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Programming Books Media Book Reviews IT Technology

Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0 73

Posted by timothy from the dirty-work-so-you-don't-have-to dept.
Craig Maloney contributed this review of the Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0, which he calls "the most portable way to get five Perl books from here to there." Like others in the same series, this package from O'Reilly assembles several related titles onto a single, searchable disk to save endless page-thumbing, but not without a few glitches.

Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0
author (Various)
pages N/A
publisher O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
rating 8
reviewer Craig Maloney
ISBN 0-596-00164-9
summary The update to the previous Perl CD Bookshelf with a new edition, two deletions, and a new title.

Books, but not a book

O'Reilly's Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0 includes the following books, which have all been reviewed earlier on Slashdot before:

Overview

The Perl Bookshelf 2.0 is O'Reilly's updated version of its popular Perl Bookshelf. It includes five books rather than the six of the previous edition, and removes the Learning Perl and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems in favor of Perl for System Administration. It also includes a Java-based search engine to search the books, and a master index for all of the books. Like the previous Perl Bookshelf review I'll be doing a 'meta review' of the presentation of the content rather than the content itself.

What's in it for me?

As mentioned before, this edition includes five searchable and indexed O'Reilly Perl books. The removal of Learning Perl and Learning Perl for Win32 Systems doesn't bother me, since this bookshelf has material that can be used by everyone rather than books for just beginners, or Win32 Perl programmers. Included in the package is a CD-ROM and a paperback version of Perl in a Nutshell, the same version as the first edition. On the CD-ROM, you'll find the five books in HTML format, as well as a (proprietary) Java search engine. Unlike the first edition, the JRE is not included on the CDROM. Windows users get the added benefit of having an autorun.inf file to begin their session for them.

What's good?

Perl for Systems Administration is a worthy addition to this library. The other four books have proven themselves to be worthy of being in every Perl programmer's library. Having them all in one convenient searchable spot is, of course, a huge advantage. The layout for each of the books is adequate, and is very cross platform. The indexes take advantage of named tags and clicking on an index entry takes you directly to the section specified.

The inclusion of Perl in a Nutshell is also a nice touch, since Perl in a Nutshell can answer the mundane problems, while the CD can be used for the tougher ones.

What's bad?

The Java search engine may be the only way to make The Perl Bookshelf cross platform, but it is very weak. Worse, if you are running Linux, the search engine won't work at all. You'll need to visit O'Reilly and download a patch, copy the CD to your hard disc, and apply the patch using a 'fixed' shell script. Windows users fortunately will not have to go through such hoops to get the search running properly. The searches themselves leave something to be desired as well, namely the lack of a highlighting of the search term or even the ability to move to the term being searched. For instance, searching on 'chomp' will bring up the Perl function page as one of it's choices. However, it brings it up without positioning the page to the function itself, so the user has to scroll through the list of functions to get to the one she wants. Thankfully, the master index is very complete, so you may not even have to bother with the search engine at all. It's a shame that something which could have been so powerful is so crippled.

Conclusion

This is the most portable way to get five Perl books from here to there. While there are problems with the keyword search, the master index should be good enough to get you the information you need. If you've been considering getting these books this is the most cost effective way to bring them into your library."

You can purchase this CD at FatBrain.
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review: Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0 More

review: Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0

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  • Warez (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hold on ... where can I download it for free?

    (I am not 100% serious)
  • ...
    Ever heard of Perl?
    And if the complaint is Perl doesn't do good cross-platform GUI, then try TCL/Tk or Tk mod for Perl.

    Still faster, and easier then Java GUIs, and definitely the most logical choice for a Perl CD
  • I love on line docs. They are much faster to seach and take up a lot less space.
    I just wish that the Java Swing book was avail in HTML Indexed and searchable.
  • alt.binaries.e-book is not a site, you pathetic excuse for a geek, it is a newsgroup. And a darn good one at that.
  • Witty! But there is a reason no-one publishes crossplatform end user tools written in Perl. Not that there is a huge amount of end-user tools in Java, but still, Perl wouldn't make too much sense, what with the big fat interpreter and libraries which would bloat up the installation overly.
  • Heh, my bad...

    Don't drink and post.

