Duration:

3 Days

Audience:

Employees of federal, state and local governments; and businesses working with the government.

Course Overview:

In this course, you will learn how to solve everyday problems with the Perl programming language. Geared for individuals new to Perl, this class was developed for people who are new to the Perl programming language and need a tool to help them in solving administrative type tasks and ad hoc requests/queries. You will immediately be able to use Perl to complete basic tasks in the real world.

Course Outline:

1. Language Overview

  • Perl Overview
  • The Perl Interpreter
  • Running a Perl Application
  • The Perl Help System
  • Our First Perl Statement

2. Language Basics

  • Language Basics
  • Basic Language Rules
  • Comments
  • Scalar Variables
  • Printing Scalar Variables
  • Quoting Scalar Variables
  • <STDIN> as a Scalar
  • Cleaning up after Scalars
  • “Special” Scalars
  • Safe Coding with Scalars
  • Scalar Operators

3. Arrays and List Data

  • Arrays and List Data
  • What is a List?
  • Representing a List
  • List Variables
  • Assignment
  • Retrieving List Values
  • List Slices
  • Special List Variables
  • <STDIN> as a List
  • Built-In List Functions
  • The reverse Function
  • The sort Function
  • The push and pop Functions
  • The shift and unshift Functions

4. Control Structures and Looping

  • Control Structures and Looping
  • Statement Blocks
  • The if Statement
  • The Truth in Perl
  • The unless Statement
  • The if/unless modifiers
  • The while Statement
  • The until Statement
  • The do {} while/until Construct
  • The for Statement
  • The foreach Statement
  • Modifying Looping Behavior
  • The last Statement
  • The next Statement
  • The redo Statement

5. Hash Data

  • Hash Data
  • What is a Hash?
  • Hash Variables
  • Built-in Hash Variables
  • Built-in Hash Functions
  • The keys Function
  • The values Function
  • The each Function
  • The defined Function
  • The exists Function
  • The delete Function

6. Input/Output

  • Input/Output
  • STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR
  • More on STDOUT
  • Formatted Output Using printf
  • Format Control Strings
  • Here Documents
  • Using the <> (Diamond) Operator
  • Creating Data Streams