CGI Programming with Perl, 2nd Edition By Scott Guelich, Shishir Gundavaram, and Gunther Birznieks 2nd Edition July 2000 Rating:

I bought the 1st edition of this book when it came out and was pleased to see the update. The web, and programming for the web have evolved quite a bit since 1996, but this book takes the good ol' CGI/Perl duet and gives it a fresh script. The "with Perl"  title change lets the authors cut to the chase without trying to woo the newbie that Perl should be strongly considered. In this case, Perl is it, take it or leave it.  The book is frank about the relative inadequacies with the CGI programming environment but doesnt waste a lot of time trying to defend it. The fact is, that despite the marketing glitz and hype of ever evolving technologies, the CGI continues to be an approachable and enduring part of the web programmers strategic toolkit and probably will be for a while.

To be honest, I didnt read the book cover-to-cover but chose rather to pick out interesting tidbits based on my usage pattern.  The book embraces the obvious marriage of things like JavaScript and CGI/Perl and dedicates whole chapters to recent technologies like XML, templating, DBI and PerlMagick.  The tendency to overload subject matter across O'Reilly texts has been a pet peeve of mine but I must say I enjoyed the "getting startedness" of the XML and templating sections so I'll cut them some slack.

As always with O'Reilly-ies I found the structure of the book good and the font non-obtrusive. The web site for the book has many of the example scripts and to this day I cut and paste bits into my cgi-bin as needed. Its a good read for the newbie and accomplished webbie alike. As if you cared I give it   "* * * 1/2 camels". One for nostalgia, two for effort and 1/2 (you pick the half) because it has "Perl" in the title.

- Tony