Learning Perl

[afton]

Any Perl geek here? I'm planning to learn it, just for the sake
of learning it (I heard it's fun & "disgusting" at the same time).
Any book recommendation for a beginner? (yes I know, I can
find some free ebooks, but I still prefer to hold pressed dead tree porridge)

I know the big three is O'Reilly's Learning Perl, Programming Perl, and Perl Cookbook. I tend to gravitate towards Perl Cookbook, because it provides
concrete examples. Any advice, before I handed in my valuable bucks.
:)

[eyebyte_atWork]

I had one that was pretty cool book - it was a beginner book and seemed well suited for learning. It was one of those "learn in 24 hours" books. ISBN: 0-672-31773-7

Good book for a starter book - although I have to add that I lost interest after one third of the book as I never use perl (and will never get paid to do so - I am a Windows developer). The cook book is also good for the reasons you have stated.

[Sue Denim]

I learned from Learning Perl, but I never use it now. Programming Perl is a good reference, and the Cookbook is good for ideas and usage. Learning the syntax is only the beginning if you want to use it as a language and not just for scripting. The Advanced book will really help you understand it as a language, so do try to work up to that if you really want to learn Perl.

There's a site somewhere that hosts the whole set of books online but I lost the URL. I think it's a .cz domain or something like that.

I get paid to use Perl, FWIW. Mostly for ad-hoc reports using LDAP API, and some basic Unix admin stuff.