Book Review - Wicked Cool Perl Scripts by Steve Oualline
Category Book Reviews
If you have a decent background in Perl and you are looking for practical ideas for scripts, Wicked Cool Perl Scripts by Steve Oualline has a number of benefits to offer...
Contents:
General-Purpose Utilities; Website Management; CGI Debugging; CGI Programs; Internet Data Mining; Unix System Administration; Picture Utilities; Games and Learning Tools; Development Tools; Mapping; Regular Expression Grapher; Index
Each of the chapters includes a number of scripts that are ready to be used and/or modified for your own purposes. The general format is to present the code first, and then tell how to run it, how the module(s) are used in the script, the results you'll see from the script, how it all works, and in some cases how you can hack the script in order to enhance it. On the associated web site, there's also full documentation on the script. So if there's one that you really want to incorporate into your arsenal, you can download it. Makes the book more focused and concise. There were plenty of items in here that piqued my interest, such as the scripts for checking stock quotes and for checking your web site for broken links. There is also a cool script that allows you to search your file systems for duplicate files based on size and a generated checksum. That'd be great for all those sound and video files that look different, but that are duplicates in everything but name.
As with most "recipe"-style books, some people will find a ton of value, and others might not find anything that floats their boat. It's definitely a case of "your mileage may vary". Also, a beginning Perl programmer would be over their head here. You could probably work your way through the code and figure it out, but it would be slow going. But having some background in Perl will allow you to start getting some ideas about potential "wicked cool" scripts that you could use in your toolbox...
If you have a decent background in Perl and you are looking for practical ideas for scripts, Wicked Cool Perl Scripts by Steve Oualline has a number of benefits to offer...
Contents:
General-Purpose Utilities; Website Management; CGI Debugging; CGI Programs; Internet Data Mining; Unix System Administration; Picture Utilities; Games and Learning Tools; Development Tools; Mapping; Regular Expression Grapher; Index
Each of the chapters includes a number of scripts that are ready to be used and/or modified for your own purposes. The general format is to present the code first, and then tell how to run it, how the module(s) are used in the script, the results you'll see from the script, how it all works, and in some cases how you can hack the script in order to enhance it. On the associated web site, there's also full documentation on the script. So if there's one that you really want to incorporate into your arsenal, you can download it. Makes the book more focused and concise. There were plenty of items in here that piqued my interest, such as the scripts for checking stock quotes and for checking your web site for broken links. There is also a cool script that allows you to search your file systems for duplicate files based on size and a generated checksum. That'd be great for all those sound and video files that look different, but that are duplicates in everything but name.
As with most "recipe"-style books, some people will find a ton of value, and others might not find anything that floats their boat. It's definitely a case of "your mileage may vary". Also, a beginning Perl programmer would be over their head here. You could probably work your way through the code and figure it out, but it would be slow going. But having some background in Perl will allow you to start getting some ideas about potential "wicked cool" scripts that you could use in your toolbox...
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