Object Oriented Perl: A Comprehensive Guide to Concepts and Programming Techniques

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...as a 1989 Keanu Reeves might say, if his Ted Logan character could possibly comprehend computer programming.

To my ever-growing stack of O'Reilly Perl books, I've just added this gem, which fits nicely alongside Effective Perl Programming (ISBN 0201419750 for the uninformed) as a non-O'Reilly Perl book that every Perl programmer should have at their disposal.

Not content with writing just a Perl book, Damian Conway spends the first chapter explaining normally confusing object-orientation concepts in a very clear manner. This tutorial alone is worth a good chunk of the purchase price, especially if you tend to find typical articles on object-oriented programming overwhelming. To fill the rest of your order, the next 400+ pages are pure Perl, as Conway takes every concept introduced in the first chapter and spends a chapter on each one, showing you how Perl accomplishes them. The examples and code samples are very clear, very real-world, and (thusly) very easy to understand. A good deal of time is also spent on tricks and optimizations to help reduce the much-touted performance hit from OO Perl. The later chapters dive into more advanced topics and start combining all the core concepts together.

Besides teaching all the ins and outs of OOP, a good number of paragraphs are also devoted to non-OOP advanced Perl techniques. This book transcends its title; it's a book for anyone looking to move into the advanced Perl realm, OOP or not.

This book has definitely helped me increase my level of Perl competence and the knowledge gained is presently working to streamline a number of projects I'm on. I'm elated. I think I'll play my air guitar in celebration.

I was a bit skeptical when I was first handed a copy of Object Oriented Perl because I tend to be biased toward O'Reilly books. However, after reading it I felt it is one of the best Perl books I have come across. Most Perl books deal with Perl as a scripting language. Conway treats pull like a real development language. He gives the standard introduction to object orientation and objects in Perl and then quickly moves past this to look at some of the unique features of Perl's OO development in Perl. For example, he covers blessing every type of reference possible, why you would want to bless a particular type of reference and what the pros and cons are of each approach.

Conway also gives a very thorough coverage of implementating true data encapsulation in Perl and presents several methods for doing so.

Another thing that struck me about this book is Conway's attention to detail. In his code samples, he carefully explains why each line was written a certain way. He even notes which version of Perl a certain feature or module first appeared in.

All in all, a wonderful book. Even if you have been developing in Perl for a while this book has something to offer.

Conway's Object Oriented Perl is the definitive work on object-oriented Perl programming and will probably remain so for some time (if not indefinitely). It illustrates how to construct all manner of object-oriented frameworks in Perl and aptly demonstrates the wide range of styles that are possible--from simplistic to complex and constrained.

My only complaint about this work, which is more of an opinion that isn't relative to its rating, is that I think Perl programs are more beautiful and elegant when they don't embody complex scaffolding of the type that this book so ably describes. I see this book as a Perl counterpart to Coplien's Advanced C++, but in the case of C++, it's possible to bury scaffolding in a library out of sight in a way that isn't quite possible in Perl. I'm not sure how many Perl programmers actually know C++ (my experience is that it's a surprisingly small number) but I think that C++ is a language that tolerates and even demands such complexity in a way that Perl doesn't.

One thing for sure--the coverage of objects here is vastly superior to that in the turquoise Camel book (Programming Perl). I'm sorry, but I think the topic deserves more descriptive terminology than "thingy." Conway knows his concepts, knows how to execute them in Perl, and sets them down lucidly and, yes, exhaustively.

I'm not sure it's worth it in the long run, but that's just me, and obviously others see architectural tradeoffs differently. Meanwhile, this is an excellent, literate work that enhances both the capabilities of programmers and the stature of Perl. If nothing else, studying it will definitely improve your understanding of the language and idioms of Perl. But I would expect it to be more rewarding than that.

After reading so many positive reviews of Damian Conway's "Object Oriented (OO) Perl," I decided to buy a copy and increase my understanding of said subject. Unfortunately, after about two months of thoroughly dissecting each chapter in the book, I must admit that I was surprisingly disappointed.

