The best Perl Programming books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

You can buy that actually: Writing Code that Nobody Else Can read

I haven't learned Python, but I did learn Perl, and I hear they're similar-ish. The process is probably just as easy. The Learning Perl textbook is the best book I've ever seen on learning a programming language and I can't recommend it enough.

Depending on how many characters there are, and depending on how much of a one-time thing this is, you might be able to get away with Search and Replace in Word.

I agree with /u/brazen_nippers that bioinformatics book is fairly old (I have a copy, myself). I come from a programming background primarily centered on C++, but I still found the Learning Perl book by Schwartz and d foy to be a great intro to Perl. Plus, it's a super fast read even when you do all of the exercises. Their next book in the series <em>Intermediate Perl</em> dives into the language constructs that you will be using more often (things like regex, building nested data structures with references, and OOP). It is just as readable and easy to follow as the first book.

Some one else might have a newer suggestion, but Learning Perl (2011) is probably a good place to start if you're already used to using things like awk for getting rid of repetitive tasks.

In other words, let's say that you don't need the concept of variables explained as if they are a foreign idea, and you pretty much get the difference between different primitive data types like strings and types of numbers. Yet, while you may have used arrays and hashes, it wouldn't hurt to have them explained more completely, and why they're so useful in Perl.

One way of describing Perl is as a good Swiss Army Knife for doing what you can do with awk, sed, and many other utilities with the unintended consequence that it turned out to be a pretty good general purpose programming language, especially when most alternatives required compilation. If you sent a colleague a C program to accomplish something, you could be diligent and send both the executable and the source, but if you sent a perl script then you automatically sent the equivalent of both without either hassle. They did not have to compile what you sent and they could readily modify it to their changing needs.

1. No i was opening to make it so the appender (if that is a word) can see what is displayed before he/she starts typing, I understand the idea of appending.
2. SHIT! I just bought 2 perl books (this and this)

You may want to dabble with some Perl too. Minimal Perl by Tim Maher is pretty good. Other people may have some better book recommendations.