PERLBOOK(1) | Perl Programmers Reference Guide | PERLBOOK(1)

# NAME

perlbook - Books about and related to Perl

# DESCRIPTION

There are many books on Perl and Perl-related. A few of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at <https://www.perl.org/books/library.html> . We list some of the books here, and while listing a book implies our endorsement, don't think that not including a book means anything.

Most of these books are available online through O'Reilly Online Learning ( <https://www.oreilly.com> ).

## The most popular books

The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:

Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):

       by Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall with Jon Orwant
       ISBN 978-0-596-00492-7 [4th edition February 2012]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-9890-3 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/9781449321451/

The Ram is a cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to accomplish specific tasks:

The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):

       by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
       with Foreword by Larry Wall
       ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
       ISBN 978-0-596-15888-0 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/0596003137/

If you want to learn the basics of Perl, you might start with the Llama book, which assumes that you already know a little about programming:

Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")

       by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
       ISBN 978-1-4920-9495-1 [8th edition August 2021]
       ISBN 978-1-4920-9492-0 [ebook]
       https://www.learning-perl.com/

The tutorial started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which introduces the intermediate features of references, data structures, object-oriented programming, and modules:

Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")

       by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
               foreword by Damian Conway
       ISBN 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-0459-1 [ebook]
       https://www.intermediateperl.com/

## References

You might want to keep these desktop references close by your keyboard:

Perl 5 Pocket Reference

       by Johan Vromans
       ISBN 978-1-4493-0370-9 [5th edition July 2011]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-0813-1 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/9781449311186/

Perl Debugger Pocket Reference

       by Richard Foley
       ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]
       ISBN 978-0-596-55625-9 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/9781449311186/

Regular Expression Pocket Reference

       by Tony Stubblebine
       ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [2nd edition July 2007]
       ISBN 978-0-596-55782-9 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/9780596514273/

## Tutorials

Beginning Perl
  (There are 2 books with this title)

       by Curtis 'Ovid' Poe
       ISBN 978-1-118-01384-7
       https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/Beginning+Perl-p-9781118235638
       by James Lee
       ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010 & ebook]
       https://www.apress.com/9781430227939

Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")

       by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
       ISBN 978-1-4493-0358-7 [6th edition June 2011]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-0458-4 [ebook]
       https://www.learning-perl.com/

Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")

       by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
               foreword by Damian Conway
       ISBN 978-1-4493-9309-0 [2nd edition August 2012]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-0459-1 [ebook]
       https://www.intermediateperl.com/

Mastering Perl

          by brian d foy
       ISBN 9978-1-4493-9311-3 [2st edition January 2014]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-6487-8 [ebook]
       https://www.masteringperl.org/

Effective Perl Programming

       by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy
       ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010]
       https://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/

## Task-Oriented

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN

       by Sam Tregar
       ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002 & ebook]
       https://www.apress.com/9781590590188>

The Perl Cookbook

       by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
           with Foreword by Larry Wall
       ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
       ISBN 978-0-596-15888-0 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/0596003137/

Automating System Administration with Perl

       by David N. Blank-Edelman
       ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009]
       ISBN 978-0-596-80251-6 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/9780596801892/

Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl

       by Linchi Shea
       ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003 & ebook]
       https://www.apress.com/9781590590973

## Special Topics

Regular Expressions Cookbook

       by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan
       ISBN 978-1-4493-1943-4 [2nd edition August 2012]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-2747-7 [ebook]
       https://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023630.do

Programming the Perl DBI

       by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes
       ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-8670-2 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/1565926994/

Perl Best Practices

       by Damian Conway
       ISBN 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]
       ISBN 978-0-596-15900-9 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/0596001738/

Higher-Order Perl

       by Mark-Jason Dominus
       ISBN 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005]
       free ebook https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/
       https://hop.perl.plover.com/

Mastering Regular Expressions

       by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
       ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]
       ISBN 978-0-596-55899-4 [ebook]
       https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/-/0596528124/

Network Programming with Perl

       by Lincoln Stein
       ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/0201615711/

Perl Template Toolkit

       by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley
       ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003]
       ISBN 978-1-4493-8647-4 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/0596004761/

Object Oriented Perl

       by Damian Conway
           with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
       ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999 & ebook]
       https://www.manning.com/conway/

Data Munging with Perl

       by Dave Cross
       ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001 & ebook]
       https://www.manning.com/cross>

Mastering Perl/Tk

       by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
       ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]
       ISBN 978-0-596-10344-6 [ebook]
       https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/-/1565927168/

Extending and Embedding Perl

       by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
       ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002 & ebook]
       https://www.manning.com/jenness

Pro Perl Debugging

       by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
       ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005 & ebook]
       https://www.apress.com/9781590594544

## Free (as in beer) books

Some of these books are available as free downloads.

Higher-Order Perl: <https://hop.perl.plover.com/>

Modern Perl: <https://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/>

## Other interesting, non-Perl books

You might notice several familiar Perl concepts in this collection of ACM columns from Jon Bentley. The similarity to the title of the major Perl book (which came later) is not completely accidental:

Programming Pearls

       by Jon Bentley
       ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]

More Programming Pearls

       by Jon Bentley
       ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]

## A note on freshness

Each version of Perl comes with the documentation that was current at the time of release. This poses a problem for content such as book lists. There are probably very nice books published after this list was included in your Perl release, and you can check the latest released version at <https://perldoc.perl.org/perlbook.html> .

Some of the books we've listed appear almost ancient in internet scale, but we've included those books because they still describe the current way of doing things. Not everything in Perl changes every day. Many of the beginner-level books, too, go over basic features and techniques that are still valid today. In general though, we try to limit this list to books published in the past five years.

## Get your book listed

If your Perl book isn't listed and you think it should be, let us know. <mailto:perl5-porters@perl.org>

2025-01-28 | perl v5.40.1