I bought this book for two reasons.

First, I wanted to get it because I didnt have it and I own the rest of the oreilly perl books. For this purposes, the book is excellent. It definitely rounds out a collection.

Second, I wanted to write some complex data storage and data parsing algorithms. I was going to be using complex data structures, and I was going to need efficient algorithms. Furthermore, I was going to need to implement some C code because parts of the task involved legacy code.

This book provided sort of indirect hints into what might be a good idea. However, as a whole, it is one of the least useful of my perl books.

I think that most people who are going to be able to understand this book arent going to need it for 75% of the tasks theyre going to be embarking on. Something like Mastering Algorithms With Perl and, to a lesser extent, Mastering Regular Expressions, would definitely be more useful.

Advanced Perl Programming contains one section that none of the other perl books out there contain -- a section on embedding C in perl and perl in C. This is something I found absolutely necessary, and this book was the only real source of that information. However, the examples and code provided are all but useless. Furthermore, the Inline:: group of modules for perl... make almost all the examples and code in this book obsolete.

To sum this up in two sentences: This book does not provide anything that you cannot glean from perldoc with equal efficiency or retention. This book provides examples and instruction that are largely obsolete or better provided by other books.

This book is designed for those wishing to maximise their understanding of Perl; the text is suited to an audience familiar with programming technique (ample references are provided for those not familiar with the underlying issues). At the script level there are discussions of refs/globs and GC, symbol tables, OO, eval and tie. At the C level, extending, embedding and operation of the perl interpreter is discussed at length for up-to-date versions of perl5. These concepts are reinforced through examples built around databases, GUIs, networking and dynamic code generation. The writing style is clear and concise and clears up many common misconceptions people have about Perl. One highly useful feature is a summary comparison with other languages and the end of each chapter, contrasting the Perl functionality against Tcl, C/C++, Python and Java. This text is an excellent companion to the Blue Camel providing a broader view of advanced language features. An essential companion for serious perl developers.

Advanced Perl Programming definitely changed the way I code perl. I would say that by reading it and executing the concepts contained within my productivity has gone up ten fold. I currently own 11 books dealing with perl and I still refer to this one most often. If you learned the ideas presented in Learning Perl and perused Programming Perl this book is a very valid next step. Some of the complaints about this book presented in other reviews are real however as I said before...this is the book I reach for most often. If you write perl this book should be in your reference collection. It deals with varied topics and Sriram does a fairly good job of linking them together. Although other books have dealt with one topic better (such as Mastering Regular Expressions), none I have read increased my productivity as much. For those new to perl, look elsewhere to pick up on the basics.

A finely honed search for a textual prehistory of a visual convention: the multiplying arms and heads of many Indian images. Srinivasan finds evidence to suggest cosmogonic motivations in the origin and development of what she calls the multiplicity convention, and she weaves early textual sources and archaeological evidences from the northwest particularly effectively, if at times with a monothematic doggedness that misses some of the multiple layerings of the convention she analyses.

Of the different internship books I've used at my career center, this is the LEAST useful. Half of the phone numbers didn't work! Yale students who put this book together, wake up!

This is the most helpful book ever! I couldn't put it down all weekend and I loved to feel its glossy pages on my fingers. MMM.

This was one of my top pick when I browsed the library for network programming in Java. The excitement came with the big-bang title, but it didn't live up to my expectations. It's usage spectrum lies more towards a learning tool rather than a reference book. The biggest dissappointment came in the "Network & Sockets" section which didn't have real world examples. It's got good coverage on GUIs using AWTs but performs poorly in terms of indexing and collecting examples into a single area.

Hence, it's a confusing reference book, and a so-so network-programming learning tool. It's no where near it's subtitle claim of a "Reference" nor a "Superbible".

I had had high hopes for this book, the companion to the Java Language API Superbible; but as high the expectations, as great the dissappointment. This book advertises itself as "the Comprehensive Reference for the Java Programming Language". That may be so, but a reference book is only as good as it's index, and for a 900+ page book, a 17 page index is simply not acceptable. The index is sparse and minimal, and does not even contain the class methods, except under the class items. This means you have to first look up which class a method belongs to - which you cannot do with this book. The sparce index, compounded with a confused ordering of the information in the book, makes it very hard for the readers to find what they are looking for. The contents themselves are very detailed and contain many examples - but what good is detailed information if you can't find it? If you need a good reference book, try elsewhere

This is just the book for people wanting to learn network programming in java. In just about two weeks I was able to write cutting edge java applications/applets. This book is a must for anyone who is seriously into java or network programming. Lucidly written, its a pleasure to read. There are lot of good examples to aid ones understanding of the subject. Again, this book is a must!

I need this book for writing thesis and so on...........