    I meant the CGI Programming one of course
  • Too bad they didn't include "Programming the Perl DBI" [oreilly.com] and maybe even "Programming the Perl DBI" [oreilly.com] which are both two extremely useful books as introductions to web programming. Since Perl is used a lot in this context, I think those should have been included as well.


    One thing I'd love to see is a subscription based service to search and read the whole O'Reilly library online. That would make my life soo much easier...

  • Wow, I need to check out their website more often. Thanks for the pointer, that's exactly what I was thinking of...
  • I have Perl CD Bookshelf (without a version, so it's 1.0). I would like to upgrade it to Perl CD Bookshelf 2.0, but I don't need YA Perl in a Nutshell book. Also the only change I can see it "Programming Perl" updated from 2nd to the 3rd edition.

    I can buy the paper version of that book ($29.50 at bookpool.com) for 2/3 the price of the Perl CD Bookshelf ($45.50) ...

    I would pay $15 to download the update.

    Tim O'Reilly are you listening?
  • I ordered v2 of the perl cd bookshelf as soon as it became available in Canada. It's been the best addition to my library of perl resources to date. Combine the CD bookshelf with my copy of "Programming the Perl DBI", and I have pretty much everything I could ever want to know about perl right at my fingertips. The CD rarely leaves my drive. I use it every day.

    The search engine is a little clumsy, and I hate the look of the interface. One thing I'd change in the set would be to include search engines for windows, linux, etc systems in seperate folders. Suppose I could always write one myself on my next slow workday (as if i ever get any of those).

    The other real drawback i see to the CD is that is IS a CD. There's just something about the feel of a real book in your hands that a computer screen can't match. I've found myself printing off reams of information just so I could have something in my hands, rather than staring at the screen. I like that they include a copy of 'perl in a nutshell'... I find myself referring to it quite often.

    But I guess I can't have it both ways. Not like I'm going to be able to search actual books anytime soon, nor would I get it for the price of the CD.

    Having said all that.. I'd recommend it to any perl programmer. It gives you an incredible amount of information that's (relatively speaking) inexpensive.

  • There were six books in the original.
    To quote timpthy's article:



    "The Perl Bookshelf 2.0 is O'Reilly's updated version of its popular Perl Bookshelf. It includes five books rather than the six of the previous edition, and removes the Learning Perl and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems in favor of Perl for System Administration."


  • Very unfortunate that the search feature sounds so lame. Mayhap Ill be forced to aquire a copy, add a wee search thingie of my own (since it appears to only have to search [and maybe index] html pages), and then burn that onto a cd and... uh.... distribute it myself.
    In summary... Why do they wish to be like that?
  • I had the old edition and bought the new edition and being incredily lazy am still looking for a way to join the two indexes.....ah well... htdig
  • In this case O'Reilly really was not listening to customer feedback. When this was reviewed last time it was very clear that people were not happy with the search engine and now they've done it again. Does anyone who has used this know if the search engine is ANY better this time around? Can I search for $_ and actually get a response?
  • Umm.. there seems to be one missing in your list of two books too. Was the other one meant to be the "CGI Programming in Perl" book, or did you really mean to recommend that we all have two copies of Programming the Perl DBI? Admittedly I do have two copies of Programming the Perl DBI.. but then I'm a freak, or so I'm told.
  • Thanks for the advice and constructive criticism.. and a compiled executable is cross-platform how exactly..? If they were going for platform-specifics then the language chosen wouldn't be as much of an issue, but to go for multi-platform then Java makes more sense than Perl.

  • It's a nice idea to use Perl in this way, and I have done it myself when the search facility didn't seem to be able to find the entry I needed. The first edition though did including "Learning Perl" and "Learning Perl on Win32".. the Java search worked here since it doesn't need any knowledge to get it working. I'll agree though that having the CGI version available would have been nice, although (IIRC) the Java version required the CD to be in the drive and wouldn't work from a HDD copy, maybe O'Reilly didn't want people setting up a single networked copy of this?

    I do truly love the idea of getting people to write their own search engine though!


  • ..and all this is installed by default into a Windows system?

