Perl 5 Introduction
Course
Online
Description
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Type
Course
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Methodology
Online
This is an introduction to the Perl language yet covers enough to be able to produce useful programs and to maintain basic scripts. This course is suitable for programmers and system administrators seeking to write fast, powerful and efficient report generating programs to manipulate data files and logs, or who need a more powerful language to extend shell scripts. The course environment enables delegates to use either Windows or Linux - or even both if they wish to make comparisons. Target Audience Programmers and analysts intending to implement Perl programs, e.g. HTML generation, application control, and report generation will find it a suitable first step. Learning Objectives Write and run a Perl 5 scriptUnderstand Perl 5 language elementsRecognize simple and complex variable types and select appropriatelyUse Perl 5 operators and built-in functionsUnderstand procedural flow control in Perl 5Program basic input/outputRun and control other programs from PerlWrite powerful report generating programmes implementing Regular ExpressionsTake advantage of the vast library of Perl 5 modules and subroutines
About this course
Students should be familiar with at least one programming language: UNIX shell scripting background is sufficient. No previous knowledge of Perl is assumed.
Reviews
Subjects
- Perl
Course programme
Chapter 1: Language Basics
- Course objectives
- Perl documentation
- Perl history
- Perl availability
- Perl popularity
- Interpreter environment
- Running a perl script
- Anatomy of a perl script
- Controlling the interpreter
- General Perl syntax
- A look ahead
Chapter 2: Fundamental Variables
- Variable types
- Variable definitions
- About scalars
- Defined and undefined scalars
- Scalar literals
- Arrays and hashes introduced
- Variable interpolation
- Predefined variables
- Some useful literal constants
Chapter 3: Arrays and Hashes
- About arrays
- Array constructors
- Array constructors
- $#array magic
- Array slices
- About hashes
- Hash literals
- Hash slices
Chapter 4: Expressions and Operators
- Perl operators
- Numeric scalar operators
- Precedence and associativity
- String scalar operators
- Compound assignment operators
- Increment and decrement operators
- Comma operator
- Assignment in list context
- Context and type conversions
Chapter 5: Scalar Functions
- Numeric functions
- The magic variable $_(1)
- String functions
- String functions: index
- String functions: substr
- Assigning to substrings
- String functions: split
- String functions: join
Chapter 6: Decision Making in Perl
- Basic conditional statements
- Boolean and logical operators
- What is truth?
- Short-cuts for the lazy
- File condition functions
- Loops
- foreach
- The BLOCK
- Lexical variables - reminder
- Unconditional flow control
Chapter 7: Array and Hash Functions
- Array and list functions
- Array functions: shift
- Array functions: pop
- Array functions: unshift
- Array functions: push
- Array functions: splice
- List functions: reverse, sort, grep, map
- Hash functions
- Hash examples
- undef and exists
- defined vs. exists
- Deleting hash elements
Chapter 8: Input and Output
- The basics
- File handles
- Default file handles
- New file handles
- Reading files
- The magic variable $_(2)
- Writing files
- Formatted output - printf
- Typical behaviour of filters - ARGV
- Common input idiom
- Counting lines and bytes in Files
- Changing the default output handle
Chapter 9: Running Processes
- Family life
- Running a process from perl
- `Back ticks`
- The system function
- Creating pipelines
- Command pipelines
- Special variables
Chapter 10: File System Interaction
- The filename globbing operator
- Working with files and directories
- Working with files and directories
- Detailed file information
- Stat conversion
- Directory information
Chapter 11: Regular Expressions
- Regular expressions
- Uses of regular expressions
- Perl regular expressions
- Perl regular expression patterns
- Basic pattern match syntax
- Basic substitution syntax
- Processing of regular expressions
- Matching alternatives
- Anchors
- Class shortcuts
- Repeat quantifiers
- Quantifiers
- What did we match?
- What did we match? Sub-patterns
- More capturing sub-patterns
- Substitution
- Substitution with interpolation
Chapter 12: Subroutines and Modules
- Subroutines
- Subroutine return values
- Subroutine return values: example
- Passing subroutine arguments
- Subroutine arguments
- Getting at subroutine arguments
- Lexical variables revisited
- Find the bugs!
- Modules
- The library directories
- Using subroutines from modules
- Using subroutines from modules
- Standard modules
Perl 5 Introduction