Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

B.6 Finding Help

Make sure you have any available
documentation. If you install Perl as outlined earlier, this is
already done as part of the general Perl installation, and the
instructions that come with your Perl distribution will explain how
to get at the documentation on your system. There is also excellent
online Internet documentation, which can be found at http://www.perl.com.

First, point your web browser at the main Perl web site, bookmark it,
and look around a little, especially at the available documentation.
This is an essential resource. Also, point your browser at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (the
National Center for Biotechnology Information) and http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ (the European
Bioinformatics Institute) for two of the biggest government-sponsored
bioinformatics resources. These are among the most important web
sites for Perl and bioinformatics.

Also very useful is the standard book Programming
Perl (now in its third edition). You can do fine with the
(free) online documentation, but if you end up doing a lot of Perl
programming, Programming Perl (and perhaps a
few others) will probably end up on your bookshelf.

Most languages have a standard document set that includes the whole
story about the language definition and use. In Perl, this is
included with the program as the on-line manual. Although programming
manuals often suffer from poor writing, it is best to be prepared to
dig into them. A well-honed ability to skim is a great asset. The
Perl manual isn't bad; its main problem, that it
shares with most manuals, is that all the details are in there, so it
can be a bit overwhelming at first. However, the Perl documentation
does a decent job of helping the beginner navigate, by means of
tutorial documents.