Perl v5 Programming

Perl v5 Programming

Software engineers, programmers, web site administrators, and system administrators who will be designing and creating programs using Perl. Anyone desiring the ability to read and understand Perl programs for maintenance and update purposes.

This course is available in a ``crunched'' 4-day version, which eliminates some of the extended lab reviews and prolonged discussions of alternate techniques.

Course Contents

Why Perl Programming? (Origin and History of Perl)
Introducing Perl Scripting
Scalar Data
Arrays and Lists
Control Structures (Blocks, if/unless, while/until, for, foreach)
The Perl v5 Debugger WinNT
Associative Arrays
Basic I/O WinNT
Regular Expressions (Pattern Matching and Substitution)
User-defined Functions WinNT
Miscellaneous Control Structures
Filehandles and I/O Commands WinNT
Formats: Perl's Report Writer
Directory and File Management WinNT
Process Management WinNT
System Database Access (users, groups, network info) WinNT
User-defined Databases
Advanced Features WinNT
Networking Basics (client/server coding) WinNT
Applying Perl (CGI and/or Database access) WinNT

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Design and code Perl scripts for data manipulation and text processing, including CGI and DBI use
Understand the issues in Perl client/server applications
Use standard system commands from within Perl scripts
Produce reports using simple ``page layout'' techniques
Understand how modularity and code reuse is implemented in Perl
Understand how Perl can be extended through the use of modules to access vendor databases, graphical user interfaces, network protocols, and other high-level concepts

Instructional Technique

Students are invited to bring their current ideas and questions to the classroom for discussion. Lecture, group problem solving, and online laboratories will be used. Students will be encouraged to enhance their skills utilizing the techniques presented through classroom problem solving and controlled online workshops. This course is approximately 50% labwork.

Prerequisites

None, although experience in any interpreted scripting language would be particularly helpful (Visual Basic, Unix shell, TCL/Tk, Python, JavaScript, etc).

Operating System Differences

Unix: Perl was designed to be run on a Unix platform and this is its native environment. All materials in this course are written with this in mind.
WinNT: Because Windows NT and Windows 2000 do not support the full operating environment expected by Perl, some features or functions are incomplete or not supported. This course discusses which aspects of Perl are affected. In most cases, alternative techniques are described which provide similar functionality. If this course will be taught in a Windows environment, please specify at the time of ordering so that an additional reference appendix may be attached to the course materials.
Lab Setup: For setup information, follow this link to a page which describes where to download a Perl distribution and what the setup requirements are.