Review by Billy Barron

"Effective Perl Programming" by Joseph Hall with Randal Schwartz (Addison-Wesley; ISBN 0-201-41975-0) is an intermediate book on Perl. It is an unusual book. Instead of being straight forward, it mostly is random tips about using Perl effectively. I've been a Perl programmer for 7 or 8 years so I'm very familiar with the language.

Throughout the book, the author uses his own notation called Perl Graphical Structures (PEGS) for showing variable states. I find this notation to worthless. Even a paragraph is more understandable than the notation. Notation aside, some parts of the book are hard to understand and I was unable to follow them even given years of experience in the language.

Other parts of the book are just wonderful. An example is the section of regular expressions.

Perl is known for its "There is more than one way to do it" philosophy. After looking at this book, it is obvious that the author's ways and my ways are vastly different. His way of using Perl is completely different from mine. I'm not saying the author's way is bad or wrong, but tough for me to grasp because it is not the way I would do things in the language.

In conclusion, this is a unique book and a tough one to review. It has many useful tips, but no real glue holding it together so it is not a cover-to-cover read. I think many readers will find its tips useful but others won't. Therefore, I'd recommend looking through it before purchase to see if it will be worthwhile for you.