Perl Course Modules for In-house Perl Training

Combine Modules for Customised Perl Training

Most of our Perl course modules are outlined below. They can be combined in different ways to produce a wide range of specialist Perl courses. Our own "off the shelf" Perl courses are, for example, built in this way.

With judicious selection, a purchasing company can build itself a bespoke Perl training solution from these modules at a fraction of the usual cost.

The vast majority of modules and their hands-on exercises are delivered in a quarter day. A few exceptional modules last a half day, because cross-dependencies in their content dictate a specific sequence of progress.

Please ring our training advisors for help in assembling a course with appropriate content, speed of progress, prerequisite knowledge, and consistent subject matter, etc.

N.B. GBdirect write fully-bespoke courses for clients in all of our specialist areas of consultancy. If you have such a requirement and the budget for it, please contact our course developers for advice and support.

Listings of our Perl Modules

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

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

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
Placeholders and bind values
Connecting through ODBC

Introduction to CGI Programming With Perl

Printing a CGI header for a simple command-line program
Running the simple program as a CGI script
Form handling — CGI::Lite for parameter parsing
GET
POST
Debugging CGI programs
Running CGI programs at the command line

A Whistle-Stop Tour of the World of Perl

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

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

Creating Web Pages with HTML::Template

Using a simple print statement to output HTML
Embedding Perl in HTML
Template systems — separating code and layout
HTML::Template
HTML::Template conditionals
HTML::Template loops
Changing the templates but not the code

Advanced Perl Regular Expressions

Commenting regexps — /x
Word boundaries
Grouping without capturing
Single/many line strings
Zero-width lookahead assertions
Lookbehind assertions
Back-references
Alternation
Quantifiers: ?, {}
Non-greedy quantifiers
Finding multiple matches
Dynamically making replacement text

Creating Classes and Objects in Perl

Using object-orientation: classes and objects
Constructors
Object methods
Destructors
Dual-purpose class and object methods
Inheritance
An example class: CGI::Page

Advanced Perl Miscellany

Exception-handling: trapping run-time errors
Executing code fragments in strings
Secret subroutines
Static variables
Subroutine prototypes
Benchmarking code

Creating Perl Modules

Modules
Packages & files
Creating a module
Defining functions in modules
Exporting functions from modules
Variables in modules
When you should create a module

Logging with Perl

Text logs
Logs used on Unix
Handling state
Disk usage problems
Log analysis
Log munging
Logging related modules

Managing Networks with Perl

Host Files
DNS
NIS lookups
WHOIS
LDAP
ADSI
Sending and receiving email
Related modules

Perl Security Issues

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

Managing Users and Processes with Perl

User identity across platforms
Process control
Scheduling events
Managing disk quotas
Querying filesystem usage
Monitoring file operations
Monitoring network operations
Related perl modules

mod_perl

What is mod_perl?
Apache::PerlRun
Apache::Registry
Persistent database connections: Apache::DBI
Migrating from CGI to mod_perl
Setting Up mod_perl
Configuring Apache and mod_perl

Network Programming with Perl

Berkeley sockets
Higher-level Perl interfaces
Modules for writing network clients
Modules for writing network servers
Net::FTP, LWP
Multiplexing network input/output with select

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

Perl Style

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

Using LWP for web Client applications

A library for WWW access in Perl
Library components (modules)
The fully object-oriented interface vs. a very simple procedural interface
Basic and digest authorization schemes
Redirect handling
Access through proxy servers
Building robots and parsing robots.txt files

Advanced Object-Oriented Techniques in Perl

Multiple inheritance
Method resolution algorithm
Customizing method dispatch using AUTOLOAD
Using tie to make instances simulate scalars, aggregates, or file handles
Operator overloading

Perl for Microsoft Windows

System interaction

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