Perl CD Bookshelf

Thanks to Arjen for sending a review of O'Reilly's Perl CD Bookshelf. The bookshelf is a collection of O'Reilly's well-known Perl books, complete with searchable information.

Perl CD Bookshelf
author	Multiple Authors
pages	406
publisher	O'Reilly, 08/1999
rating	8/10
reviewer	Arjen Laarhoven, Murphy Software
ISBN	1565924622
summary	This CD is a very handy collection of a number of well-knownO'Reilly Perl books. If you work on Perl-related stuff on various sites, a CD with the content of 6 books is much easier on your backto carry around with you.

Overview

This is kind of a weird review. Sort of a meta-review if you like. O'Reilly's Perl CD Bookshelf is a CD with 6 of O'Reilly's Perl books on them, in HTML format. To enable searching of the complete contents of the CD, a Java-based search engine is included, as are a number of Java Runtime Environments for various platforms.

I didn't read all 6 books on the CD 'cover to cover'. In my opinion, books in electronic form don't really lend themselves for relaxed reading. But as reference material, it's more appealing to carry around a single CD than lugging around almost 3200 pages in book form.

What's in it for me?

Lots. Most importantly: the complete contents of the following books in HTML format:

• Perl in a Nutshell (review)
• Perl Cookbook (review)
• Learning Perl
• Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
• Programming Perl (review)
• Advanced Perl Programming (review)

Each book has its own index, but a master index spanning all 6 books is also provided.

With this much information, you want to be able to search for a nugget of information hidden somewhere in the equivalent of almost 3200 bookpages of information. Perl runs on a variety of platforms, so this CD contains a (proprietary) Java-based search engine. This engine supports a number of basic search capabilities, like wildcards and boolean operators. The engine isn't very sophisticated, and I don't use it much, as I generally know where to look for specific things, and the master index is very complete.

The search engine requires installation of a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) if you don't already have a JRE or a JDK (Java Development Kit). The Windows users have it easy; put in the CD and the search engine and a browser with the CD homepage start automagically. The Windows JRE is installed automatically. UNIX/Linux users have to do some handywork to install a JRE if they don't have installed one already. Binary JRE's for the following platforms are provided:

• FreeBSD 2.2.* with a.out binary format
• FreeBSD 3.* with ELF binary format
• HP-UX 10.20
• HP-UX 11
• Linux with glibc
• Older JRE for Linux with glibc (try if the other glibc JRE doesn't work)
• Solaris
• SunOS 4.1.3

JRE's for other platforms, like AIX, Digital UNIX (Tru64) and SCO are not on the CD because of license issues. Information about where to get a JRE for these platforms is provided on the page about UNIX JRE installation instructions.

I had some problems with installing the Linux JRE on my Debian GNU/Linux system, but after some headscratching and trying another package it worked well. The documentation on installing and using the JRE's and the search engine on the various platform is sparse, but sufficient for most cases.

What's good?

The size and price. For about $54 (price at Amazon) you get 6 books which would add up to about $138 at only a fraction of the weight. Quite a bargain, if you ask me.

With the CD comes a dead-tree version of Perl in a Nutshell (or the other way around :-), so for that ``I know what I want to do, but what where the details again?'' questions, you can just reach to your bookshelf which is very handy. For in-depth discussions and explanations, you can refer to the content on the CD.

What's bad?

Hmm. Tough one. IMHO, only some small details. The JRE installation for UNIX can be a bit hairy for novice UNIX/Linux users. Paper books read more easily than computer screens (but that's not O'Reilly's fault). The limited and proprietary search engine (maybe O'Reilly should have included a search CGI (written in Perl ;-) for those of us who run a Webserver on their systems).

Conclusion

If you're a programmer which works on different client sites, this is great replacement for a stack of good Perl books. For a reasonable price, you get a truckload of information on a handy portable medium.

Links to Web pages related to The Perl CD Bookshelf

• O'Reilly's page on The Perl CD Bookshelf

Purchase this book at fatbrain.