Introduction to Perl Programming

Practical Extraction and Report Language 101

by Willie Northway

Class Description

Learn the basic concepts of programming with the Perl scripting language, a rapidly growing programming language used for development of tools for the internet or unix administration. "Perl is designed to make the easy jobs easy, without making the hard jobs impossible." It has been stated that 90% of all programming work is focused on text manipulation. By combining sed, awk, and grep while using C-style syntax, Perl has been described as a swiss-army chainsaw.

We will be focusing primarily on the characteristics of Perl, while discussing how typical programming concepts are implemented with the language. Topics covered will include: variables, symbols, structures, functions, regular expressions, files, sockets, and modules. The elementary concepts will be emphasized, while quickly introducing more advanced concepts to whet the appetite for further self-study.

This class is designed to last 4 hours, with a few breaks, and lab exercises. There will be hand-out materials, and sample code to take home. Please come with a unix account, comprehension of a unix text editor (pico is acceptible) and at least an elementary understanding of programming concepts.

pre-requisites to this class:

access to a unix machine (can work on DOS as well)
understanding of a unix text editor such as vi, emacs, or pico (also known as pine composer)
elementary knowledge of programming concepts

if you don't know how to program, that's OK, but the focus of this class is to introduce the perl language, and not necessarily instruct on programming concepts, if you can follow along - great, we've got a lot of content to cover in a short time. I will start off slow so that everyone understands, but will pick up the pace near the end to whet your appetite.

Begin the lesson -->