This course is a comprehensive guide to the features and philosophy of the Perl programming language. It covers basic syntax, operators, data structures, control structures, I/O, references, subroutines, packages and modules, existing Perl libraries, debugging, and documentation.
Topics covered in the standard four-day version of this class include:
- A Brief History of Perl
- Getting and setting up Perl
- Comments
- Variables
- Data types
- Statements
- Warnings and diagnostics
- I/O
- Numeric, string, bitwise, and boolean operators
- Hashes (associative arrays)
- Control structures (if, for, while, etc.)
- Exceptions
- References and nested data structures
- Subroutines
- Perl's namespace mechanism
- Writing and using external source code modules
- The Perl standard library and the CPAN
- Built-in documentation tools
- Debugging Perl
The three-day version of the class covers most of the same above material, in somewhat less depth. The five-day version of the class added hands-on programming exercises (and hence requires that students have access to a computer with Perl installed).
Half-day lecture1-day to 3-day seminar
4-day or 5-day workshop
Programmers with experience in other languages (such as C, Java, Pascal, or Visual Basic), who have a basic knowledge of control structures, subroutines, I/O, and data structures.