Perl Programming - A Solid Foundation

Covers general Perl programming together with system and database interaction. The basic four-day course is a grounding in using the Perl programming language as a successful Perl programmer and/or system administrator. An optional fifth day can be added, focusing on CGI Perl and Perl for web development.

OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE

Delegates have usually encountered some Perl before, but may not always have found it easy to learn or use. The course is for developers who want to learn the Perl way of doing things. It emphasizes taking advantage of Perl's native productivity tools and techniques, rather than trying to ‘make do’ with other language's idioms.

The course covers the fundamentals of Perl from the beginning, as we have found that a good understanding of how and why Perl does things in particular ways helps everyone to learn more effectively; even those who have been programming in Perl for a couple of years.

COURSE DATES:

INTENSITY: About 40% of the course is practicals, and 60% lectures.

PREREQUISITES: EITHER attendance on the Perl Basics course OR at least one programming language or scripting language, e.g., C, C++, Java, PHP, Visual Basic, Pascal, or COBOL.

FOLLOW UPS: Attendees can attend an extra day at the end of this course to cover web development with perl.

PRACTICALS / TAKEAWAYS:

Each student leaves the course with their own set of training notes for the material covered.

Every student who attends this course  will be issued with a signed certificate of course completion.

SOFTWARE VERSIONS: Covers Perl running on any platform.

TOPICS COVERED ON THE COURSE:

Preparing to learn Perl

• Things you need to know and do in order to run Perl programs and learn Perl programming
• A module designed for complete beginners
• The perl compiler/interpreter
• Perl under Unix/Linux
• Perl under MS Windows 2000/NT/95/98/ME (perl.exe)
• ActiveState Perl
• Making programs executable (chmod +x)
• Perl from the command line (perl command)
• Specify the perl compiler/interpreter (#!)
• Using plain text for programs
• Writing a very simple program
• Running a very simple program
• Basic syntax

Perl: the absolute minimum

• Enough of the language to get started
• The print function
• Variables
• Scalars — numbers and strings
• Assignment
• Simple conditional tests — if
• Lists
• Arrays — for storing lists
• foreach loops
• Hashes
• Other loops: while, for, do,until
• Arrays — the rest
• Simple input, e.g., while(<>)
• Functions overview — recognising, writing, using
• Simple file handling — open, print
• Subroutines — parameters in and out, listification, local variables (my)
• Help — perldoc, books, web

Regular expressions

• Text manipulation with regular expressions
• Matching strings
• Matching the default variable
• Case-sensitivity and matching
• Special characters
• Special characters: where
• Special characters: what
• Special characters: how many
• Built-in character classes
• Built-in character class examples
• Capturing
• Regular expression examples
• Substitution
• Global substitutions

Perl: beyond the basics

• More flow control
• Statement modifiers
• Quoting mechanisms — qq(), etc.
• Here documents
• Uppercase/lowercase conversion
• Splitting strings into lists
• Joining lists into strings
• Filtering lists with map
• Sorting lists
• The importance of context
• Assignment shortcuts
• Scoping rules
• Special variables

Complex data structures & references

• Limits of flat lists
• Nesting arrays
• Array references
• Anonymous arrays
• Named array references
• Passing multiple arrays to/from functions
• Hashes of arrays
• Hash references
• Arrays of hashes
• Hashes of hashes
• Complex nested data structures
• Code references
• Dispatch tables

Finding Out More For Yourself

• How to read Perl's documentation
• Where to find more information
• Knowing what's out there to look for
• FAQs

Using Perl Modules from CPAN

• The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
• Why effective Perl programmers are efficient CPAN users
• CPAN's philosophy
• Finding modules
• Installing Modules
• Using modules
• Some particularly useful modules

The Perl debugger & debugging Perl

• Avoiding bugs
• Perl's built-in debugger
• Invoking the debugger
• What you can do with the debugger
• Understanding the debugger's command line interface
• Knowing the debugger's basic command set
• Exploring some extended functions
• Graphical debuggers
• Alternative debugging techniques

Command-Line Perl

• General principles
• Using Perl as a filter
• Editing files in-place
• Many real world examples
• Command line flags
• Many examples using regular expressions

A Whistle-Stop Tour of the World of Perl

• Wheels you don't need to re-invent
• Common recipes
• Common pitfalls

Perl Style

• The Philosophy of Perl
• Why good style is important
• Good style
• Bad style

Handling Databases with Perl

• Interacting with SQL databases from Perl
• Using DBI
• Connection/disconnection, log in/log out
• Retrieving a single record
• Retrieving multiple records
• Update/insert queries
• Place-holders and bind values
• Connecting through ODBC

Advanced File Processing with Perl

• Types of open
• Filehandles
• Reading line by line
• Reading paragraph by paragraph
• Reading entire files
• Special variables
• The flip-flop operator (..)
• File test functions
• Pipes

System interaction

• Connecting to other programs
• Unsafe pipes
• Using IO::Pipe
• Grabbing a program's output
• Other ways to run programs

Perl Security Issues

• Potential security pitfalls
• Coding for security
• Taint checking
• Dangerous environment variables
• File input
• Set-user-id Perl programs
• Permissions and users

SPECIAL SAVINGS FOR MULTIPLE AND PACKAGE BOOKINGS
If you book more than one place on our courses on the same order, you are entitled to a 10% discount.