I consider the first two chapters ("What you need to know first" and "What you need to know second") to be well written and quite useful. These chapters effectively and succinctly expressed the non-OO aspect of Perl programming. When I delved excitedly into chapter three, however, it seemed to me that Damian Conway lost his interest in teaching Perl, in lieu of underlining his own mastery of the language. Too many times I recall his overly complicated one-liners getting in the way of a clear explanation of the point he was trying to convey. I bought Damian Conway's OO Perl because I wanted to learn more about object orientation in Perl-not to view obfuscated code. A *lot* more clarity would have the made the book much more useful.

A second frustrating point about the book is how Damian writes a given class, and then fails to provide even a simple example of how to use said class. As a programmer reading the book, I found it quite annoying that I had to so often write my own "class calling" scripts. Of the many classes contained in the contents of the book, I recall only one or two working examples of how to use said classes! This baffled me throughout the book. I kept wondering, "Are examples of how to use these classes available on a website or something?" Even as I write this review now, I'm shaking my head at the lack of examples provided in the book.

In my opinion, the most appropriate title for Damian Conway's book is "Obfuscated Object Oriented Perl." The solid first two chapters aren't worth the ...cost of the book, and the OO chapters (3-14) are practically worthless-both as a reference, and as a means of instruction. The freely available OO Perl tutorials are of much more value than Damian's book. Said tutorials will not only save you money, but they will also bolster your understanding of OO Perl, which is something I so greatly wanted, but so widely failed to receive, from Damian Conway's OO Perl.

I found this book to be utterly useless.

little gems in the code examples like "..etc.." make it worthless as reference.

If you don't understand oop abstraction from a C++ university world, your lost. There is no what-is-actually-going-on explinations of the perl code in regards to replication of data structures in memory, or reference munging in the symbol table.

There is little to no helpfull information assosciating code design to the management of files (otherwise known as packages) module heirarchies, or namespaces.

Every oop question I have had while working with perl that has been referred to this book has gone unanswered.

Basically, this book is only usefull if you have already been taught to think and design in an oop world, including a full understanding of all the idiotic jargon used to describe an action that is going on in the real world, in real memory, and with a real processor.

If you already have a good understanding of what an object (data structure replicated in memory), class (a bunch of em that conform to the same IO mechanism and behave the same), and method (code-routine that acts on that "object" data structure) then this book might be worth your while.

Except of course, that if you knew that, you could learn everything this book is going to tell you by simply looking at the syntactical structure and reading a few paragraphs in the camel book.

my $firewood = shelf->remove_book() ;

Preface: I'm a detail person, the top level view is what I ignore to get to the facts. I am entirely turned off by the normal practice of writing up one or two example apps, and then ignoring giving the full details on commands, such as what all the options are, or what the syntax to uuse is. If your app is different than the example, you're pretty much out of luck. That's the situation that other books I'd bought had placed me, while I was trying to learn Perl for a non-trivial app I needed to deliver. I was so frustrated I was nearly in tears.

I don't recall what caused me to buy this book; perhaps it was the only Perl OO book. I am so glad I did, because the amount of info that the author has put into this book is amazing. Not just that, it's the *choices* he made, of what to explain. He's picked all the pieces that the other books glossed over, and examined the missing pieces, so that I now understand the"why" behind many oddities, and I now can push myself much farther forward.

Sort of like, the other books pose the questions, this book answers them.

If you only buy 2 Perl books, make this one of them. Ignore the fact that the title says OO. Yes, it does a great job of explaining how the OO features mechanically work, but the reason to buy this book is all the extra backgrounder info that's in this, it's worth twice what they're asking for. The data often has nothing to do with the OO features, he's probably remembering all the details that HE had to go run down, and he's giving us all these data pearls (pun intended) for free, along with the payment for the OO data.

Don't buy this book to learn object-oriented programming, but if you want to learn how Perl manages to add OO features, and accidentally learn how Perl adds in a great many other features, then you're in the right place.

After five years of perl hacking, and lot's of wondering about OOP in perl, this book finally relieved me. Single classes were never a problem, but multiple inheritance, was. Even in linear inheritance it was not easy to see, where the object data of the superclasses would go. Things are clarified here. The book also explains OOP as such, which is a good for learning or repetition. The author seems to be extraordinarely versatile in perl hacking and shows every detail of sophisticated use of perl OOP.

