Reddit reviews Perl Cookbook, Second Edition

Modern Perl is good, but I sometimes recommend the Perl Cookbook to beginners, because its format is a little easier for new people to get started with. In general these days, Modern Perl may be the best up to date guide, with good advice on how Perl should be used, but I'm not convinced it is the easiest to learn from for a beginner, especially in cases where they are already somewhat familiar but just trying to figure out how to get things done.

Perl Cookbook:
http://www.amazon.com/Perl-Cookbook-Second-Edition-Christiansen/dp/0596003137/

Yeah, it hasn't been updated since 2003, but it is a really well done cookbook-style book, where each chapter has an introduction to the topic at hand, followed by "recipes" on how to do all the common types of things.

Which is better for you might be personal preference, so here are some links to help you decide which one would be more useful for your style:

Modern Perl Online Edition:
http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl_2014/

Perl Cookbook (older first edition):
http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/perl/cookbook/


Also, Perl has fantastic documentation. Use perldoc to access it. For example:

• Show the main page for documentation. This provides an index of other special pages on various topics. Most of them are well written and have good examples and tutorials.
  > perldoc perl
  
  
• Show the docs for a module
  > perldoc Module::Blah
  
  
• Show the docs for a function
  > perldoc -f function
  

For an intro to general Unix wizardry, I'd recommend Unix Power Tools. It covers all the basic Unix tools, and shows how they can be used together effectively.

To be a real Unix master, you should also learn Perl. If you want to go farther and master Perl you can't go wrong with that.

Once you know the basics of Perl, get the Perl Cookbook, which has many great recipes for doing things like in your list. In fact, if I recall, that very example might be in the book; if not, one very close to it is.

I always had a hard time learning from man pages. They're great for reference once you've already got your bearings, but in my opinion these books will serve you far better.