perlbook - Books about and related to Perl
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 http://books.perl.org/ . 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 Safari Books Online ( http://safaribooksonline.com/ ).
The major reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
ISBN 978-0-596-00027-1 [3rd edition July 2000]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000271/The Ram is a cookbook with hundreds of examples of using Perl to accomplish specific tasks:
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN 978-0-596-00313-5 [2nd Edition August 2003]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135/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:
by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
ISBN 978-0-596-52011-3 [5th edition June 2008]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520113The tutorial started in the Llama continues in the Alpaca, which introduces the intermediate features of references, data structures, object-oriented programming, and modules:
by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
foreword by Damian Conway
ISBN 978-0-596-00478-1 [1st edition March 2006]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004781/You might want to keep these desktop references close by your keyboard:
by Johan Vromans
ISBN 978-0-596-00374-6 [4th edition July 2002]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003746/by Richard Foley
ISBN 978-0-596-00503-0 [1st edition January 2004]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005030/by Tony Stubblebine
ISBN 978-0-596-51427-3 [July 2007]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514273/by James Lee
ISBN 1-59059-391-X [3rd edition April 2010]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430227931by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
ISBN 978-0-596-52010-6 [5th edition June 2008]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix
foreword by Damian Conway
ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102067by brian d foy
ISBN 978-0-596-10206-7 [1st edition July 2007]
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242by Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy
ISBN 0-321-49694-9 [2nd edition 2010]
http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/by Sam Tregar
ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/159059018Xby Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
with foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [2nd edition August 2003]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003135by David N. Blank-Edelman
ISBN 978-0-596-00639-6 [2nd edition May 2009]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006396by Linchi Shea
ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/159059097Xby Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan
ISBN 978-0-596-52069-4 [May 2009]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520694by Tim Bunce and Alligator Descartes
ISBN 978-1-56592-699-8 [February 2000]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926998by Damian Conway
ISBN: 978-0-596-00173-5 [1st edition July 2005]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001735by Mark-Jason Dominus
ISBN: 1-55860-701-3 [1st edition March 2005]
http://hop.perl.plover.com/by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
ISBN 978-0-596-52812-6 [3rd edition August 2006]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126by Lincoln Stein
ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Network-Programming-with-Perl/9780201615715.pageby Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley
ISBN 978-0-596-00476-7 [December 2003]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004767by Damian Conway
with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
http://www.manning.com/conway/by Dave Cross
ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
http://www.manning.com/crossby Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
ISBN 978-1-56592-716-2 [1st edition January 2002]
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565927162by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
http://www.manning.com/jennessby Richard Foley with Andy Lester
ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590594541Some of these books are available as free downloads.
Higher-Order Perl: http://hop.perl.plover.com/
Writing Perl Modules for CPAN: http://www.apress.com/resource/freeebook/9781590590188
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:
by Jon Bentley
ISBN 978-0-201-65788-3 [2 edition, October 1999]by Jon Bentley
ISBN 0-201-11889-0 [January 1988]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 http://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.
If your Perl book isn't listed and you think it should be, let us know.