Perl Core Language: Little Black Book by Steven Steven Holzner, Keith Weiskamp (Editor)

I've been using Perl for over 3 years now, but am always interested in Perl reference books that can make learning more easier. I wasn't sure how much I'd like this book, since most of my perl books are the standard blue O'Reilly ones, but I was plesantly surprised.

This is probably the most well laid out perl reference book I've ever used, and at just under 500 pages "Little" might be a bit inaccurate of a title (there is a bigger one Perl Black Book which, at 1296 pages, does make this book look small). This book is just packed with useful information. When I first got it I didn't have a lot of time to dive into it, so on evenings when I was feeling adventurous I'd just open to a random page and see what I could learn. It was always interesting!

The book starts out with some Perl basics, but I wouldn't recommend this to someone new to programming, it's aimed at intermediate to advanced Perl programmers. The section on Regular Expressions is excellent, I've learned so much from it. The book even touches upon Perl CGI, modules, and using Perl with XML.

Great all-around reference book, it's now sitting on the "most used" shelf next to my computer.