Prerequisites:

Some experience with either a programming language (preferably C), or any of the UNIX shells.

Who Should Attend:

Programmers, end users, system administrators, network administrators, CGI script writers, or anybody who is interested in automating tasks but doesn't want to learn all the details of a full blown programming language.

Course Description:

Perl is a scripting language which allows for rapid prototyping of projects formerly done with a programming language or a shell. It incorporates all the functionality of C (including a UNIX system interface), the Shells, grep, sed, and awk. The topics in the course will aid all computer users - from end user to programmer to administrator alike. Many in class labs support the course material.

Benefits of Attendance:

Students will be able to write Perl scripts that:

• Manipulate files and directories
• Use the powerful regular expression capabilites of Perl
• Generate awk like reports
• Solve problems by using Perl's associative array capabilites
• Take Advantage of Perl's powerful interface to UNIX and other Oses
• Perform network communication including those tasks accomplished through CGI programming
• Perform many system administration functions
• Be able to use Perl to write CGI applications
• Be able to use Modules from the Standard Perl distribution
• Use Perl data structures and references
• Use object orientation in Perl
• Create objects and reuse classes

Tuition:

Tuition for the course is $1,925

Course Outline:

CHAPTER 1: A PERL TUTORIAL

1. What is Perl?
2. Where can I get Perl
3. The first Perl program
4. Simple I/O
5. Perl variables
6. Numbers
7. Arrays
8. Array functions
9. Arrays and STDIN
10. Control flow constructs
11. Altering loop control flow
12. Labeled Blocks for long breaks
13. Statement modifiers
14. What is true and what is false
15. Associative arrays
16. The special built in variable - $_
17. Pattern matching and w/ regular expressions
18. Writing your own functions

CHAPTER 2: I/O IN PERL

1. Introduction
2. The print function
3. The printf function
4. The sprintf function
5. Filehandles
6. Opening disk files
7. File open errors
8. Closing files
9. Opening pipe files
10. Command line arguments
11. File operators
12. The stat operator
13. The _ filehandle

CHAPTER 3: PERL OPERATORS

1. Introduction
2. Table of Perl operators
3. Assignment operators
4. Special String operators
5. Relation operators
6. Logical operators
7. Arithmetic operators
8. The conditional expression
9. The range operator
10. Regular expression operators
11. String operators

CHAPTER 4: ARRAYS + ARRAY FUNCTIONS

1. Introduction
2. Assigning values to an array
3. Subscripting
4. Array functions
5. push and pop
6. shift
7. sort, reverse, chop
8. split, join
9. grep
10. splice
11. Associative arrays
12. Associative array functions
13. Associative array example
14. Built in associative arrays
15. Reading from a file into an associative array

CHAPTER 5: SUBROUTINES

1. Subroutines
2. Passing arguments to subroutines
3. Returning values
4. The require function
5. @INC
6. Packages
7. Modules and use
8. Typeglobs
9. Predefined subroutines

CHAPTER 6: DATA STRUCTURES

1. References
2. Higher Dimensional Arrays
3. Complex Hashes
4. References and Subroutines
5. Linked Lists

CHAPTER 7: ACCESSING SYSTEM RESOURCES

1. Introduction
2. File and directory system calls
3. mkdir, chdir, and chown
4. Opendir and readdir
5. Link, unlink, rename
6. Time stamps for disk files - stat and utime
7. Process creation - fork
8. exec and wait
9. signals
10. system

CHAPTER 8: ODDS AND ENDS

1. eval
2. warn
3. quoting
4. Sorting with custom comparison functions
5. here strings
6. tr
7. pack and unpack
8. Regular Expressions
9. Command Line Options
10. Debugging
11. The strict.pm module
12. The -w flag
13. The Perl debugger

CHAPTER 9: GENERATING REPORTS WITH PERL

1. Introduction
2. Formats
3. Multi-Line formats
4. Filled Field formats
5. Top of Page formatting
6. The select operator
7. Special Format Variables: $~, $^
8. A sample report generator

CHAPTER 10: CLIENT/SERVER APPLICATION USING TCP/IP

1. Introduction
2. Internetworking with TCP/IP
3. Client/Server applications
4. Perl functions for networking applications
5. A simple client/server application
6. Code for the client program
7. Code for the server program
8. Client/Server Programming using Socket.pm

CHAPTER 11: A CGI PRIMER

1. Introduction
2. A typical form
3. Web Servers & Web Clients
4. HTML & HTML form tags
5. CGI Input
6. GET methods
7. CGI Output
8. Environment Variables
9. Decoding form data

CHAPTER 12: MODULES & OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

1. Perl Modules included with the distribution
2. What is CPAN?
3. Packages v.s Modules
4. The use directive
5. Importing and exporting symbols
6. Object Oriented Programming
7. Defining and creating objects
8. Implementing information hiding
9. Destructors
10. Inheritance
11. Polymorphism
12. Documenting Perl code

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