Perl Taining Course Midlands | Birmingham | Telford | Stafford | Wolverhampton

A two day course introducing participants to Perl programming.

Topics include

Perl Overview
What is Perl?
Perl Features
Who Uses Perl?
Why Use Perl?
Your Version of Perl
Where to Get Perl
Plain Old Documentation

Creating and Executing Perl Scripts
What is a Perl Script?
Implicit Execution - Unix
Implicit Execution - Windows
Explicit Execution
Deleting Errors in Perl Script
Statements
Declarations

Scalar Data
What is Scalar data?
Scalar Variables
Identifier Names
What are Operators?
Operator Precedence
Setting Scalar Variables
Using Perl Functions
Quoting Strings

Conditional Execution
Boolean Values
Simple if and if-else
The if - if-else Control Structure
The Unless Control Structure
Relational and Logical Operators
Logical Operators
Command Modifiers
The Conditional Operator

Lists and Arrays
The List Data Type
Named Lists or Array
Accessing Single Array Elements
Slices of Arrays
Setting Arrays with Scalars
Setting Arrays with a List
The Range Operator
Quoting Operators
Command Line Arguments

String and List Functions
Determining Array Size
Clearing an Array
String vs. Numerical Context
String Functions -
length(), index(),substr()
List Functions - split(), join(), shift(), unshift(), pop(), push(),splice(), map(), grep(), reverse()
Combining List Functions

Looping Constructs
The while Loop
The until Loop
The do-while and do-until Loops
The for Loop
Variations on the for Loop
The foreach Loop
Naming a Loop-Labels
Continuing Blocks
Loop control - last(), next(), and redo()

Associative Arrays
What is an Associative Array?
Accessing Hash Elements
Setting Hashes
Hash Functions
Extracting Key/Value Pairs
Testing for a Key's Existence
Testing for a Value is Defined
Removing Hash Elements

Text File I/O
Steps of Text File I/O
Opening Files
Accessing Modes
Testing For Open()
Reading Lines from Text Files
Removing "newline" Characters
Writing to a File
Predefined File Handles
Opening OS Commands
Closing Files

Regular Expressions
Pattern Matching
Regular Expression Properties
Common Metacharacters
Binding Operators
Matching with =~
Search and Replace
Saving Matches
Translations
Modifiers to tr///

Perl Shortcuts
Built-in Perl Variables
Perl Environment-%ENV
The Default Variable
The Null File Handle
Command Line Scripts
Interactive Code Wrappers
Editing a File in Place
The "heredoc" Mechanism

Subroutines
Subroutines Overview
Defining a Subroutine
Invoking Subroutines
Declaring Subroutines
Subroutine Parameters
Referencing Parameters
Subroutine Return Values
Return Value Context
Declaring Local Variables

Sorting
Sorting Overview
Simple Sorts
Custom Sort Blocks
Sort Subroutines

Using Libraries and Modules
Overview
Writing a Library
Where to Place Libraries
Modules
Using a Module
Using a Non-OO Module
OO Perl Overview
Pragmas
The Perl Standard Library

CGI, the World Wide Web, and Perl
CGI Client/Server Model
CGI Step by Step
URL Encoding
Invoking CGI Scripts
The ISINDEX Tag
Anchors or Links
Forms
Form Methods
Server Provided Data

Writing CGI Scripts
Scripts I/O Process
Client Input
The Request Method
Parsing Script Input
Parsing Input the Easy Way
Processing Client Input
Generating Output
The HTTP Header
Script Errors
Saving Script Errors
Troubleshooting CGI Scripts
Some Common CGI Errors