What are the best resources to start learning Perl?

Question

I want to start learning Perl from scratch and I need to find some good tutorials and books to begin with. I found this tutorial very helpful and I'm wondering if you guys know of some more useful resources to help me learn more about this language.

Answer 1

http://learn.perl.org/ is a nice start. Specially check their online library.

Answer 2

The Camel Book.

Answer 3

You can take a look at the Perlmonks Tutorials page

Answer 4

Learning Perl (AKA 'The Llama Book') is what I learnt from, and it comes highly recommended.

Beginning Perl is also very popular, with the advantage that it's freely available in PDF format from that link.

Answer 5

I find the Camel Book most useful as reference, but you also have to realize that ~95% of its contents is word for word taken from perldoc.

If you need a concise, show me the basics, Learning Perl or the llama book is still the best. But I would also get the Camel Book, because it is handy :-)

Answer 6

Just a couple of minutes ago I was reminded of a lesser known alternative: Learning Perl The Hard Way (available under the GNU Free Documentation License),

Answer 7

If you're looking for on-line materials from which to learn, then the Perl 5 wiki has a page on Recommended online tutorials including those for beginners. I'd recommend you take a look at it.

More specifically, Perl Training Australia has all of its course notes available for download in PDF format. The Programming Perl manual is specifically designed for developers who want to learn Perl, and already have some experience with other languages. They're regularly updated, as they're the same books you get when you come on one of Perl Training Australia's courses.

I can also highly recommend Learning Perl and Intermediate Perl as physical books. Not only are they kept up to date (the latest editions covers Perl 5.10), but they are also written by people who teach Perl for a living, and at least one of which is an active stackoverflow member. ;)

Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors of Perl Training Australia's course manuals, and own half the company, so I naturally think our course notes rock..

Answer 8

The Perl Beginners' Site concentrates all information for people who are new to Perl.

Answer 9

Perl Testing Notebook is great for test automation, test driven development and unit test. link text

Answer 10

A great way is to use the new language in this case perl to re-code all the programs you wrote.

Answer 11

I think this can be a good platform for you.

Answer 12

Learning Perl is a lot like learning any other language: review source code, scroogle for Perl help, and ask questions on SO.

Easiest way to learn, well really depends on your own learning style. Many of us learn by doing, but others learn better in the class room.

How do you best learn?

Answer 13

Read and practice:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/70573/whats-the-best-online-source-to-learn-perl

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/336715/what-are-good-books-for-learning-perl

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/172266/what-are-the-best-resources-to-starting-learning-perl

Answer 14

When I was getting started with Perl, I got a lot of mileage out of Randal Schwartz's columns in various (now defunct) magazines. Fortunately, Randal has the articles online here. The columns solve real problems, and walk you through the solutions step by step.

Answer 15

Picking up Perl gives you a good idea.

The documentation, especially the tutorials, are invaluable:

 perldoc perldoc

On your computer (you might also have HTML versions installed). If you haven't installed Perl on your development machine yet, you can browse http://perldoc.perl.org/

Start at http://perldoc.perl.org/index-overview.html

Answer 16

Learn Perl has some resources. Perl has an excellent community. Checkout The Monsastery Gates.

Perl Beginners' Site: Perl - because programming should be fun

Also, do not forget to read perldoc perlintro.

Happy Perl-ing. :-)

Answer 17

"Learning Perl" (no earlier than 4th edition) or "Beginning Perl" have exercises. I started with exercises from "Learning Perl".

For web programming using CGI, you can read Ovid's CGI Course.

And of course, you should learn how to use CPAN - best tool for Perl programming.

Answer 18

This exact situation happened to me just over a year ago. I learned Perl largely from Randal starting with Learning Perl. Learning Perl has got to be one of the best books on beginning programming I've read (and I have many). After learning Perl I went into Intermediate Perl. I also read Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom and loved it. I even ended up listening to Floss Weekly as a result of reading Randal's books.

Answer 19

As others have said, the Llama book. Then move on to 'Mastering Regular Expressions' and 'Perl Cookbook'. I skipped the Camel book altogether, and just use it for reference.