Although the book is perfect, besides the typoos (, but there is an errata page on the www), one wonders, whether perl is the ideal language for object oriented programming. It becomes once more clear, that perl is the most powerful language, but also the most complicated one. If one would apply the "tie()" function regularely, then nobody could read the code any more. Despite that, the book is needed, because perl is now everywhere, and it can only be good to master it.

The chapters of the book are: 1.) What you need to know first (an object-orientation primer), 2.) What you need to know second (a Perl refresher), 3.) Getting started, 4.) Blessing arrays and scalars, 5.) Inheritance, 7.) Polymorphism, 8.) Automating class creation, 9.) Ties, 10.) Operator overloading, 11.) Encapsulation, 12.) Genericity, 13.) Multiple dispatch, 14.) Persistent objects, A.) Quick reference guide, B.) What you might know instead [about other OO languages].

/Object-Oriented Perl/ is miles ahead of any other book on OOP that I've ever seen. It sets a new standard in how concepts of OOP should be explained, and how they should be related to the language that the OOP framework is implemented in.

And the best thing about this book is that, on the way to explaining various OOP concepts, it manages to elucidate all sorts of non-OOP advanced programming techniques in Perl. So I recommend this book to anyone who's finished /Learning Perl/ and is looking for what to learn next.

It's a surprising achievement, and one that makes this book very worthwhile reading for people who don't even particularly care about OOP!

And, conversely, because /Object-Oriented Perl/ touches on so many of the possible approaches to OOP, I think that this book would be interesting to people who are interested in OOP, but not terribly interested in Perl per se.

It is, in short, a book of immediate as well as lasting value.

This is an extraordinary book not because it is well-organized, clearly written, and easy to read, though it is all of those things. This is a book that is intriguing and makes one want to try out new things.

I have spend the last couple weeks literally playing with Conway's examples and ideas. It has been tremendous fun. Reading the book is almost like having a clever pal constantly egging one on. "Hey, watch this!" or "Why don't you try it this way?"

No offense to O'Reilly and Co., but this book is exceptionally easy to read and understand. The whole book is a relief from the usual confusing and dry computer book. There is plenty of code and all of it is explained.

Conway is also candid about the problems and advantages of OO perl. For me, this established his credibility early.

I have read several Object Oriented Programming books recently (most of them were C++). This is the first book I have read that has taught the material in a format that the average person can read and understand. The examples were great. They were of everyday items the the average person could relate to. The code through out the book was helpful to get the perl implementation of the OOP ideas. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to Object Oriented Programming no matter what the language of choice is. For me, the bonus is that it is in Perl.

So you've been writing perl for while, you know your way around the camel book, and you even know a lot of the CPAN library. You've written a few CGI pages, and maybe even some mod_perl module.

But you can't figure out the point of some of those perl features. Blind hashes? What are they for? And that 'bless' instruction? And typeglobs- huh? Maybe you're puzzled by that odd syntax some of the CPAN modules use- $class->export($var)? What's that all about?

Relax. You've just stumbled into the world of object-oriented perl programming. And it's not as hard as you may think. Conway does a wonderful job of explaining how OOP works. His examples are perfectly transparant, and perfectly obvious. And he shows how OOP construction can be summed up neatly in three simple rules.

There aren't a lot of prerequisites needed to make good use of this book. If you've got a basic familiarity with perl, and some basic experiece with programming, you're ready to dive in. Conway even gives you a review of the necessary perl essentials you'll need in chapters 2 and 3.

A first-rate book, and one destined to be a perl classic.

A top-notch handling of object oriented perl. Without a doubt, objects in Perl are a different beast from any other language, but this book handles the concepts and details admirably. In addition, some related topics (how to install a Perl module) are included. The style is very O'Reilly-like (why is this book not from O'Reilly?), right down to the humorous footnotes. The appendix covering the differences between Perl and other OO languages is superb. I only wish that Python had been included.

Written as a textbook and used as such by Stonehenge Consulting services, Object Oriented Perl may be the ultimate reference on object oriented theory and practice using the standard all-purpose programming language of the twentyfirst century. For the autodidact, this book is readable too, in much the same way as the Llama or Camel.

Conway provides examples of use of the features of the very latest iteration of the Perl OO standard, 5.005, such as blessed regular expressions and _init methods, while always keeping an eye on the truth that the end goal of your programming project is probably, somewhere, somehow, "to engender a warm feeling."

