merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) (06/28/90)
In article <103428@convex.convex.com>, tchrist@convex (Tom Christiansen) writes: | I hope that most of the subtleties of the language will be outlined in | that fabled tome, the perl book he and Randal are working on. I know that from our present work on the book, what you will probably see is 250 pages in the tone of the 67 page manpage, so count on about 4 times the number of examples, and a few larger programs documented, along with some "philosophy" and "religion" regarding programming in Perl effectively. To get everything you ask for, and to document the features that Larry will most certainly add while the book is at the printer, you will probably have to get "The Book, version 2.0." Sorry... it's the nature of the biz. We are definitely aiming to capture as much of the incremental wisdom of comp.lang.perl, my coding, and Larry's intimate knowledge of Perl as we can, but it is really difficult to document a moving target. Buy the book! Yell at us for not having any examples of "Perl-assisted honeydanber UUCP management" or "how to eval an arbitrary expression inside a quoted string" or "when do I use $\"! But 250 pages is certainly better than 67 pages. If you are a regular reader of comp.lang.perl, don't expect any great revelations... just a broadening of your understanding. Just another Perl-book hacker, -- /=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\ | on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III | | merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn | \=Cute Quote: "Welcome to Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins!"=/
nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) (06/28/90)
In article <1990Jun27.171449.4507@iwarp.intel.com> merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes: >... >Buy the book! Yell at us for not having any examples of >"Perl-assisted honeydanber UUCP management" or "how to eval an >arbitrary expression inside a quoted string" or "when do I use $\"! >But 250 pages is certainly better than 67 pages. If you are a regular >reader of comp.lang.perl, don't expect any great revelations... just a >broadening of your understanding. > >Just another Perl-book hacker, So SELL the book already! (Know why the Perl programmer got divorced? He never did anything - just told his wife how great it was GONNA be!!) Oh...all of the above is covered by :-) Just another waiting-for-godot book purchaser. -- John W. Nall | Supercomputation Computations Research Institute nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 "They said it couldn't be done/they said nobody could do it/ But he tried the thing that couldn't be done!/He tried - and he couldn't do it"
garvey@cmic.UUCP (Joe Garvey) (06/29/90)
In article <1990Jun27.171449.4507@iwarp.intel.com>, merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes: > I know that from our present work on the book, what you will probably > see is 250 pages in the tone of the 67 page manpage, so count on about > 4 times the number of examples, and a few larger programs documented, > along with some "philosophy" and "religion" regarding programming in > Perl effectively. To get everything you ask for, and to document the > features that Larry will most certainly add while the book is at the > printer, you will probably have to get "The Book, version 2.0." > Sorry... it's the nature of the biz. > Buy the book! Yell at us for not having any examples of > "Perl-assisted honeydanber UUCP management" or "how to eval an > arbitrary expression inside a quoted string" or "when do I use $\"! > But 250 pages is certainly better than 67 pages. If you are a regular ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Not if it isn't well organized and thought out. Despite the terseness of the man page (a time honored unix tradition :-)), it does a "complete" job, and is well organized. No, there aren't scads of examples. No, it doesn't start you off with just enough information to get you started if you haven't used perl before... it dives right in. The book should be targeted (in my opinion) to help those others who can't get started in perl from the man page. I hope one of the objectives of the book is to increase the numbers of perl users... to mainstream perl. I hope that eventually Sun, HP, SCO, OSF will offer perl as part of their standard unix. Write an important program, give it away. Make money off the book, and the movie. :-) -- Joe Garvey UUCP: {apple,backbone}!versatc!mips!cmic!garvey California Microwave Internet: garvey%cmic@mips.com 990 Almanor Ave HP Desk: garvey (cmic@mips.com) / hp1900/ux Sunnyvale, Ca, 94086
lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) (06/29/90)
In article <355@cmic.UUCP> garvey@cmic.UUCP (Joe Garvey) writes:
: Not if it isn't well organized and thought out. Despite the terseness
: of the man page (a time honored unix tradition :-)), it does a "complete"
: job, and is well organized. No, there aren't scads of examples. No, it
: doesn't start you off with just enough information to get you started
: if you haven't used perl before... it dives right in. The book should
: be targeted (in my opinion) to help those others who can't get started
: in perl from the man page. I hope one of the objectives of the book is
: to increase the numbers of perl users... to mainstream perl. I hope
: that eventually Sun, HP, SCO, OSF will offer perl as part of their
: standard unix.
That is exactly where the book is targeted. It starts off with very much
of a hold-your-hand tutorial, giving just what you need to know to
get started, and then has some longer examples of things you might do,
and then has everything else arranged so that you can look things up
as you need them.
Most of the examples will NOT be for system administration, since we
think that most system administrators got to be one because they knew
how to read manual pages already. Contrariwise, we think the typical
SA will be able to take the general examples and whip up something
of their own. After all, they'll do that anyway, can't stop 'em...
: Write an important program, give it away. Make money off the book, and
: the movie. :-)
I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...don't suppose that counts...
Larrymerlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) (06/29/90)
In article <355@cmic.UUCP>, garvey@cmic (Joe Garvey) writes: | Write an important program, give it away. Make money off the book, and | the movie. :-) Shhh! You weren't supposed to tell them about the *movie* yet... "Perl Three Dot Oh: The Syntax Strikes Back!" Sigh. -- /=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\ | on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III | | merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn | \=Cute Quote: "Welcome to Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins!"=/