    Perl's a great cross-platform language for server-side work, but if it was chosen as the language to implement a quick CD-distributed search system I think it'd be point-and-laugh time. Most machines do not have the ability to run Perl by default, and even if they did it'd generally take a fair bit of configuring to make it pick up on this random file in the CD drive, and I really wouldn't want the hassle of copying stuff to my cgi-bin.

    My copy of the CD Bookshelf (1st.Ed) is mostly used on Win9x machines, where I've been roaming round the company Doing Stuff and suddenly need to borrow a machine to change something on a server. I think installing Perl and it's support libraries would be a little bit of a pain, so I'm fundamentally glad they chose Java.


  • Also, I read dead trees faster than a CRT. I'm not sure why.

    Dead trees tend to have narrower columns, making it easier to scan the book.

  • What needs to be done in the world of virtual publishing is some way to provide a "thumbing" function that allows you to thumb through a virtual book as if it was the real thing

    Mozilla 0.9.1 and later can thumb through a long HTML document. Edit > Preferences... > Advanced > Mouse Wheel and bind the wheel to page up and down. It can also thumb through lots of small documents in the browser history.

  • Quick question. Whats to stop someone from subscribing and firing up wget to download the books?

    SealBeater
  • it's six of one, half a dozen of another
    In this case, it's five of one or half a dozon of the other, but you're right that there's no price change.

    --
  • Maybe they should have used a Python search. Crush '$'s.
  • I like traditional books, but computer books seem ideal in electronic format. All that information at your fingertips & searchable.

    Just a little tip about the O'reilly books - they are only about 90MB each. I got the Unix, Networking, and Perl Bookshelves and burned them to a single CD. Its pretty cool carrying around 18 books on a single disk. Like I said, I only wish there were more of these.

  • I already have 4 of these books. They are very usefull if you want to code perl.
    Perl is a fantastic language to program web applications. Two advices:
  • Simple:
    Let's say the previous set cost $30 (cheap, I just want easy math here)

    It came with 6 books, for $5 / book. You didn't use one, so it really came with 5 books so you effectively paid $6 / book

    The new one is 5 books, and costs the same $30. So you paid $6 / book.

    What's the difference? For you, none. For the people that would use the book, they got screwed. And my original was wrong, it's 20% more each, not 4% each.

  • I will probably buy this set now that they have removed the Win32 book. I don't recall how much the first edition was, but I remember that having 20% of the cost go to a book I was never going to use seemed ridiculous.

    So rather than pay 20% for a book you won't use, you'll pay 4% more for each book?

    If there's no price change, it's six of one, half a dozen of another.

  • A multi monitor setup is perfect for setting up reference documentation on one monitor while programming in the other.

    - Pat
  • Have you tried the Safari Books Online [oreilly.com] from O'Reilly? Not all of the books are online yet, but they will be someday. Plus the books that are available now are a pretty good cross section - including the Programming the Perl DBI that you mention. Pricing/details can be found on the site, but the base price of $9.95/month, you get any 5 books. You can switch out any or all at the end of the month as well.

    Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.

  • Bear in mind I'm stuck on Windoze...

    The search engine does appear to be different from the first version. Self-contained, not requiring an initial install.

    Wherever you hang their directory subtree, the search works. With v1, I had to dig into config files and edit some path references after installing into a non-default directory, before I could get the searching to work. I view this v2 change as a major improvement.

    On the downside, the v1 results gave some context. When one jumped to a result, all occurences of the matching term were flagged by being rendered in a larger, red font.

    With v2, one gets an anemic list of one-line, couple-of-words references. Well, at least it runs without tweaking -- on Windoze.

    Does anyone else see the possibility of a perception, correct or not, of O'Reilly creeping a bit toward the MS camp?

  • Any chance O'Reilly will do an "enhanced" CD with DBI and Friedl's book (and, why not, Learning 3, of course :-)? I'd pay more, and maybe even pay again (unless I can 'upgrade'), to have everything I need in portable format. Lugging all those books around gets to be a pain.

    I know, you're not O'Reilly, but you're a lot closer to them than me. :-)

    Insert 2 cents here...

  • ...bringin up Acrobat.

    The CD bookshelves are HTML-based, unless things have changed sizeably since the UNIX bookshelf was released.