As Randal Schwartz (whose own books may be linked to from this page) claims in the book's forward, the wait is now over for the perfect object-oriented Perl book. I quote:

"Damian Conway has written a comprehensive guide, organized well for both the casual OO hacker as well as the experienced OO user, including large reusable chunks of code (and that's what OO is all about.)

"Damian's humor makes the reading light and fast. The depth of coverage from 'what's the big fuss about Perl objects?' to 'creating a self-tied inheritable overloaded filehandle with autoloaded accessors' means that this is the first and last book I need to teach Perl objects to my students.

"For experienced users, the appendix comparing and contrasting Perl with other popular OO languages is by itself worth the entire price of the book."

And not only if you're interested in Object Oriented Programming! The first chapter of the book is a general overview of Perl, and I learned a lot of things just from those first 70 pages that I had never found in the other dozen or so Perl books that I have read. Of course, the rest of the book is excellent too. It explains the object oriented features of Perl very clearly, and it is full of simple, elegant and sophisticated examples. However, the author does occasionally slip in some rather arcane code. At one point he described how something could be accomplished with one simple statement, which it took me five minutes to decipher and understand. But overall, the book is excellent, and it taught me some very good lessons in programming techniques and style. I know I will be referring to this book a lot in the future.

After writing many objects in perl using the 50 odd pages found in Programming Perl I am glad to finally have a tome that contains lengthy documentation on object features of perl.

I do wish this had been released a few years ago as it has pointed out a few errors in the way that I have been doing things. My ways work, but Damian shows techniques for improving the efficiency of object that I hadn't thought of before.

If you are at the point in learning perl that you are starting to cut and paste code from your other scripts to do the same thing in a new script - it is time to buy this book. Cut and paste that code into an new module and you will never need to copy it again, this book will show you how.

Even if you are just 'making a module' and aren't really thinking of making classes and objects, read this text - or at least use it as a reference. By doing a small amount of extra work beyond making a module you will be doing OO programming. This book shows you how easy it is to do.

I'll try to not be redundant: suffice to say that this book is approachable, in-depth, and invaluable.

A pleasant suprise was the coverage of some new additions to the language which have yet to be documented in the standard O'Reilly texts. Among these are pseudo-hashes and threads. I don't know if I'll ever need to bless a pseudo-hash, but I know how!

Thankfully, the author mixes up the data structures he uses for his objects. Thus, you get exposed to the new ways to impliment objects as well as the more conventional ways (lists, hashes, etc...).

This is a good book because it shows some ways to make using the abomination known as Perl a slightly less infuriating experience. Use the samples from this book as cookie-cutter templates and you'll find that you can actually write useful programs beyond the typical 20-30 lines which is ordinarily Perl's maximum useful threshold before it deteriorates into illegible unmaintainable garbage.

For those like me who are forced to write Perl against their will, this book is a must-have. In contrast to some other Perl books out there, this one doesn't get into cutesy terminology like calling things 'spaceship operator' or similar uses of sloppy informal language.

OOP is the definitive book on Object Oriented (OO) programming in Perl. It starts out with a very gentle 20 page primer on essential OO concepts, and follows on with a 50 page Perl refresher chapter. The best hardboiled synopsis of essential Perl concepts which this reader has yet read. This is one of those rare books which will thoroughly teach beginners, and yet continue to hold rapt, surprise, and inform more advanced readers as well.

The book is a well paced introduction to OO, illustrating and implementing the core concepts of OO in the context of Perl. While the earliest chapters serve as building blocks to those that follow, the later chapters need not be read front to back, but rather as the topic appeals to the reader.

Topics covered include: inheritance, polymorphism, ties, operator overloading, encapsulation, genericity, multiple dispatch, and persistent objects. Each topic is introduced along with code which highlights how each technique helps to solve common real world problems. As various tips, tricks, and pitfalls are covered, the reader will often find themselves revisiting and evolving improved solutions to familiar problems.

A lot of languages implement a particular flavor of OO. And indeed, OOP shows a variety of the techniques and flavors of OO and how they may be implemented in Perl. -Explaining when and where each may best be used, and trade-offs involved. As a result, the reader comes away from the book with a greater understanding of OO, and not just a single style embraced by a particular language.

