Good book, too many footnotes
This is a review of the 4th edition (Schwartz, Phoenix, foy). Like all of the O'Reilly books I've seen so far, Learning Perl is very nicely edited and well laid out. The authors made one unfortunate choice. They decided that, since Perl is a complex language with a lot of quirks, they were going to interrupt the general flow with an abundance of footnotes. They do warn you to ignore them, but that's easier said than done -- besides, if they're there to be ignored, why not just leave them out? Other than that, this is a good introduction to Perl. I am using it for a distance ed class at NC State. I am more than half way through the term and I've done well so far without listening to a single lecture, just by reading the book and doing the end-of-chapter exercises.
