Steve Oualline's Wicked Cool Perl Scripts, with it's practical no-nonsense approach to scripting, is an interesting and refreshing read. I wouldn't recommend it for the beginner, but it shows off some great uses for this versatile language if you're an intermediate or career Perl programmer. The included scripts and techniques will prove especially useful to *NIX and web system administrators.
Recipes for Administrative Success
Wicked Cool Perl Scripts is a book about kick-starting your programming imagination. Steve Oualline doesn't waste any time getting right to the heart of the matter - practical Perl scripts that solve real (potential) problems. Each of the 47 problems gets laid out in a few quick paragraphs and immediately followed by a Perl script code listing that solves the issue. A short segment on how to use the program, and some sample output helps to visualize the solutions once you've seen the code. Finally, each problem is capped off by a nice explanation on how the script works, and how it can be modified to solve other, similar problems.
Perl, by it's very nature, is extremely helpful to UNIX/Linux system and web administrators, and the majority of the problems in Wicked Cool Perl Scripts deal with issues that administrators will face at one point or another in their careers. Especially helpful are scripts like 'Mass File Renaming' and several that deal with automating *NIX user account management. For the web administrators, there is an automatic link checker, some CGI debugging utilities, and some great lessons on internet data mining.
Pages and Pages of Perl
Saving some of the best for last, Steve pulls out two pure Perl gems in the final chapters of Wicked Cool Perl Scripts. Chapter 10 (problems 40 - 43) outline a great process for downloading and viewing topological maps and aerial photographs from the US government to help plan a hiking trip. Chapter 11 (problems 44 - 47) is a fascinating look at creating a regular expression graphing program to aid in visualizing the often complex and confusing world of Perl regular expressions. A few of the scripts, most obviously the 'Random Joke Generator' and 'Visitor Counter', have been done so many times by so many people that I found myself passing over them for the fresher topics.
One of the beautiful things about Perl is the ability to solve the same problem in a variety of different ways, and that fails to come across in Wicked Cool Perl Scripts. The solutions are practical, but the 'How it Works' and 'Hacking the Script' sections of each problem are often lacking in detail and alternate methods for accomplishing the same task. Several of the scripts go on for pages and pages with very little analysis other than comments, and I would have loved to see more breakdown and description of the 'how' and 'why' for some of the code.
Final Thoughts
Wicked Cool Perl Scripts is not a must have book, but if you make a living coding Perl it's worth a read. The scripts range fairly wildly in their usefulness, but regardless they will get you thinking about the most important issue you face as a programmer - creating practical solutions to your problems.