  • This is a grievous error! Advanced Perl Programming delves into the workings of Perl itself and is a must read for true users of Perl. The book starts off with references to data, complex data structures, and gets more technical as you go along. The lack of the Learning Perl and Learning Perl on Win32 books is not a down turn as they are seldom used for reference, but for learning. Once you have learned enough to proceed on your own, these books are a must have set. I have been anxiously awaiting this new addition to my kit.
  • "These modern kids don't know the simple joy of saving four bytes of page-0 memory on a 6502 box."

    These modern kids don't know the simple joy of saving one byte of memory on Sinclair ZX-80.

    These modern kids don't know the simple joy of saving one bit of memory on each character.


  • uh... this is a resource for PERL programmers and the search engine is what you're complaining about?

    seems to me anyone interested in buying this CD/book could write a good search engine in... PERL ... very quickly and have fun doing it.

  • There are also some excellent Python [php.net] docs that can be found here [python.org].

    Personally, I just find Python cleaner than Perl, as it has a better syntax, using whitespace to delimit rather than brackets. Also, it is a lot faster for my purposes. Anyway, now you can take the docs with you anywhere you go.

  • Not the latest version but *cough* not bad:

    ftp.redcom.ru/pub/books/OreillyBookshelf-full.tar. gz

    --

  • It's kind of funny to see that you have to copy to your hard disc, as one of the first things I noticed was the legalese about not copying this to a server. I do enjoy not having to lug so many books around, as I have them all at work, and I agree with the choices, although I would have loved to see Mastering Regular Expressions make the cut. I have noticed that some of the links, particularly from the cookbook to the camel appear to go to the wrong location, and after doing a little double checking, I found out they go to the correct location in the 2nd edition camel, not the third. I wonder if they will send me an update?

  • I have the Java bookshelf CD. Searching works in Linux and Windows. It's pretty sad that it works for the Java CD, but not for Perl. Perhaps they'll cut fixed CDs by the time I need it. I can cut CDs at home, so perhaps I could cut myself a fixed CD.

    For dog ears, I use my browser's bookmarks. If I wanted, I could publish these bookmarks on my web site, so I could have my dog ears at home or at work.

    I disagree - searching the CD is faster than searching dead trees. I find myself doing:
    zgrep -i sometext /usr/man/man1/perl*
    and even that's faster than looking it up in dead trees. My biggest problem with the CD is the desktop computer. I can read dead trees anywhere, but my laptop doesn't have a CD drive or wireless network. Also, I read dead trees faster than a CRT. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's that dead trees don't make as much noise.

  • "the most portable way to get five Perl books from here to there"

    Just hope there's a printer there too :)
  • I have already found it on alt.binaries.e-book. Damn, i've only just gone and bought it as well.
  • I have heard Richard Stallman is going to buy these, apparently he's a big fan of Oreilly books.
  • Instead of AddAll, I prefer to use BestBookBuys [bestbookbuys.com]. Both AddAll and BestBookBuys appear to have similar functionality (for instance, they [addall.com] both [bestwebbuys.com] identified BookPool as having the lowest price [bookpool.com]), but I personally prefer the interface on BestBookBuys.

    But, I do share your sentiment about Fatbrain. Sure, it used to be independent and cool, but now they're just yet-another subsidiary of Barnes & Noble [fatbrain.com] (bleh!). Besides, Fatbrain also costs $18 more than the lowest AddAll/BestBookBuys price.

    Alex Bischoff
  • Agreed, but there isn't much to be said that hadn't been said in the previous review. That's why I left it as a link to the previous review. I agree it's a very good book, but what more can be said than that? :)
  • Learning Perl is not in the Perl CD Bookshelf Version 2.0, so there was nothing to wait for.
  • Nope. It's still broken. :) (I just tried it, and got nothing back)

  • Actually, the legalese says you can't copy it to a server for public use. I know, I forgot that my copies weren't unavailable from my public side, and got a letter from the O'Reilly legal department when the UNIX and Perl Bookshelves started showing up on spider searches of my site.

