We are using this book in my Perl class, and the general consensus is that this book is mediocre at best. Much of this comes from the fact that we are required to do the exercises at the back of the book, which, among other things, sometimes require you know information that has not yet been covered. Also some of the chapters do a poor job at explaining things, especially the functions chapter, in which even the examples in the chapter did not work when compiled. In its defense(short as it may be), however, the fact that it is short and concise made Perl more easy to handle.