Any Good Resources for learning perl?

[Derango]

Are there any good resources out there for someone who wants to learn perl programming?

I've had an interest in it for a while and I figure why not try it.

[kmj]

www.perl.com (http://www.perl.com) www.perlmonks.org (http://www.perlmonks.org) www.perl.org (http://www.perl.org)

let me try to scare up some tutorials for you..

oh, and to beat jemfinch to it: Don't bother with perl, learn python instead. you'll thank me later. :)

http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=Tutorials

this should give you a good start.

[ 23 May 2001: Message edited by: kmj ]

[Derango]

So would you reccomend perl or python to learn? Whats the merits of each language?

[kmj]

what do you want to do? Do you use shell scripts alot? Do you really want to "learn to program"? I've only been using python for a week or so, but it's beautiful and very easy. Perl is cool, too & fun, but it's harder to pick up and not healthy for inexperienced programmers.

[Derango]

Well, I've got the basics of C/C++ under my belt, and I've been programming off and on for a few years. I'm not sure if I would qualifiy as a inexperienced programmer or not.

As for shell scripts, I haven't played around with them too much, although I'd like to start working with them some more.

[YaRness]

play with perl, play with python (ad nauseum), use whatever feels right. if you've done c/c++, perl will have a familiar feel to it.


#!/usr/bin/perl
if (1)
{
print "Hell Oh Whirled!";
}

[kmj]

I'd say take a glance at both, and choose which looks more fun to you...

everything python is at www.python.org (http://www.python.org) including a good tutorial which you should see linked right on the front page.

[Derango]

Cool..thanks...have no doubt I'll have questions to ask you guys in the future ;)

[kmj]

Originally posted by Derango:
<STRONG>Cool..thanks...have no doubt I'll have questions to ask you guys in the future ;)</STRONG>

Good. I love questions. :D

[YaRness]

questions are always welcome here. it gives us all something to argue about, and to show off different ways of doing stuff. and helping out fellow coders is always very cool.

[Larkfellow]

Since I haven't seen this mentioned yet, I figured I might as well let you in on a little secret. You have the resources to learn perl already on your computer. It's called perldoc. Try typing something like this: perldoc perl

That will give you something very similar to a man page. (And there is an identical manpage available) The first thing on it is a list of other perldoc pages to read. Listed in the order they recommend reading them. The reason I suggest perldoc is because it has a helpful argument function too. Try something like this: perldoc -f print

That will list the information, including possible arguements, use, and explaination of the function "print". That is how I learned perl. Well that and looking at example scripts. Good luck.

[Derango]

I took a look at python eariler today...and I like what I see...pretty easy to understand so far. I'm going to keep going with it for now, and see where it takes me. Thanks for the suggestion.

[jemfinch]

I can't think of a better language to learn how to program from than python.

I knew perl, I loved perl...and then I discovered python. It was all over for perl :)

Jeremy

[JBrian]

Hey kmj, I'm curious as to why you think that perl might be unhealthy for inexperienced programmers...
~Jeff

[kmj]

it's easy to use bad coding practices, bad style, etc. It's very difficult to read compared to other languages. It comes with more of a hack/script mentality than a "programmer" mentality. Other languages are much better at teaching people how to write good clean code. Perl can be written as neatly as any other language, but Python must be written as neatly as(usually more neatly than) any other language.

[YaRness]

Larry Wall, the dude who made perl, is a linguist. he wrote perl so that it would read more like natural language than other code does. so in this sense, it can definitely be written so that it's much different than other code (and becauase of this feature, it can also be written to be very highly obfuscated, should the writer choose to do so).

it's interesting, i was reading something in some article how perl IS a lot like a natural language, in that it's development highly reflects the culture (perl coders) around it.