CAPITAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LTD

Course outline: Perl Programming

Purpose: to introduce all the fundamental concepts of the Perl language. The course is designed to equip the delegate to be able to work on Perl projects after completing the course. As is the case for all our programming courses, the 5 days consist of approximately 50% lectures and 50% hands-on practical work. All our lecturers have considerable experience of both software development and course delivery.

Prerequisites: the course assumes no previous Perl experience, but does assume a programming background. Previous experience of Unix and/or shell programming concepts will ease the learning experience considerably.

Course contents:

Language Basics

Course Objectives
Course Format
Perl History
Perl for the Web
Language Environment
Perl Scripts
General Structure

Variables and Literals

Variable Types
Variable Definitions
About Scalars
Scalar Literals
String Interpolation
About Arrays
Array Literals
About Hashes
Hash Literals

Expressions and Operations

Numerical Scalar Operators
Expression Evaluation
String Scalar Operators
Assignment Operators
Increment and Decrement Operators
Comma Operator
Bitwise Operators
Assignment in Array Context
Expression Evaluation Context
Type Conversion

Functions

Numerical Functions

int, abs

sqrt, log

sin, cos

String Functions

chomp, chop

uc, lc, ucfirst, lcfirst

length, substr, index

split, join

Array Functions

shift, unshift, push, pop

sort, reverse, grep

Hash Functions

keys, values, each

exists, delete

Flow Control

Conditional Statements

Logical Expressions

for Loop

while Loop

Loop Jump Statements

Variables with Local Scope

Advanced Flow Control

Statement Modifiers

Short-circuit Operations

Alternative Forms: unless and until

File Conditional Operators

Advanced for Loops

continue

Labels and Loop Jump Statements

redo

In-line Conditionals

Input and Output

File Handles

Default File Handles

New File Handles

Reading and Writing Files

Command Pipelines

The ARGV Argument Vector

Common Input Idiom

Changing the Current File

A Complete Program

Subroutines

Subroutines
Calling a Subroutine
Subroutine Return Values
Passing Subroutine Arguments
Writing Subroutines
Subroutine Arguments
Subroutine Return Values
Subroutine Prototypes
Local Variables

Modules

Using Modules

The Library Directories

Using Functions from Modules

Standard Modules

Writing Modules

Namespaces

Symbol Export

BEGIN and END Blocks

The require statement

Formats

Types of Output
Creating a Report
Creating a Format
Multi-line Formats
Output Generation
Other Format Options
Special Variables for Formats

Advanced Array Functions

Array Slices

Hash Slices

The sort Function

Customising Sort Order

The Sort Order Subroutine

Avoiding the Use of sort

Sorting Hashes

The map Function

The grep Function

The splice Function

Regular Expressions

Purpose of RE’s
Basic RE Syntax
Special RE Characters
Positional Characters
Alternatives and Grouping
Anchors, Wildcards and Character Classes
Quantifiers
Side Effect Variables
Search and Replace

References

What are References?
Use of References
Creating References
Using References
Examining References
References and Subroutines
Complex Data Structures
Reference Counting

Object-Oriented Programming

Perl OO Features
Basic Object Usage
Objects are References
Accessing Object Fields
Constructors
Implementing Object Methods
Destructors
Inheritance
Advanced Constructors
Dynamic Class Changing

Appendices
1. File System Interaction
2. Network Programming
3. Database Interfacing Using DBI
4. Web Progamming