The first book I bought was Learning Perl (the Llama book). I was lost from the beginning. Later on I realized that the first chapter is an overview and the learning really begins with Chapter 2. However, this book isn't for people who have no programming experience. Learning Perl is simply the best book for, well, you know, learning Perl. To see some potentially biased book reviews, see Tom Christiansen's Camel Critiques (this page is now very outdated).

On your way to learning, take your time. Read and re-read. Don't try to do it in 21 days unless you're on vacation and have latent geeky programmer genes in your family history (which means you can write code for hours and hours without sleeping or getting bored). And most importantly, do the exercises! Write programs (which can also be referred to as scripts). You will not learn by reading alone.

I suggest you get a good basic knowledge of Perl down before you start CGI.

Q: What's the difference between Perl and CGI?
A: Perl is a specific programming language, like C or Visual Basic. CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is the interface used for the Web browser to talk to the server, and the server to talk back to the Web browser after the Perl program has been run. (Any number of programming languages can used for CGI programming.)

After you have a good grasp of Perl you can launch into the CGI aspect of programming, which enables you to run your programs using a Web browser as an interface. There are a lot of good books on this subject, some of which are shown below. There are also a lot of resources on the Web, which are mentioned on the Internet Resources page on this site.

Then you may want to go more in depth by getting Programming Perl (the Camel book), which is the industry standard Perl reference. Also seen below are CGI Programming 101 and a newer book, Writing CGI Applications with Perl. Be sure you are getting the 3rd edition of Learning Perl and Programming Perl which cover Perl 5 and some CGI issues.

You may read more book reviews by clicking on the books below and scrolling down when you get to the book's page. From there you can purchase books and have them sent right to your home, without ever having to leave your computer! Even with shipping they may cost less than your neighborhood book store. Scroll down below the books to search for other Perl/CGI books.