I bought 'Effective Perl Programming' by Joseph N. Hall and Randal L. Schwartz, about two years ago along with 'Intermediate Perl' and 'How to Joust Underwater'. When it arrived I quickly flipped through it and decided I could not really understand a lot of it. My decision then was that it was not the book to read until it looked more friendly.
It was spotted last week and jumped out of my bookshelf. As I opened it and started to read it, it did not seem to be the book that I had first encountered. In fact it was really quite accessible and rather exciting. I greedily started reading it and skimming through the code examples. Not until I had read it for about an hour did I see that what was once a mystery was now becoming clear. To my delight I could see things that I could use and apply.
This I am sure is not unusual. It was just the right book at the right time, even though it had collected dust on the shelf for a couple of years. I particularly liked the 'Schwartzian Transform'. It felt like reading module source code because it looks like alot of the examples are realword rather than contrived. If I feel that the code is real code then I do seem to take it more seriously. This may be unfair of me to do but its one of the ways a subject keeps my attention.
There's a second edition coming out soon.
I haven't had a chance to reread the 1st edition but from the advance copy I have (from the Effective Perl class brian d foy taught at Frozen Perl) it looks just as good as I remember it.
Definitely updated to reflect the 10 years or so of changes in Perl since its initial publication.
