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"Beyond the Basics of Learning Perl", advertises the front cover, and those aren't just empty words. The Learning Perl in this case is the book originally written by noted Perl trainer Randal L. Schwartz and now in its fourth edition. Learning Perl is certainly popular, but since it's intended to be an introductory text, there are a number of important Perl topics that it doesn't cover. Among them are objects, references, and modules, all of which are important for writing larger Perl programs (and many smaller Perl programs too).
That's where this book comes in. Randal (and his coauthor and colleague Tom Phoenix) base the book on the materials they successfully use in their Perl training courses, just as they did with Learning Perl. The goal is clear: to make sure that concepts are presented in a way refined by the experience of teaching them to real students.
This raises an important point. There seems to be a widespread perception that references in particular are very hard to learn in Perl - possibly encouraged by the fact that Learning Perl avoids covering them. But that perception doesn't fit with my own experiences, either as a learner or as a Perl trainer. The most widespread problem I've seen among students is dealing with the sheer quantity of material to learn, especially when it comes to the syntaxes for using references. But as long as references are taught in a sensible way, and without presenting too much information too soon, I've found that students can readily pick up the material.
I'm glad to report, therefore, that Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules covers references in a way which strikes me as entirely suitable for learners. Chapter 3 "Introduction to References" begins with a single type of reference: array references. It successfully motivates them by demonstrating a problem they solve: writing a subroutine which modifies an array provided by the caller. The relevant syntax is introduced gradually, but all the necessary syntax is covered by the end of the chapter. The chapter ends with a brief introduction of hash references.
Chapter 4 "References and Scoping" continues, describing carefully
what happens when multiple references point to the same thingy, and the
orthogonality of references and variable scoping. Chapter 5
"Manipulating Complex Data Structures" contains lots of useful
information and examples for dealing with nested data structures,
including the use of Data::Dumper. Chapter 6 "Subroutine
References" covers subroutine references and closures in reasonable
depth, describing dispatch tables and callbacks as common uses of them.
Chapter 7 "Practical Reference Tricks" is a grab-bag of well-known
techniques using references, including sorting and recursive data
structures; it's particularly useful for beginners who may not have seen
such techniques in other languages. All told, these four chapters
provide a comprehensive yet readily comprehensible grounding in the
non-object uses of references in Perl.
Chapter 8 therefore offers a introduction to object-oriented
programming (OO), and to the use of OO techniques in Perl. Unusually,
this first chapter on OO focuses on class methods to the exclusion of
object instances. While this approach seems strange at first, it does
make sense: students can concentrate on the concepts of methods and
inheritance without having to simultaneously deal with instances, or
with reference syntax (which is presumably still relatively fresh in
their minds at this stage). Chapter 9 "Objects with Data" introduces
object instances, along with instance methods, instance data, and
accessors. Chapter 10 "Object Destruction" has all the necessary
information on destructors, including the use of weak references to deal
with sets of objects that circularly refer to each other. Chapter 11
"Some Advanced Object Topics" concludes the OO discussion with an
introduction to topics like UNIVERSAL,
AUTOLOAD, and multiple inheritance. There's clearly much
more that could be said about OO in Perl - Damien Conway has an entire
book on the subject - but beginners are given a very good foundation in
both the mechanics and the idioms.
All this isn't to say that the book is perfect, however. The
practical exercises at the end of each chapter are fine as far as they
go, but I suspect many students would welcome additional exercises.
Also, a large number of the code examples and exercises refer to
characters from the 1960s US television sitcom Gilligan's
Island. It's definitely useful for students to read examples that
are in some way meaningful, compared to yet another
foobar-ridden sample. But there's always a risk that
picking a single topic like this can cause problems for those who aren't
familiar with it; certainly I found the subject of these examples
slightly confusing.
I'd also question the relative levels of coverage for some of the
topics other than references and modules. It's very encouraging to see
a chapter in a beginner's text that introduces automated testing; but
arguably this should be extended at the expense of the material on
preparing module distributions and submitting modules to CPAN. More
importantly, it strikes me as particularly strange that use
is covered so lightly and so late in the book (chapter 12). Chapter 2
describes how require can load modules, including the use
of packages as namespaces, but doesn't go so far as to describe
importing library functions into another namespace. I'd like to see
much better coverage of how to create function libraries - and
especially of how to use them, given the importance of CPAN as a
repository of reusable code.
A few relatively minor quibbles aside, this seems like an excellent introduction to the use of references and object-oriented programming in Perl. A little more focus on using and creating libraries of functions would be helpful, but all the necessary information is there.
Table of contents
Ch1 : Introduction Ch2 : Building Larger Programs Ch3 : Introduction to References Ch4 : References and Scoping Ch5 : Manipulating Complex Data Structures Ch6 : Subroutine References Ch7 : Practical Reference Tricks Ch8 : Introduction to Objects Ch9 : Objects with Data Ch10 : Object Destruction Ch11 : Some Advanced Object Topics Ch12 : Using Modules Ch13 : Writing a Distribution Ch14 : Essential Testing Ch15 : Contributing to CPAN Appendix. Answers to Exercises Index
