Wicked Cool Perl Scripts

Wicked Cool™ Perl Scripts
Useful Perl Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems
by Steve Oualline

February 2006, 336 pp.
ISBN-10 1-59327-062-3
ISBN-13 978-1-59327-062-9

http://nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=wcps

I like the book at the first glance since the TOC is fairly simple. The scripts are categorized into several area, such as Unix System Administration and Internet Data Mining, per chapter.

Flipping to the next page, I found the detailed table of content, listing the short description of the scripts and sub-sections. The sub-sections describes the usage/background/possible improvement after the code is given. I like the layout for each script since it mimics how POD supposed to be written.

But looking into each of the scripts, I found most of the scripts would save me a lot of time and agony ... 4 years ago. Thus, I would encourage the younglings to read this book ASAP before they start building their own library.

These are the general "must have" scripts:

• #2 Finding Duplicate Files: generally this is must have scripts, especially for someone who has amassed tons of media (aka p0rn) files and they aren't managed very well. You'll be surprised.
• #3 Checking for Changed Files: secure conscious user will find this script useful.
  
• #6 Website Link Checker
• #7 Orphan File Checker
• #19 Comic Download: the script is fairly big, but no fret since the code is available for download at nostarch.com. Comic lovers will be glad to have this script running on a regular basis.
  
• #22 Checking Symbolic Links
• #23 Disk Space Alarm
• #37 Dead Code Locator
• #38 EOL Type Detector
  

Besides those general scripts above, I believe some people will find that they need the others since they could be wearing a different hat than I am, for example: a CGI developer could find the CGI Debugging chapter very useful (depending on the level of proficiency).

These are the scripts that I find interesting since I am playing with map caching nowadays:

• #40 Getting the Map
• #41 Map Generator
• #42 Location Finder

Although it is a useful script, I couldn't help myself to point out that using Filesys::DiskSpace module for #23 Disk Space Alarm script is overflowing the brain with 'not-very-useful' and obscured module. Why not parsing the output of df command instead?

I am looking forward to the second edition to this book, giving out more goodies to the readers at large.