Conway and Schwartz are well-known and respected throughout the Perl community. Their writing is clever, humorous, and while information dense... surprisingly easy to follow. There is a sense of grace and continuity to their writing which made this book a real pleasure to read.

I can only echo the positive comments from those who've already commented. OOPerl is clearly written, beautifully designed, and funny as hell.

I had been making use of Object Oriented features of Perl5 long before I purchased "Object Oriented Perl" by Damian Convey. There hasn't been a single CGI/Perl application (almost) of mine that either didn't have its own constructor or inherited one.

So I was a true OO Perl programmer(well, that's who I thougt I was then). Still I wanted to give a try to Damian's "Object Oriented Perl" due to lots of positive reviews the book earned.

Upon buying this book I discovered so many features of OO Perl that I had been missing. I never thougt of using aythings except reference to a hash variable as data structure for my objects (have you?). When Damian started talking about objectifying arrays, subs, typeglobs and even *RegExp* in addition to annonymous hashes, I felt like tearing off all the pages from my previous OO Perl tutorials and eat it.

I was pleased.

The organization of the book is quite logical as well. I found it even better than some O'reilly's Perl books (I love O'reilly), and this was my first book from Manning.

The author builds the base for you to get started with through the first two chapters ("What you need to know first" and "What you need to know second").

The third chapter introduces you to all the basics of Object Oriented Programming in Perl, which all other tutorials out there mostly deal with. In this chapter, you build CD::Music class for managing your CDs.

The fourth chapter, "Blessing Arrays and Scalars" starts off with the section "What's wrong with a hash?" Only then I discovered that hash was not the only data structure I could use for my objects (well, not that I didn't know, but never thought of). In this chapter he also introduces to the pros and cons of blessing arrays, pseudo-hashes, scalars and supports each with an example

Chapter five is even more teasing, which talks about "bless"ing regexps, subroutines and typeglobs.

The rest of the book (starting on page 168) is dedicated to standard OOP lingo, techiques and their implementation in Perl

Language of the book is plain english. I found some of the wordings a little different than I am used to (en-us), but doesn't effect the comprehensibility (is there such word?) of the book at all. It was like taking couple of days off from my O'reilly books.

To illustrate some of the complicated structures (such as inheritance tree) the author uses charts and diagrams. I found them really helpfull, easy to read and understand.

If you are into Perl, and want to get more advanced with Object Oriented features of the language buy this book.

The book definitely " bless $my_eyes => $OOP::Perl5; "

More than anything, this book convinces that Perl only masquerades as an object-oriented language. To implement features which come naturally to other, truly object-oriented languages such as Java, one must jump through hoops.

The book itself is useful in parts, although overly long for its subject matter, and often confusing. Explanations are often made harder to understand by the examples, not easier. The author spends too much time discussing BAD approaches to a particular problem before showing us the "right" way.

Overall, inferior to "Advanced Perl Programming" in its approach to teaching OO-Perl.

This is a fine book, but the passage of time has rendered some parts of it less relevant.

As an introduction to object oriented programming, and how to do it in Perl, this is one of the best sources you could learn from. Neither The Alpaca nor The Camel do such a good job.

And it's not just objects that are well covered. You'll also find lucid explanations of closures, type globs, the symbol table and tied variables, all of which can be considered advanced Perl.

Elsewhere, though, the material has not aged so well, superseded by the author's own Perl Best Practices, where some of the recommendations have been reversed, or improved upon ('inside out' classes, for example, as implemented in Class::Std, is a superior development of the flyweight approach mentioned in this book). Some of the material, which concentrates on CPAN modules, and the experimental pseudohashes is not so useful in the light of this - the latter are on course to be removed in Perl 5.10. The sections on building objects using references to things other than hashes (e.g. arrays, regular expressions and subroutines) is clever, but this reader was unconvinced of their utility.

There's also coverage of generics, although in Perl this is not much like generics in C# or Java, basically passing around Perl code as uninterpolated text strings and then evaling it inside a subroutine, where any lexical values are interpolated.

Finally, there are chapters on multimethods (no more elegant or manageable in Perl than other languages that support this feature, alas) and persistence.

The principles discussed remain relevant, and the book is a pleasure to read. However, if you already familiar with OOP and just want to get going as fast as possible, the relevant chapters of Intermediate Perl and Perl Best Practices might be better places to look.