    It does indicate that copying it for your own personal use is OK/


    This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U

  • Ok - I don't see anyone asking this -
    I have the first edition, with the six books.
    Is it worth it to buy the new edition?
    Other than the mentioned 'drop two books, add one', are the rest unchanged from the last set?
    As for that annoying Java thing, I stopped using that after about 5 minutes.
    Why didn't they just write a simple search in say, um... PERL? (I would guess most users have it on their systems...)
    If I really can't find what I need using the hypertext table of contents, I'll usually use grep...

    Cheers,
    Jim

    MMDC Mobile Media [mmdc.net]
  • What does XML have to do with a search engine? Are you planning just to grep through a huge XML document? Because you could do the same thing with HTML just as easily...
  • This is a grievous error! Advanced Perl Programming delves into the workings of Perl itself and is a must read for true users of Perl.

    I second this. Advanced Perl Programming is fantastic, and definitely necessary to learning how Perl's guts work, which lets you do some really neat things. It also helps you optimize code, since not only does it tell you stuff like why 'my' is faster than 'local', but it explains why. It also gets down and dirty with how things are implemented at the C level, the structure of the generated bytecode, and lots of other things. Definitely a must-have for hardcore Perl users.

    I'm not sure it's such a great loss that it's not on the CD though; it's the type of book where you'd want a paper copy to read, rather than to use as a reference.
    --
  • If you don't want to carry a CD-ROM around with you back and forth to work, all of these books (except for Programming Perl?! What's the deal with that?) are also available at O'Reilly's Safari [oreilly.com] service. That way you can try these books out for a month (or as long as you want) and get as much out of them as you can/want.

    I would highly recommend the "Perl Cookbook", as it gives very good examples on most things that you want to do with Perl. I find the camel books sort of annoying and not very useful, so I tend to stay away from them, but to each his own. I have heard that there are some problems with a few of the HTTP related examples, but I've never run into any...
  • Yes, there are six books in the Perl CD v1.0 [dhtp.kiae.ru]. Speaking of which, when are the pirated versions of v2.0 going to show up on the web?
    --
  • Its called a 'bookmark' and some programs actually have fairly effective ones.

    The MRU list in Windows ("Documents") is equally helpful for resuming where you left off with something. Its not that hard for a computer to track where you went -- its just hard for us to come up with nice UIs that allow you to get back there easily.

    For example: I'd love it if search engines remembered which results I'd used the previous time I searched for the same terms and seperated them for me so if I didn't find what I was looking for before, I could ignore them, and if I did, I'd have a smaller list to go through.
  • for the search engine? I honestly can't think of a better cross-platform method for a book index.

    I will probably buy this set now that they have removed the Win32 book. I don't recall how much the first edition was, but I remember that having 20% of the cost go to a book I was never going to use seemed ridiculous.

    And Kudos to O'Reilly for doing e-books. ALL of their books should be available this way. It is best to learn things in front of the computer, but switching between keyboard and mouse is enough of a hassle, adding a book (and having to hold down pages with one hand) is a major pain in the ass when you are trying to learn something new. It's much easier to just tab between the book window and your editor.

  • Math notwithstanding, the previous set cost X dollars and included a book I could not use. This set has 5 books I can use. How does that constitute paying 4% more for each book?
  • Personally I don't like the idea of paying for the honor of searching my books, and the use of Java in this case is idiotic.

    Obviously you should use Perl and search via keyword, subject, or regex. That way you can even learn about regexes by using them. If you want to search on another computer, you can figure a way to do that with Perl.

    You are going to have a Perl interpreter on your machine if you are using the CD. They could bundle a Perl distribution probably too. And obviously it is a pretty good bet that the purchaser also will have a Perl CGI capable web server running on his or her machine, one of the gazillions that run Perl. So you know, you could use CGI to search on your own computer. Not so tough to find such a server on the net even if someone installs it, they'd probably sell more to companies that want to set up such a CGI server in-house too.

    And you can probably make a crossplatform binary with perlcc. Better yet, just include a perl DBM or flat file with all this index and a specification for it, then make building specific plugins to the search engine "extra-credit" problems!

  • Besides, does anyone else besides me think "Fatbrain" is a stupid name?
    Versus what? MajorBurrito? Fatbrain sounds appropriate to me. It conjours images of a big headed scientist guy saying "My brain is bigger than yours" right before he flips the switch to the doomsday device.
  • ...when someone comes up with a way to dogear a page on my monitor.

