Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions (Circle series)
Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions (Circle series) by Dave Roth
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Number of Pages:
- 752
- ISBN:
- 157870216X
- Product Group:
- book
- Publisher:
- Sams
- Publication Date:
- Sept. 27, 2001
- BooksForGeeks.com ID:
- 1419
Core Perl is an incredibly powerful programming language which has proved a major hit with the Unix and Windows programming community.
Add a whole heap of plug-in modules and it raises the language to a whole new level of usability and usefulness.
In this excellent volume Dave Roth (who, coincidentally, is a prolific Win32 Perl module writer) thoroughly documents and explains the standard extensions, gathering for the first time all of the information vital to squeezing the best from these freeware add-ins.
From ODBC to user authentication over networks and even playing .WAV files there's something here to excite the interest of anyone using Perl on a Windows-based platform, even to the extent that Roth explains the intricacies of using the Win32::API module to access DLLs directly--powerful stuff indeed.
Backed up by dozens of useful code snippets and examples this is such a useful book no self- respecting Win/Perl hacker should be without it.
Reviews for Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions (Circle series)
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Invaluable for perl on Win32
Rated out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2002
This book is an excellent resource for people writing administrative scripts on the Win32 platform using perl. There is a lot of information available for working with user accounts, groups, and machine settings, network shares, etc.There is some bias in the book towards the extensions that Dave Roth has written himself, but the book covers using some of the other extensions that are out there. Would I have liked the same treatment for all of the useful Win32 modules - of course, but the book is already 625 pages long - Dave could have written a 1000 page book, and still not have covered everything.
If you write admin scripts in perl, this book, and the O'Reilly Perl CD Bookshelf should cover most of what need to know.
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Ok - but could be more balanced
Rated out of 5 stars, July 12th, 1999
Mixed feelings about this book. Some chapters are fine - others leave a lot to be desired. Overall it is worth having as it does clear up some issues and the chapters on writing your own extensions, file management, data access and processes are very good. There are some errors and typos that would stump a novice Win32 perl programmer however.I got the impression that the author concentrated on the extensions he developed very well but only gave the the other (more useful?) extensions a decent explanation if he was interested in them.
The book starts off well detailing error handling and system administration for Perl on the Win32 platform. It started to dissapoint here as, in places, much more detail is included on the authors own web pages. There is a lot of detail on the more esetoric details of Win32 Perl such as Com & OLE, consoles and sound. This stuff is interesting but not as important as the more common and useful extensions dealing in, say, system administration.
The author (not surprisingly!) treats the extensions he has written himself in most detail - ODBC in particular. This is fine but glaring omissions are even here. For example the chapter on communication mentions the win32::pipe and win32::message extentions but nowhere does it explain that these are additional extentions that need to be downloaded and installed first (in most cases at least). I know from first hand experience that this would fox a newcomer to Win32 Perl builds.
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Don't bother
Rated out of 5 stars, June 12rd, 1999
I was pretty excited to see a dedicated treatment of Perl on Windows (Learning on Win32 systems doesn't quite cut the mustard) and bought this book. However, after finding 4 or 5 typos within the first 40 pages I decided it wasn't worth the investment. Many were pretty obvious (examples for gethostbyname and gethostbyaddr both used gethostbyaddr (or maybe it was vice versa)) but this many syntax typos this early in the book made me return the book. This is the right track but I'm going to wait for the second edition. -
Must have for NT Perl Users
Rated out of 5 stars, May 12th, 1999
There are tons of bits and pieces of this information on the web and in .htm help files, but this book brings it together nicely. -
Good discussions on Perl and NT issues.
Rated out of 5 stars, May 12th, 1999
Well written discussions on Perl and NT issues. Some topics were missing like MAPI and TAPI, but overall well written. I recommend it for anyone using Perl and NT.