This book gives a very excellent all-around perspective on object-oriented programming. The examples are a bit limited in scope, but this is made up for by showing the evolution of a simple class through many of the OO techniques available in Perl. He shows you how to enforce strict encapsulation, but also tells you that you probably don't have to enforce this. Various inheritance techniques and tools are extremely well explained and illustrated. And of course he makes wonderful use of the CPAN resources, letting you know that you are not developing software in a vacuum; there's a lot of resources out there and he shows you how to use them to your advantage.

Perl is not C++, it's not Java, and it's not Smalltalk or Eiffel. But Conway gives a wonderful perspective about the differences (and similarities) between all of these languages, and even a straightforward glossary to help you "translate" from one to another where appropriate.

All of the other reviews for this book pretty much get it right: This book is a must have for any moderately serious Perl programmer who needs to work with or develop object oriented code.

The best thing I can say about this book is that it's actually useful. In a sea of unnecessary Perl books (Programming the Perl DBI comes to mind), this book stands out as an immediately valuable tool that you will continue to use over and over again. It has a great rudamentary Perl primer section, object oriented programming primer and, of course, Perl's application of these ideas.

This book has definitely helped me to write better code, period. Buy it.

I pick up this book to learn Perl out of necessity and to see what Perl has to offer in terms of OOP.
Having programmed in VB, C,C++, Java, C#, Forth,Pascal,etc I would say that honestly, Perl is very prone to bugs and hard to read(least readable lanaguage I have seen) and maintain. About the only advantage I see is that it's wide legacy code base in Unix platforms and its terseness(if you feel smart writing cryptic code). In my opinion,honestly, C/C++ code is easier to read because of its stricter syntax.
The OOP in Perl is added as an afterthought and is not clean and there's messy embodiment of complex scaffolding as one reviewer correctly pointed out.
If you have to maintain legacy Perl code and need to write some out of neccessity, this book has much to offer. I like the diagrams and illustrations in it. The author goes to great length to explain things.

If you like clean OOP language, skip Perl and use Java/C# instead. But if you still want a scripting language like Perl, try Python or Ruby instead.

Damian Conway is regarded in the perl community as one of the most novel-thinking programmers around. He writes novel, efficient code, and has a talent for explaining it few authors are able to match. As somebody who normally relies only on OReilly books, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are other publishers out there providing books of the same quality.

With regards to the book, the subject matter is clearly laid out with prodigous examples, and explanations of why things work.

He also gets into the nitty-gritty details of _how_ things work, which is essential for "deep" programming.

There is no reason on earth any perl programmer should find themself without this book.

In short, this book is a must-have if you are a serious Perl programmer (or thinking of becoming one).
As far as I know, this is the only Perl book entirely dedicated to OOP and it does a good job of delivering the OOP concepts of this popular language. The explanations are easy enough to follow, and there are examples provided to apply the concepts.
Having said that, the material organization could have been done a little better. I found myself skipping over a lot of things because they are simply not applicable in real-world projects.

am from India and luckily, manning released this book here. I'm a complete perl newbie and i wanted to have an understanding of OO features of Perl and contrast it with those of python.
Well, i realized that i accidently stumbled upon one of the best texts on OO programming using a language.

Having "Learning Perl" would help but not necessary because the author covers the perl intro in the first chapter. But that is all you need!. Brilliant writing. Each and every page carries so much information!..not a single page has been wasted.
There is comparison of other OO languages with Perl at the end and i found that very very helpful (coming from a java background)
I have bought 3 manning books so far..
Server based java programming, web development with jsp and now OO Perl. and am convinced that Manning publishes some of the best books around. If someone from their side is reading this...
PLEASE...PLEASE release all your books in India....don't be selective... we've been waiting for some of your titles for long and none have come through as yet!.

and..

even if you are a perl newbie with an exposure to programming(
as i am) , this will teach you all the perl OO tricks.
So BUY this if you want to do OO using Perl.

This book truly is the best perl book I've ever read. The auther takes concepts that I previously vaguely understood, brings them out, and makes everything so easy to understand.

Reading this book brought me back to the days when I was learning perl for the first time. Every turn of the page will illustrate a new concept, and a new way of doing things.

