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Training Course Summary:

This hands on Perl programming course provides a thorough introduction to the Perl programming language, teaching attendees how to develop and maintain portable scripts useful for system management, data manipulation, and Web CGI programming. Emphasis is placed on built-in subroutines that can be used to help conveniently build fast, portable and efficient scripts. Extensive hands on exercises provide practice in report creation, pattern matching, string manipulation, file I/O, command line processing, and debugging. Students are shown how to extend Perl's basic functionality with packages and loadable modules. The final day encompasses CGI scripting with Perl as well as database access using the DBI module. Attendees are shown how to validate form data, how to perform robust database access, and how to generate HTML output in order to create a dynamic web site. Attendees who do not need or want in-depth coverage of CGI scripting and DBI should attend HOTT's Perl Scripting course instead.

Pre-Requisites:

Prior scripting experience or knowledge of fundamental programming concepts. For CGI programming, knowledge of HTML fundamentals and SQL is helpful but not required.

Training Course Overview/Content:

Introduction to Perl
Origin and Design Goals of Perl
Overview of Perl Features
Getting and Installing Perl
Accessing Documentation via perldoc
HTML-Format Reference Documentation
Perl Strengths and Limitations
Getting Started With Perl
Explicit Invocation of the Perl Interpreter
Running Perl on UNIX vs. Windows
Running Perl from the Command Line
Using Command Line Options
Using Debug Mode
Implicit Invocation of the Perl Interpreter
Running and Debugging Perl Scripts
Simple and Compound Statements
Fundamental Input Techniques
Using the print Function to Generate Standard Output

Using Variables
Scalar Variables
Introduction to Standard Data Types
Retrieving Standard Input Using the Default Variable $_
Assigning Strings and Numbers to Scalar Variables
Declaring Constants for Persistent Values
Using strict to Declare Variables
Pattern Matching in Perl
Regular Expressions in Perl
Using Pattern Matching Operators
Altering Data with Substitutions in Regular Expressions
Using Backreferences to Capture Data from Regular Expression Matching
Global and Case-Insensitive Matches
Altering Data with Character Translation
Using Variables in Patterns

Operators
Introduction to Fundamental Operators
Operator Precedence and Associativity
Using the Ternary Operator ?: as a Shortcut for the if Statement
Using and <> File I/O Operators for Standard Input/Output
Using the Shortcut Operators +=, -=, *=, /=
String Manipulation
String Comparison
String Relations
Concatenation
Substring Manipulation
Using chomp and chop to Eliminate EOL Characters
Escape Characters for Formatting
String Manipulation Functions

Flow Control: Conditional Statements and Looping
Conditional Expressions and Logical Operators
if/else/elsif and unless
Constructing switch/case Equivalent Expressions
while Loops and do Loops
for and foreach Loops
Labels
Altering Program Flow with next, last, and redo
Trapping Errors with the eval Function
Terminating a Script with exit
Subroutines and Parameters
Simplifying Scripts with Subroutines
Defining and Calling a Subroutine
Passing Arguments by Value
Passing Arguments by Reference
Using return to Return a Value
Controlling Variable Scope using my and local Keywords

Arrays and Hashes
Defining Numeric Index Arrays
Defining Associative Arrays
Sorting Arrays with the sort Function
Adding and Deleting Items Using push, pop, shift, and unshift
Using slice, splice, and reverse
Other Array Manipulation Techniques
Looping through an Array
Merging Arrays
Introduction to Hashes
Preallocating Memory to Optimize Hash Performance
Packages and Modules
The Power of Packages and Modules
Introduction to Standard Modules
Where to Find Modules on the Internet
Installing a Module on UNIX or Windows
Creating Packages for Portability
Using Packages to Create Isolated Namespaces and to Separate Code

File Manipulation
Using open and close
Difference Between print and write
Reading and Writing Arrays
Directory Manipulation Using opendir, closedir, readdir, chdir, mkdir and rmdir
Input/Output Processing
Parsing Input
Using Standard Input, Standard Output, and Standard Error
String and Field Processing
Using Streams and Pipes
Using die to Quit with an Error
Redirecting Standard Output and Standard Error to a File
Getting Standard Input from a File

Implementing Command Line Arguments
Reading Command Line Arguments from @ARGV
Manipulating Positional Parameters with push, pop, shift
Processing Command Line Options with getopt or getopts
Analyzing Command Line Argument Values with the Getopt::Std and Getopt::Long Modules
Reserved Variables
Manipulating Identifiable Options Using GetOptions
Perl Report Formatting
Defining Report Formats
Justifying Text (Left, Right, Center)
Using write to Generate Reports
Defining here Documents for Report Customization
Creating Report Headers
Using Built-in Variables t