Perl Programming on UNIX Course

Perl has been described as C, awk, sed, and shell programming all wrapped into one language. In this intense, 5-day, hands-on programming course, you will learn how to take advantage of Perl's power through examples and extensive exercises. Arrays and hashes, I/O, regular expressions, subroutines, and complex data structures are covered in depth. The course also introduces object-oriented programming in Perl, as well as UNIX multi-tasking and Perl sockets programming.

Audience
Programmers and system administrators.

Prerequisites
Fundamentals of UNIX. Experience in a high-level programming language, such as C, C++, or Java, is strongly recommended.

Course Outline

1. Overview of Perl
What is Perl?
Running Perl Programs
Sample Program
Another Sample Program
Yet Another Example

2. Perl Variables
Three Data Types
Variable Names and Syntax
Variable Naming
Lists
Scalar and List Contexts
The Repetition Operator

3. Arrays and Hashes
Arrays
Array Functions
The foreach Loop
The @ARGV Array
The grep Function
Array Slices
Hashes
Hash Functions
Scalar and List Contexts Revisited

4. Quoting and Interpolation
String Literals
Interpolation
Array Substitution and Join
Backslashes and Single Quotes
Quotation Operators
Command Substitution
Here Documents

5. Operators
Perl Operators
Operators, Functions and Precedence
File Test Operators
Assignment Operator Notations
The Range Operator

6. Flow Control
Simple Statements
Simple Statement Modifiers
Compound Statements
The next, last, and redo Statements
The for Loop
The foreach Loop

7. I/O: Input Operations and File I/O
Overview of File I/O
The open Function
The Input Operator < >
Default Input Operator
The print Function
Reading Directories

8. Regular Expressions
Pattern Matching Overview
The Substitution Operator
Regular Expressions
Special Characters
Quantifiers (*, +, ?, {})
Assertions (^, $, \b, \B)

9. Advanced Regular Expressions
Substrings
Substrings in List Context
RE Special Variables
RE Options
Multi-line REs
Substituting with an Expression
Perl RE Extensions

10. Subroutines
Overview of Subroutines
Passing Arguments
Private Variables
Returning Values

11. References
References
Creating References
Using References
Passing References as Arguments to Subroutines
Anonymous Composers
The Symbol Table

12. Complex Data Structures
Two-dimensional Arrays in Perl
Anonymous Arrays and Anonymous Hashes
Arrays of Arrays
Arrays of References
A Hash of Arrays
A Hash of Hashes
And So On...

13. Packages and Modules
Packages
BEGIN and END Routines
require vs. use
Modules
The bless Function

14. Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming in Perl
What is Object-Oriented?
Why Use Object-Oriented Programming?
Classes, Objects, and Methods in Perl
Inheritance, the "is-a" Relationship
Containment, the "has-a" Relationship
Overloaded Operators
Destructors

15. Binary Data Structures
Variable-Length (Delimited) Fields
Variable vs. Fixed
Handling Binary Data
The pack Function
The unpack Function
The read Function
C Data Structures

16. Multitasking with Perl
What are Single and Multitasking?
UNIX Multi-tasking Concepts
Process Creation with fork
Program Loading with exec
File Descriptor Inheritance
How UNIX Opens Files
One-Way Data Flow – Pipes
Example
Final Result - Page Viewing

17. Sockets Programming in Perl
Clients and Servers
Ports and Services
Berkeley Sockets
Data Structures of the Sockets API
Socket System Calls
Generic Client/Server Models
A Client/ServerExample
A Little Web Server

18. Appendix A - The Perl Distribution
Where Can You Get Perl?
How Do You Build Perl?
What Gets Created and Installed?
Differences Between Platforms
19. Appendix B - The Perl Debugger
Overview of the Perl Debugger
Debugger Commands
Non-Debugger Commands
Listing Lines
Single Stepping
Setting and Clearing Breakpoints
Modifying the Debugger
The -w and -D Flags