PERLBOOK(1)

NAME
perlbook - Books about and related to Perl

DESCRIPTION
There are many books on Perl and Perl-related. A few of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at http://books.perl.org/ . We list some of the books here, and while listing a book implies our endorsement, don't think that not including a book means anything.

Most of these books are available online through Safari Books Online ( http://safaribooksonline.com/ ).

  The most popular books
The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:

Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
            by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
            ISBN 978-0-596-00027-1  [3rd edition July 2000]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000271/

The Ram is a cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to accomplish specific tasks:

The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
            by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
                with Foreword by Larry Wall
            ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/

If you want to learn the basics of Perl, you might start with the Llama book, which assumes that you already know a little about programming:

Learning Perl  (the "Llama Book")
            by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
            ISBN 978-0-596-52011-3 [5th edition June 2008]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520113

The tutorial started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which introduces the intermediate features of references, data structures, object-oriented programming, and modules:

Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
            by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
                    foreword by Damian Conway
            ISBN 978-0-596-00478-1 [1st edition March 2006]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004781/

  References
You might want to keep these desktop references close by your keyboard:

Perl 5 Pocket Reference
            by Johan Vromans
            ISBN 978-0-596-00374-6 [4th edition July 2002]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003746/

Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
            by Richard Foley
            ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/

Regular Expression Pocket Reference
            by Tony Stubblebine
            ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [July 2007]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/

  Tutorials

Beginning Perl
            by James Lee
            ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010]
            http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430227931

Learning Perl
            by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
            ISBN 978-0-596-52010-6 [5th edition June 2008]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106

Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
            by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
                    foreword by Damian Conway
            ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102067

Mastering Perl
            by brian d foy
            ISBN 978-0-596-10206-7 [1st edition July 2007]
            http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242

Effective Perl Programming
            by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy
            ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010]
            http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/

  Task-Oriented

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
            by Sam Tregar
            ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002]
            http://www.apress.com/book/view/159059018X

The Perl Cookbook
            by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
                with foreword by Larry Wall
            ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [2nd edition August 2003]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135

Automating System Administration with Perl
            by David N. Blank-Edelman
            ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396

Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
            by Linchi Shea
            ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
            http://www.apress.com/book/view/159059097X

  Special Topics

Regular Expressions Cookbook
            by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan
            ISBN 978-0-596-52069-4 [May 2009]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520694

Programming the Perl DBI
            by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes
            ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998

Perl Best Practices
            by Damian Conway
            ISBN: 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735

Higher-Order Perl
            by Mark-Jason Dominus
            ISBN: 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005]
            http://hop.perl.plover.com/

Mastering Regular Expressions
            by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
            ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126

Network Programming with Perl
            by Lincoln Stein
            ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
            http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Network-Programming-with-Perl/9780201615715.page

Perl Template Toolkit
            by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley
            ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004767

Object Oriented Perl
            by Damian Conway
                with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
            ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
            http://www.manning.com/conway/

Data Munging with Perl
            by Dave Cross
            ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
            http://www.manning.com/cross

Mastering Perl/Tk
            by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
            ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]
            http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162

Extending and Embedding Perl
            by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
            ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
            http://www.manning.com/jenness

Pro Perl Debugging
            by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
            ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]
            http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590594541

  Free (as in beer) books
Some of these books are available as free downloads.

Higher-Order Perl: http://hop.perl.plover.com/

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN: http://www.apress.com/resource/freeebook/9781590590188

  Other interesting, non-Perl books
You might notice several familiar Perl concepts in this collection of ACM columns from Jon Bentley. The similarity to the title of the major Perl book (which came later) is not completely accidental:

Programming Pearls
            by Jon Bentley
            ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]

More Programming Pearls
            by Jon Bentley
            ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]

  A note on freshness
Each version of Perl comes with the documentation that was current at the time of release. This poses a problem for content such as book lists. There are probably very nice books published after this list was included in your Perl release, and you can check the latest released version at http://perldoc.perl.org/perlbook.html .

Some of the books we've listed appear almost ancient in internet scale, but we've included those books because they still describe the current way of doing things. Not everything in Perl changes every day. Many of the beginner-level books, too, go over basic features and techniques that are still valid today. In general though, we try to limit this list to books published in the past five years.

  Get your book listed
If your Perl book isn't listed and you think it should be, let us know.