Perl Hacks: Tips & Tools for Programming, Debugging, and Surviving
February 6th, 2010 by CGI & PHP.com
Product Description
With more than a million dedicated programmers, Perl has proven to be the best computing language for the latest trends in computing and business. While other languages have stagnated, Perl remains fresh, thanks to its community-based development model, which encourages the sharing of information among users. This tradition of knowledge-sharing allows developers to find answers to almost any Perl question they can dream up.
And you can find many of those a… More >>
Perl Hacks: Tips & Tools for Programming, Debugging, and Surviving
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February 6th, 2010 at 8:03 am
Imagine that chromatic were to write a professional once-a-week blog for the span of about two years, with edits and ideas from Damian Conway and Curtis "Ovid" Poe, focusing on cool Perl tricks. The result would look very similar to the Perl Hacks book.
The book is filled with lots of small, self-contained gems. I've put a few of these ideas into immediate practice, like Smart::Comments. Other ideas solve problems that I didn't think had any simple solutions, like reading files backwards, which I'll use the next time I need it. Many of their ideas are curriosities, the sorts of things that are kinda cool but I never think I'll need like vi and emacs hacks, or database stuff; still, knowing that they are there and where to read more makes me much more likely to use those tools if ever the need arises.
In all I'm very pleased with my purchase and I would recommend it to others. You're almost certain to find a few ideas that you can put into immediate use and many ideas that you'll bookmark mentally so you can use them in the future.
Rating: 5 / 5
February 6th, 2010 at 10:01 am
I've learned enough from the first two chapters along to justify the price of this book. Even if you are an intermediate Perl programmer, this book has various tidbits that will improve your code. If anything, I would call this the Perl Cookbook 2. It may not be as big as the original cookbook, but the recipes in here can save you time and make your code more correct.
This should be a definite buy for anyone who writes Perl scripts for work or pleasure, regardless of experience.
Rating: 5 / 5
February 6th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Perl hacks is an intriguing book which explores specific problems and their quite practical solutions. This book is easy to dive in and out of. It reads more like a collection of bite sized detective stories rather than a novel.
Either novice or guru Perl coders will discover great solutions to issues they don't even know that they are having. It's continually clever, surprising, and astonishingly useful.
Part of what is most astonishing is that the cures to even monumental ailments are so short and sweet. Perl Hacks is a great way to rediscover how awesome Perl is.
Rating: 5 / 5
February 6th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Perl is my workhorse language. I've written more Perl code, both personally and professionally, than any other language I've learned. Whenever I receive a new project, I immediately think of how I would accomplish it quickly in Perl. I've also been a fan of O'Reilly's "Hacks" series of books. When I heard of the marriage of Perl and O'Reilly's "Hacks" series in the book Perl Hacks, I knew I had to pick up a copy. It was a match made in heaven. The nature of Perl for terse, yet powerful constructs, and the hackish nature of the "Hacks" series makes for one of my favorite books in this series. The collection of articles in Perl Hacks are great for putting more productivity into your programming experience.
Those of you not familiar with O'Reilly's "Hacks" Series may need an introduction. The "Hacks" Series is an ever-growing set of books with focused attention on a particular topic, like Astronomy, Mental Improvement, or even Halo 2. The books are generally short, and contain article-length "hacks" of varying difficulty, noted by a thermometer next to the hack number and description. These "hacks" fall into several categories; the non-obvious solution to a problem, the performance improvement, and the "gee, I didn't know it could do that" oddity. What makes this series special compared with other books is the willingness to "void the warranty" on a particular product, and get straight to the internals, whether they lay in hardware or software. If something can be made better by opening the covers, or twiddling with the program layout, then its eligible for inclusion in these books. The series lends itself to a wide range of topics, and the format is great for a quick read, or for (my favorite) just randomly opening the book and reading what's there.
Perl Hacks is not a book that you'd find yourself reading straight through (although you do want to make sure you visit every hack in the book at least once). The book is divided into nine chapters: Productivity Hacks, User Interaction, Data Munging, Working with Modules, Object Hacks, Debugging, Developer Tricks, Know Thy Code, and Expand Your Perl Foo. There are 101 hacks in this book, ranging from the simple (Reading files backward, or managing your module paths) to the truly perverse (Replacing bad code without touching it by substituting the system-wide exit call with your own[...]. Each hack title is listed in the table of contents, with both the page number and the hack number. Each hack contains a graphic of a thermometer next to the number to show the relative difficulty of the hack (higher temperatures = more difficult hacks). There quite a variety of hacks placed throughout the book. Not once did I feel that the book was padded with something that really didn't belong in the book. If anything Perl Hacks opened my eyes to things that I would never have thought to do, but could easily see as being useful. I wouldn't have thought to create my own personal module bundles for moving my Perl programs between machines (I've always done it the old fashioned way: run, cpan install, repeat), but hack #31 makes it so "of course" that I'm thinking of including this in all of my Perl code that I ship. Hack #74 shows how to trace all of the modules your program uses (and all of their modules, too). Hack #52 is a simple hack ("Make Invisible Characters Apparent") but I can see this saving a developer or two some time when figuring out why their code isn't behaving properly. Of course, not all hacks in the book are productive (at least, not while you're programming). Hack #37, "Drink to the CPAN" is a drinking game you and your Perl buddies may want to try.
Perl Hacks is a short book, at less than 300 pages, but it's loaded with incredibly useful information. Much like the "Perl Cookbook" (also from O'Reilly) you'll find lots of useful items hidden in their pages. Many times I started with one hack, and finished the chapter reading the rest of the hacks because there were just that interesting. Perl Hacks is highly recommended for any Perl programmer to have on their programmer book shelf. Sure, you might be able to find some of the hacks out there on the net, but I think you'll find as I have that this is more of a go-to reference for finding out some of the more interesting corners of Perl.
Rating: 5 / 5
February 6th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
I received this book as a token of appreciation for my contributions to
the 2006 Perl Advent Calendar. It's the first book I read as part of the
O'Reilly Hacks' series of books, and it proved to be a light yet informative and entertaining
read.
The book covers various useful "hacks" or small tricks that allow one to
achieve a lot of cool tasks when working with Perl. These tricks are unorthodox
and stretch the limit of one's Perl knowledge. Since they require an advanced
knowledge and understanding of Perl, I would recommend this book only for Perl
experts. Some of the B:: using modules were even too high-level for me to
understand how they worked internally. However, I understood the purpose of the
code in all cases, even if I didn't understand the code itself.
So it is a recommended read for people who've worked with Perl a lot,
and wish to learn many new and useful tricks. Perl Hacks for Perl hackers,
indeed!
Rating: 5 / 5