation of an exploit and how it works, followed by discussions of sites affected by these exploits, and concluding with how to prevent it. SQL injection, cross-site scripting, remote execution and session hijacking are some of the exploits discussed. This section of the book gave me plenty to think about and more than enough to work on implementing.
   
   If anyone is a PHP programmer and deals with any kind of sensitive data, then this book is a must read. The authors attempt to provide all the best practices because one method may not work in a given situation, but they also let you know the disadvantages of each method. As Snyder and Southwell discuss in the first chapter, as developers we cannot eliminate risk but we can do our best to mitigate it.

5 comments about Perl in A Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (2nd Edition).

1. This book is full of alphabetical high level descriptions (which are always ambiguous) of Perl language statements with few or no illustrative examples (which always help clear up ambiguity).
   It is a waste of money.



2. I am not a beginning programmer nor am I what you would call an expert. Having a background in PHP made Perl easy to learn, so I didn't need a book that would "teach" Perl. All I needed was a good reference to figure out the differences between PHP and Perl. This book did exactly that! I was able to start programming within a day and I have referenced this book more times than I can count during my most recent development efforts. The binding is nearly worn out! I recommend this book to intermediate programmers that only need a small boost to get to work. If you're a beginner, buy this book to use after you learn the basics and you'll find it to be one of the most valuable tools on your desk!



3. This is a handy reference, but if you have a limited budget you should probably go with Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook before this one. This is a fine reference but it doesn't have the depth that the other books have and the information on the modules is available online through CPAN. I have the entire Perl library on my bookshelf and I hardly ever pick this one up.



4. Exactly as advertised, "Perl in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference" is a great reference book if you already have a basic understanding of Perl. Although it does have a section that it refers to as an "Introduction to Perl" it is actually a pretty cursory introduction and there are better books for learning the basics of Perl.

   The book does have an excellent section on installing Perl including installation on both the Unix and Windows platforms. I've worked with both platforms and the installation process is well documented including how to install modules. This brings us to the large chapter on getting and installing Perl modules. I have spent hours sometimes trying to find an appropriate module for a special situation. This chapter lists all the most common modules and includes descriptions of what they do. This alone makes it a valuable resource for anyone involved in Perl.

   The authors also include a lot of technical information including command line options and environment variables as well as a section on program structure, data types, special variables, operators, expressions, subroutines, filehandles, and just about anything else that you might need a quick refresher on.

   Functions are listed both by category and by alphabetical order with descriptions and syntax information. I had a couple of problems on a large project recently and it took three days to get an answer through the forums on the Internet. The answers to all of them are right here and I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had had this book then.

   A lot of other information is available in the book including CGI programming, Webserver programming, database programming, SOAP, Network modules including Net, Mail, NNTP, FTP, and LDAP, Perl/Tk, Win32 Modules and Extensions, OLE Automation, and ODBC Extensions. This book will be the one I keep close at hand when working with Perl and deserves its location on my desktop instead of in the library. "Perl in a Nutshell" is highly recommended for Perl programmers from basic to advanced level.




5. I have a shelf of Perl books from O'Reilly, from the Quick Reference to Advanced Perl Programming. This tends to be my first grab when I am looking for something. A bit thick when I am on the road, so I fall back to the Quick Reference, and whenever I do, I find I miss having the Nutshell book (with all my notes in the margins :) If I can't find it in this book, I jump to the Perl Reference most often.

No comments about Professional Multicore Programming: Design and Implementation for C++ Developers (Wrox Programmer to Programmer).