I started learning Perl from this book and I haven't bought any other Perl books yet. This book is very thin for an O'Reilly book but it covers all the basic areas of Perl and all of the most important commands and methods. This is just one more book that makes me love O'Reilly even more.

Starts from ground 0 of perl to the up level of sky in perl. Recommended for perl geek ! Good exercises of every chapters make book more practical.

There is a lot of info packed into a small amount of pages here. If you have done some programming before this is a quick way to learn Perl. When I first bought this book however, Perl was my first attempt at learning a 'real' language and in most cases it was not enough. I bought Beginning Perl by Simon Cozens and it does a much better job of deeply explaining Perl concepts to the total beginner.

I found combining both books, "Beginning" to get a good solid understanding of each concept, and "Learning" to quickly pound the details in was an excellent way to get some Perl skillz.

Beginning Perl is available for free online but is worth purchasing to keep as a reference. http://learn.perl.org/library/beginning_perl/

This book is essential if you want to learn the basics of Perl.