There has never been a time when I was learning perl, that I learned more, faster, quicker, and easily than when I was reading this book.

I've tried to figure out Perl OO for years using the perl documentation. Even with a M.S. in CS, I didn't get it. It was too ivory tower. Or it was written too early by folks that were too close to core Perl. (Aside -- those early tutorials did a *great* service to Perl and OO. Many thanks to the pioneering authors for their efforts in moving Perl and OO forward! )

Since this book was written years after the original OO perl tutorials, Damian has had the advantage that time allows. He reports, in a clear style, how programmers *really* use the OO aspects of Perl. He reports what practically works, rather than what could theoretically work. He *builds* on the first generation of tutorials that, since they were written so early, did not have practical field experience.

Clearly written. Practical. Well organized. Thorough. Useful. Substantial examples.

Damian clamins to enjoy writing Perl over C++ because he'd rather write Haiku than legal documents. His clarity and playfulness shows.

This book will pick you up more or less where "Learning Perl" by Randall Shwarz & Tom Chrisiansen (another excellent Perl tutorial, but for beginners) has left you. Apart from that object-oriented thing, you will get a VERY clear understanding of not-so-easy-to-explain Perl topics that so many Perl books desperately lack. Nested data structures, references, anonymous arrays, hashes, subroutines, etc.,etc. - all that explained short and clear. Just 1 chapter of 14 is a reason good enough to buy this book.

The writing style of Mr.Conway (I mean English in the first place here) is worth to be mentioned explicitly. Well... you can read this book just to entertain yourself. If it won't make you laugh by the time you are done with the first chapter,there is something seriously wrong with you.

Right now I am a half-way through this book, most probably having a lot of interesting things yet to discover. Now I am writing most of my Perl code once. If I have to write it twice, I am considering writing a module :).

Just one wish (probably for the next edition): I think the book will be even more entertaining if you'd add exercises and answers to them (as in "Learning Perl"). For me, the problem was where and how to implement all that what I've learned from this book. Well, that was just in the beginning :).

A rare book is as good investment as this one. Thank you, Mr. Conway!

I was wondering if i could learn something else more than just objects, but this book clarify me many doubts about Perl. It even helped me to understand tips that I've learned in some other books. My recommendation is: first give it a shot to the camel book of Programming Perl, and then make that big step to dominate Perl with this book.

The Perl world has long needed a definitive guide to Object Oriented programming and finally it's here. This book doesn't just fill a hole in the Perl bookshelf, it does so in a very lucid and entertaining way.

Even if you don't write objects in Perl, this book is sure to teach you some new Perl tricks.

excellent book that sets a high standard for computer books in general. damian conway is the recognized expert in perl object orientated programming, and this book does a great job of both introducing and explaining these concepts in detail. must have for everyone's perl library.

This is a great book. It reads fairly easily, and just the first few chapters give you a great understanding of how to use oop concepts in Perl programs. Also, I found it very helpfull in exlaining some advanced perl topics, that are used along the way. I got out of it exactly what I wanted, and then some.

I've been looking for this book (I mean figuratively, otherwise I would have just bought it from Amazon..) for years. Conway is a fabulous teacher, and does a great introducing higher level Perl concepts (polymorphism, wantarray, etc.) and then returning to them with a JIT (Just in Time) delivery. I learned so much without having my $/ ->ed. On top of it all, his footnotes pose a challenge to the Onion books, as funniest publication of the year.

Congratulations Damian, and Thank You (:

Probably the most informative and entertaining technical book I've ever read. I hack Perl for a living and own several Perl books, but Object Oriented Perl is the only one I consider indispensable.

One of the difficult things about writing a technical book is maintaining high content quality without putting the reader to sleep. Damian manages to keep the content quality VERY high, and at the same time write a thoroughly entertaining book.

And speaking of content -- everything you ever wanted to know about objects in Perl is in this book, complete with working examples. In addition to the standard objects-implemented-as-hashes technique, you'll learn how to implement an object as an array, a scalar, or something more esoteric, such as a regular expression, a subroutine, or a type glob. Other topics include operator overloading, tied variables, and persistent objects.

And, if what's in the book isn't enough, each chapter has a section titled, "Where to find out more," -- a sort of mini-bibliography for the chapter.