    The fundamental problem with books on CD is that I can find information faster in a well-thumbed, well-used printed book than you can with your shiny new CD and search engine. What needs to be done in the world of virtual publishing is some way to provide a "thumbing" function that allows you to thumb through a virtual book as if it was the real thing, without having to wait for screen updates on every page, etc. Hmm...maybe there's a patent in here somewhere...

  • Quick answer: nothing, obviously.
  • One thing I'd love to see is a subscription based service to search and read the whole O'Reilly library online. That would make my life soo much easier...

    See my other post. In case you missed it, O'Reilly already has a service like this: Safari [oreilly.com]

    --

  • Agreed. Mason is an excellent way to make embedded perl a little easier to code. Not to mention the $session->{} hash that you can pass seemlessly between pages. I use it for the site in my .sig.

    --
  • Yes I have and love my Safari account. I just wish I could swap more often. Other than that it rocks. And at 10 bucks a month for 5 books it is well worth it.
  • It also includes a Java-based search engine to search the books

    The article goes on to mention that the Java search engine is proprietary and has cross-platform compatibility problems.

    Oh, if only there were some sort of cross-platform language available, perhaps even one especially well suited to text processing and regular expression searching!

    --

  • It used to be called Computer Literacy Bookshops, back in the day. Great chain in San Jose. I thought Fatbrain was kind of dumb as a name; they were clearly looking for a memorable yet pithy .com, and that shows in the name.

    My question: why doesn't ThinkGeek carry this in its Books department? It's lighter weight than a case of Whoop Ass...

  • Back when I started on at the current job, I had the company buy a copy of the UNIX CD Bookshelf... not because I needed it, but hey, they were willing, and I get a free book.

    Overall, I find the HTML format to be wonderfully indexed and cross-referenced, and, as mentioned, the search engine is a flaming pile of crap. It's accurate, but obscures the sought-after data by not jumping directly to the location in a page. The O'Reilly Bookshelves are useful -- a bunch of good books for about $70, on CD, cross-platform... but there are limitations. I'd honestly rather have the books...

  • Patch (Score:2)

    by Cyph ( 240321 )
    Could someone please post a link to that patch? I haven't been able to find it anywhere on O'Reilly's site, so I am stuck without the Java search thingy.
  • I much prefer the dead tree editions. My screen real eastate (even with a 17 inch monitor) is scarce enough, that when I'm deep into a 5 meg PostScript file, I don't want to interrupt my focus by bringin up Acrobat.


    At home, I like to curl up with a paper back book, like the Camel book.

  • If you still have a copy of Altavista Discovery around anywhere, install that and copy the books to HD, and let Discovery index it.

    Thats a hell of a search engine for the books :)

    Alan
    --
    Tequila - drink of the gods.
  • The timing of Learning Perl 3rd Ed was unfortunate, and precluded it from being included in Perl CD 2nd Ed. From what I was told, this was the only factor in its non-inclusion.

  • New version? (Score:3)

    by don_carnage ( 145494 ) on Thursday July 12, 2001 @06:56AM (#89946) Homepage
    They released a new version? I thought that there were six books in the original...I'll have to go back and check.

    I do own this set and I must say, it's nice to have but the best part was that it came with Perl In A Nutshell in paper format. I have just about worn out that book. As nice as it is having the text in a searchable format, it's refreshing to pick up a big book and thumb through the pages.

    BTW: Has anyone checkout out Safari [oreilly.com]? It's an O'Reilly website that allows you to "subscribe" to a set of books each month and search them online. Now if I could only get my company to buy into this...

    --

  • Aaargh! Fatbrain! (Score:4)

    by MajorBurrito ( 443772 ) on Thursday July 12, 2001 @06:57AM (#89947)
    Does Fatbrain pay someone to link to their site for every book review? They are not even close to the cheapest site on the net. If you want a good price comparison, go to AddAll [addall.com]. Just type in the title, and it will search about 30 online book retailers for the lowest price, including coupons and shipping/handling.

    Besides, does anyone else besides me think "Fatbrain" is a stupid name?

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