Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!apctrc!drd!mark
From: mark@DRD.Com (Mark Lawrence)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: How to Learn Perl?
Message-ID: <1990Sep22.193701.20416@DRD.Com>
Date: 22 Sep 90 19:37:01 GMT
References: <1990Sep21.101713.15459@cbnewsh.att.com> <1990Sep22.103545.16583@iwarp.intel.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: DRD Corporation
Lines: 24

} In article <1990Sep21.101713.15459@cbnewsh.att.com>, shun@cbnewsh (shun.cheung) writes:
} | I am new to this group and would like to learn Perl.
} | What is the best book or manual around? Please follow up
} | or send e-mail to me directly. Thanks in advance.
} 
merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) wrote:
} The best manual around is the *only* manual around... what you get
} when you type "man perl".  It's roughly 71 troff pages.

There are a lot of gripes around about the man page.  But it was the way
I learned perl (ok, so it was the way *everbody* except Larry learned
perl; read on) .  I hadn't done a whole lot of shell, awk or sed
programming before I read the perl man page, so if anybody should have
gotten lost, I should have.  I found that one good read through of the
man page coupled with converting a simple awk script or two to a perl script
(using a2p) and examining the results was all I needed to launch me into
perl.  Perl scripts now constitute the very heart of the data management
and auto code generation tools on our project and shell, awk and sed
programming make a lot more sense after having used perl.  

In summary, the best way to learn is to simply jump in and *do*
something with it.
-- 
mark@DRD.Com uunet!apctrc!drd!mark$B!J%^!<%/!!!&%m!<%l%s%9!K(B