A must-read for all Perl hackers. Buy it now.

Perl is not an object-oriented language by nature. Perl-heads will debate this with me ad infinitum, but the truth is, Perl 5 added references and a few key words to allow users to mimic what other languages gracefully implement. Conway's book is good, detailed, and rich, but nonetheless its topic matter is fractured.

If you are forced into using Perl in this manner (as I have been on large projects) then this reference is indispensible. Better advice though, would have been to simply go with Python, which is not so nearly hostile to OO techniques as Perl.

If you love Perl and want to extend your knowledge of the language, BUY THIS BOOK!!! I worked on an object oriented perl project a while back, and I wish I could have read this book before I started. It's the best!

This is my favorite Perl book, alongside Advanced Perl Programming.

When I first read it, I was very upset that 3 pages in particular had not simply been inserted into the original Camel book, which I think is one of the most important yet most poorly written programming books ever.

I wish Damien Conway had written Camel and Llama.

Hi:

The author has a very methodical way of introducing concepts and overall has done a very good job. What seems like easy flow as far as the reader is concerned was probably a lot of hard work on his part.

The wry humor in the book alone is worth the money.

I am still unable to take the plethora of my perl scripts and modularize them but that is not the author's fault.

Compare this book with " Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules By Randal L. Schwartz". This does a much better exposition.

thanks

Sidhaartha

If you work with the Perl language and you want to explore the facets of Object-Oriented programming in Perl, then this is the book that you must have.
Damian's writing style is witty and informative, and keeps you from being bored. He gives plenty of examples, and explains the inner workings of each one.
This book is definitely a worthy addition to any Perl programmers library.

I've been writing PERL for years and this book was able to open my eyes to quite a few new concepts. Great book!

Very good book, if you feel yourself an intermediate without 'that' to try to enter to advanced world, read this book.
I've read two times, the second was dramatical. The first two chapters are gold for ex-newbies, the other are a master to object-oriented world that will guide you throught all the others languages in this field.

One 'but': the code examples, is really anyone going to use this or to inspirate with the showed code? maybe better ideas for this(maybe a game and not a CD collection) would be better, but i would buy this book even without any code and even with price doubled.

In the other hand, if you know very well the object concept (very well), maybe the book isn't for you cause one of the proposal of the book (i think) is (paralel to show the perl aproach to objects) to teach the theory.
But probably your object-oriented concept is poor compared with your future idea of this if you finally read this book.

I am a newbie to perl and I'm writing an application that involves using object-oriented perl. I have not seen any other book that explains difficult concepts with amazing clarity that even a newbie like me can understand. I wish other perl books were written as simple and clear like this one :(

I have written a number of modules for Perl over the last 5 years, and I really wish I had bought this book earlier.

It is a mixture of sound coding practices and great examples. I actually bought this after reading Perl Best Practices by the same author, and have not been disappointed.

This is a book written by someone how obviously knows Perl from the inside, and can apply this to real world issues.

I almost passed this book by, thinking it was a primer into the OO world with Perl. I'm comfortable (if slightly annoyed) writing OO Perl code. What surprised about Conways text was that the book used OO as a premise to instruct the reader on more advanced aspects of Perl; its more an Advanced Perl book than the expected Object Oriented book.

I learned more depth of Perl than I have in years. Perl is a thick and crafty language. Chapter 2, subtitled "A Perl Refresher", was worth the price of admission alone, as he deftly re-hashed Perl features he would use later in the book. The practices and features of Perl he later expanded on in the OO chapters incontinued to impress me.

If you are a Perl programmer, beginner to advanced, this is a must-read book, and a great source of coding inpiration. It made me a better programmer, in Perl and other languages.

This book is was published in 2000, and usually the half-life of most computer texts don't hold up 5 years, but this book certainly does! Also, I just noticed Conway just published "Perl Best Practices" which I am eager to tackle.

If you've done the Learning Perl, Programming Perl and maybe the Perl Cookbook books, and still want to know more about OO Perl, this book should make you very well rounded.

Damian Conway's love of perl, good programming, and entertaining thought all shine through in this book. Anyone who wants to write better programs and who knows a modicum of perl will really love "Object Oriented Perl". It taught me to write better programs, quickly and painlessly.