Paper Books

• Books for Beginners
• Books for Those with Previous Programming Knowledge
• Books for Learning about More Advanced Parts of the Core Language
• Books for Learning about Specialized Technologies

Note

It is not absolutely necessary to read an organized book to learn Perl. But occassionally many people like it better than reading an ad-hoc tutorial on their computer screeens, and then trying to understand the man pages. Here is a list of books that can teach you Perl with some remarks on each book.

Learning Perl

Also referred to as "the Llama Book". Considered one of the best books for people who are absolute beginners in Perl and even in programming in general. This book however, does not cover references, modules, and objects and other important features of the Perl language. As such, you'll usually need to complement your learning by using another resource.

It is also not intended for people who are absolute beginners in programming.

Available online electronically for a registration as part of O'Reilly's Safari.

Beginning Perl

This book is intended for people who are new to programming and wish to learn programming with Perl. Those that already have a past experience in programming, will find it easier, but, otherwise even those without will be able to learn through it.

The first edition of the book is available online for free download.

Elements of Programming with Perl

A book that teaches Perl for people who have no programming experience. Takes an unusual approach of introducing them to Literate Programming as well, and using it for creating documentation and better organizing the examples.

Books for Those with Previous Programming Knowledge

These books are intended for people with a solid knowledge of programming in at least one other programming language besides Perl, who would like to learn Perl.

Impatient Perl

A book for people who need to learn Perl as soon as possible. Its full text is also available online for free download.

Learning Perl the Hard Way

Also intended for people who are already familiar with programming, and want to learn Perl quickly, and is available online for free download.

Perl for C Programmers

This book teaches Perl for experienced C Programmers. It is comperehensive and encompassing and tries to focus on Perl code that resembles C as much as possible. If you don't know C either, it will probably be of little help.