>>>>> "kotto" == kotto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
kotto> k, something wierd happened here ... anyways, the authors
kotto> are: Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
Not for the very-soon-to-be-released third edition. That'd be
me and my senior trainer, Tom Phoenix (rootbeer). And here's the
section from the "what's new" page:
o The text is completely new. There hasn't been a single "cut-n-paste" from
any prior edition of this book. Instead, we derived the text from our
Stonehenge "Learning Perl" courseware and the instructor notes we've
created and road-tested. (Some of the exercises are similar simply
because we were using the prior editions as our textbook until
recently. But even those have mutated during the rewrites.)
o We've broken the hard-to-swallow-all-at-once regular expressions section
into three easily digestible sections.
o We've eliminated the need for a separate "Windows-specific" version of
this book by creating exercises with both Unix and Windows in
mind. Sorry, Erik.
o We got rid of the artificial "control structures" chapter, moving the
while and if statement earlier, and the foreach and for loops later. This
gives us more useful examples and exercises for the scalars chapter, for
example.
o We moved subroutines much earlier, in hopes that we would finish more
exercises in some of the middle chapters with subroutines, although it
appears that we didn't actually do that.
o We now teach element syntax before the aggregate syntax for both arrays
and hashes. This has worked a bit of a miracle in the classrooms, since
it nearly always keeps beginners from the all-too-common mistake of
writing a slice where they mean an element. At the risk of hubris, we'll
admit that we expect other Perl instructors and books to follow our lead
here.
o The exercises are more real-world and better paced.
o We've included information on use strict, warnings, and modules, although
mostly as pointers for further information.
o We've made the book much less addressed to the Unix System Administrator,
and much more to the general programmer. The phrase "like C" has been
nearly completely eliminated.
o The jokes are better. (We're constantly improvising jokes in the
classroom, and some of these end up as part of the standard Stonehenge
script, and the best of those ended up here. You should see what didn't
make the cut!)
o We deeply regret that this edition lacks the wonderfully witty Foreword,
written by Larry Wall, who was busy defining Perl 6 as we went to
press. Larry is always supportive of our efforts, and we know that he's
still part of the book in spirit, if not in word, to wish you the best as
your start your holiday in the lustrous land of Perl.
--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!
