Learning Perl 6th Edition available | Hacker News Reader

Learning Perl 6th Edition available

oreilly.com

59 pointsdharmatech19 comments

Why can't I upgrade my digital edition? Not that books are that expensive but if the original is work $20 why is the same thing with a few minor changes still $20?

I frequently run into this and wish I could buy a diff of the editions for a reduced price.

Great that they removed the preface from the example chapters. Now, you can't find out what has changed in this edition. I saw a reference to StackOverflow in the introduction that I guess wasn't there in the previous version. But apart from that I have no clue if I should get it ...

From the Preface:

P.6. Changes from the Previous Edition

The text is updated for the latest version, Perl 5.14, and some of the code only works with that version. We note in the text when we are talking about a Perl 5.14 feature, and we mark those code sections with a special use statement that ensures you’re using the right version:

  use 5.014; # this script requires Perl 5.14 or greater

If you don’t see that use 5.014 in a code example (or a similar statement with a different version), it should work all the way back to Perl 5.8. To see which version of Perl you have, try the -v command-line switch:

  $ perl -v

Here’s some of the new features from Perl 5.14 that we cover, and where appropriate, we still show you the old ways of doing the same thing:

* We include Unicode examples and features where appropriate. If you haven’t started playing with Unicode, we include a primer in Appendix C. You have to bite the bullet sometime, so it might as well be now. You’ll see Unicode throughout the book, most notably in the chapters on Scalars (Chapter 2), Input/Output (Chapter 5), and Sorting (Chapter 14).

* There is more information in the regular expression chapters, covering the new features from Perl 5.14 to deal with Unicode case-folding. The regular expression operators have new /a, /u, and /l switches. We now cover matching by Unicode properties with the \p{} and \P{} regular expression features.

* Perl 5.14 adds a nondestructive substitution operator (Chapter 9), which turns out to be really handy.

* Smart matching and given-when has mutated a bit since their introduction in Perl 5.10, so we update Chapter 15 to cover the new rules.

* We updated and expanded Perl Modules (Chapter 11) to include the latest news, including the zero-conf cpanm tool. We add some more module examples as well.

* Some of the items previously in Appendix B, the advanced-but-not-demonstrated features, move into the main text. Notably, that includes the fat arrow => moving into Hashes (Chapter 6) and splice moving into Lists and Arrays (Chapter 3).

... Perl 6... available!!!!!!

been for a while, http://rakudo.org/

While true, I think that until a link for something downloadable at http://www.perl.org/get.html appears, it's not going to be considered "real" by many. I know of at least 2 large companies that restrict its use for precisely that reason.

If Perl had a single-minded organization behind it, changing that page would be simpler. Alas, volunteers do (and don't do) what volunteers want to do (or don't want to do).

<3 I owe so much to Learning Perl

I got a little excited when I though "Lama book for perl 6!", then I was a more than a little disappointed.

How is this any different than the previous 5 editions? And if not, why should anybody care there is a new version? And how is this hacker newsworthy?

One could argue that Perl 5 has gotten interesting again lately, and that the versions since the last edition are responsible for some of that. Smart match, given/when, a number of refinements that can reduce ambiguity, etc.

And, of course Learning Perl is often a new Perl programmer's first experience with the language...it's good for them to learn current best practices from day one.

Perl 5 may have gotten more interesting lately, but is any of this is a beginners book?

The llama book is ubiquitous, you can find it anywhere, including used copies for a few bucks, second hand book stores, the cubicle next to yours, etc, and from what I've seen its been unchanged. What in this new version justifies all this fanfare?

In a word: Modern Perl.

In Perl there are many ways to do a thing, but not all of the ways are made equal. Some of the ways have been newly created since the last editions of this book came out, some of the ways have proven to be bad, others have stepped into the limelight and been proven as good, and yet others have become a lot more important in the past five years.

This revision updates the contents of the book to take these changes into account.

I'd, personally, prefer to see a new camel. There have been like three llamas since the last new camel. But, I guess Larry's been sort of busy lately.

As Draegtun says, the (very welcome) Camel update is coming this October.

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004927

Didn't smart match and given/when get added in 5.10? If so they should have been covered in the 5th edition (which claims to include 5.10).

They were covered in the 5th edition, but there have been changes since 5.10, so the book has been updated in those sections as well.

>> Smart matching and given-when has mutated a bit since their introduction in Perl 5.10, so we update Chapter 15 to cover the new rules.

How is this any different than the previous 5 editions?

Have a look at http://www.learning-perl.com/ where the author (brian d foy) blogs on the updates made.

why should anybody care there is a new version?

Its good to know that there is an updated version of the book. I've never read the book myself but its handy to recommend to friends/clients/etc that I deal with.

And how is this hacker newsworthy?

Not sure but perhaps the upcoming 4th edition of Programming Perl due in October is newsworthy? http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596004927

I'm guessing it covers stuff in 5.12 and 5.14, although a lot of that wouldn't be relevant to beginners.

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