learning perl objects references and modules
It's no coincidence that I'm reviewing both this book and Programming Ruby on the same day. After learning Ruby, I was curious about its viability as a scripting language compared to Perl. I've used Perl for about 7 years now. It's always been my backup language when I need something serious done. Even though I could program with Perl modules and objects from looking at examples, I never actually sat down and learned the internals of them. And with Ruby coming in to play, I needed to have a solid understanding of those subjects to do a good, honest comparison. So this is where this book comes in.
This book can be thought of as Learning Perl Part Two. It's even written by the same person -- Randal Schwartz -- so you know you're going to learn some thing by the time you're done. Throughout the first part of the book, you learn about nothing other than References. They're shoved in your face pretty well. By the time I reached the topics of Objects, I understood why References were covered so in-depth -- Objects in Perl are nothing more than special References. The final parts of the book cover Modules, how to package them, and how to contribute to CPAN.
Overall, this book did a great job teaching me about "the rest of Perl". Unfortunately, when I compared how to do these things with Ruby, Rubys ease of use stood out dramatically. Of course, Ruby pays the price in other ways.
9/10
