This book on LAMP is not primarily focused on PHP, actually quite a small part is devoted to PHP.

It starts with a very brief explanation in layman’s terms on how the internet works, including serving web pages with a webserver. In chapter two it goes on to explain how to set up your Linux machine, including partitioning and some security related issues. With chapter three the authors start to explain Apache by example. In a very simple way handling a running Apache-server, and setting up its configuration file are dealt with.

Perl is introduced in chapter 4, and covered to the fullest extent well, as far as possible with Perl :). Starting with the basic “Hello World“, continuing with operators, variables and functions the basic syntax is explained. Of course, regular expressions are covered, and soon readable code is lost between the ~’s, ^’s. \\’s and {‘s. For a Perl book the content is insufficient,but it’s a basic start for beginning regex gurus. In a LAMP book MySQL is essential, and thus this topic is covered in chapter five. Again, the basics of SQL are explained, illustrated with Perl and DBI.

Part 2 of the book covers Static content with only a chapter on WML (Website META Language), a toolset for complex static websites. Part 3, not surprisingly called “Dymanic“, covers the more advanced Perl topics: mod_perl in chapter eight, SSI (though this is not Perl) in chapter nine, EmbPerl, a Perl module that works like the PHP module and allows Perl to be embedded into HTML in chapter ten, and Mason, which does about the same as EmbPerl in chapter 11. Chapter 12 finally is where it starts to get interesting for PHP developers, this chapter is totally about our favorite scripting language. It’s covered in a totally different way than most PHP books I’ve seen. It’s covered in a very simple way, often referred to as the little brother of Perl. Only the syntax is covered and the mysql_* functions.

This is a nice book if you didn’t have any experience with Apache, or the scripting languages covered. Although it’s not a good choice if you want to learn how to work with Apache and PHP - it’s definitely a book which focusses on Perl topics. If you are just beginning with dynamic web sites, and would like to know something about Perl this might be a nice book to read, but don’t have too many expectations of it.

James Less, Brent Ware
Open Source Web Development with LAMP
Paperback, 460 Pages, 44.99
Addison Wesley, 2003
ISBN: 0-201-77061-X