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davido
<p>If Perl is your first programming language, you should probably start with [http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920018452/|Learning Perl], published by O'Reilly & Associates. Frankly, I would probably suggest following that up with a book specifically on Computer Science. I wish I could recommend one, but I was in your shoes back in about 1981, and my 'upbringing' included high-school Computer Science classes (Apple II Basic, and then Pascal), Byte magazine, 1980's programming books, and later on, college Computer Science classes. So I really don't know what book to recommend anymore for Comp Sci. Knuth is going to be too deep for most mortals just starting out (and mostly even for professionals). ;)</p>
<p>I do believe that after learning the basics of a specific language, learning the basic fundamentals of computer science is more important as a 'next step' than learning more advanced syntactical rules and tricks in said language.</p>
<p>Once you get a bit of of the foundation laid in Computer Science, you can go back to the Perl books, such as [http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920012689/|Intermediate Perl] (O'Reilly), as well as [http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565923980/|Mastering Algorithms with Perl] (O'Reilly). That last book is pretty old (1999), but good algorithms don't change as quickly as languages themselves, so I feel it is still a valuable book to work through.</p>
<p>One should never overlook the value of the Perl POD. [doc://perlintro], [doc://perlsyn], [doc://perlsub], [doc://perlreftut], [doc://perlretut], and so on. It's free, and it's great.</p>
<p>After that, decide what it is that interests you and dig in! My [davido|home node] contains a list of books that I have found useful over the years. Most of them are not read-once types of books. After an initial reading, I find them to be helpful when I need to dive back into a topic after some time has passed as well.</p>
<p>Oh, and in case nobody else mentions it to you: Congratulations on asking a fantastic question. Welcome back to the Monastery any time.</p>
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<br /><p>Dave</p>
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