An Overview of Perl

• What is Perl?
• Perl is Compiled and Interpreted
• Perl Advantages
• Perl Disadvantages
• How to Get Perl
• Which Version of Perl
• Getting Help
• perldoc

Creating and Running Perl Programs

• Structure of a Perl Program
• Running a Perl Script
• Using -w
• Using -c
• Implicit Execution of Scripts Under Unix
• Implicit Execution of Scripts Under Windows
• Embedding in a Batch File
• Using the LINE Directive
• Associating File Extensions
• Using Perl on Windows NT/2000

Basic Data and I/O

• Perl Data
• Text Literals
• Text Operators and Expressions
• Numeric Literals
• Math Operators and Expressions
• Scalar Variables
• Default Values
• Writing to Standard Ouput
• Command Line Arguments
• Reading from Standard Input
• Removing Newlines

Logic and Loops

• About flow control
• The if Statement
• What is Truth
• Relational Operators
• Boolean Operators
• Using unless
• Statement Modifiers
• Using elsif
• warn and die
• The Conditional Construct
• The While Loop
• Variant While Loops
• The For Loop
• Exiting Loops
• Exiting From Nested Loops

Lists and Arrays

• The List Data Type
• Literal Lists
• Arrays
• Accessing Array Elements
• Creating Arrays
• Printing Arrays
• List Interpolation
• Arrays and Memory
• Counting Elements
• Iterating Through an Array
• The Range Operator
• Taking a Slice of an Array

Reading and Writing Text File

• File I/O Overview
• Opening a File
• Reading Text Files
• Putting It All Together
• Writing To A Text File
• Arrays and File I/O
• Using <>

Lists and Arrays

• Growing and Shrinking Arrays
• Using splice
• The split Function
• Splitting on White Space
• Assigning to Literal Lists
• The join Function
• The sort Function
• Comparison Operators
• Alternate Sort Keys
• Reversing an Array

Formatting Output

• Formatting with printf
• Report Overview
• Report Formats
• String Formats
• Numeric Formats
• The write Function
• The Selected File Handle

Hashes

• Hashes
• Creating Hashes
• Creating by Assignment
• Testing for Existence
• Deleting Hash Elements
• Traversing a Hash
• The each Function

References

• What is a Reference?
• Creating References
• Dereferencing
• Dereferencing Elements
• Multidimensional Arrays
• Anonymous Data
• Complex Data Structures

Working with Text

• String length
• The substr Function
• index and rindex
• String Replication
• Pattern Matching
• Pattern Substitution
• Regular Expressions
• Matching Characters
• Character Shortcuts
• Quantifiers
• Matching Location
• The m and s Modifiers
• Using Subexpressions
• Using e
• String Translation

Raw File and Data Access

• Raw File Access
• Opening and Closing Raw Files
• Reading Raw Data
• Writing Raw Data
• Raw Data Manipulation

Subroutines

• Subroutine Overview
• Declaring Subroutines
• Calling Subroutines
• Passing Parameters
• Returning Values
• Making Variables Private
• Packages
• Using Standard Perl Modules

Working with the Operating System

• Working with the OS
• Which OS
• Environment Variables
• Running external Programs
• User Identification
• Trapping signals
• File test operators
• Reading directories
• Working with files
• Time of day

CGI Scripts and the World Wide Web

• Understanding CGI
• Using CGI.pm
• URL Encoding
• Calling CGI Scripts
• About the CGI Script
• CGI Environment Variables
• Reading the CGI Data
• Parsing Raw CGI Data
• Saving Field Data
• Sending the HTTP Header
• Generating HTML
• HTML from Templates