Re: learning perl 3rd vs 4th

In article <[email protected]>, Richard Lee
<[email protected]> wrote:

> Currently I own a 'learning perl' 3rd edition and I noticed that 5th 
> version is coming out in june.
> What I didn't realize was that learning perl 4th edition's been out 
> since 2005.
> 
> I was going to order 5th version in june but does anyone in here know 
> the different between 3rd and 4th version?
> Is there a big difference?

The 4th Edition was updated for Perl 5.8, and added a bit more about
using Perl modules. Most of the work in Perl 5.8 was behind-the-scenes
stuff, so there aren't a lot of new features. Most of the changes were
the things we had learned in teaching Stonehenge's Learning Perl course
since the 3rd edition came out. The 4th Edition also has a companion
text called the "Learning Perl Student Workbook" that has additional
exercises (with answers) for each of the chapters.

The upcoming 5th Edition covers up to Perl 5.10, which includes many
new features. Some of those features, such as named captures in
regexes, smart matching, and given-when, are important for beginners so
we've added them to the book. There's an entirely new chapter for smart
matching, and updated and expanded regex stuff. We've also expanded the
Perl module chapter just a little.  We moved the Perl module chapter to
earlier in the book to emphasize it more since the strength of Perl now
is the ready-to-use stuff that either comes with the Standard Library
or is on CPAN. We've also added some additional exercises.to some of
the chapters.

If you have the 4th edition already, we hope you already know Perl
because we did it right in that edition and you just have to look at
the Perl docs to get the new features. We're not going to tell you not
to buy the latest edition though. :)