Good, yes. Wicked cool, maybe not.

This is a great book for learning by example, particularly as a follow-on to something like Learning Perl to get you started. It provides a number of useful scripts (even though some of them duplicate functionality of common system utilities), with explanations of how and why they work, and even notes on how you might alter the code to suit your own purposes. If you're a relatively new programmer that already has the basics of Perl in mind, but find yourself at loose ends wondering what to do next to help cement what you know and start learning more, this book may be exactly what you need. It's also useful for figuring out some of the basic principles of translating code between Perl and another language, thanks to the source code explanations.

The scripts themselves, however, are not exactly what I would call "wicked cool". The title is an obvious marketing conceit, designed to make the book seem more enticing. Most of the scripts, in fact, are surprisingly mundane -- but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. You may actually find yourself using some of them, with minor alterations, in your day-to-day life. Just don't expect to be wowed by the scripts themselves.

Other Reviews

• a mixed bag of solid scripting
• A book full of examples of how NOT to write perl
• Good, yes. Wicked cool, maybe not.