Perl Course Modules for In-house Perl Training

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

Reading Perl 

• Reading well-written Perl programs
• Reading badly-written Perl programs

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

• ActiveState Perl
• The Win32 modules
• Some Win32 functions
• Win32::Process
• Win32::Registry
• Win32::OLE

System interaction

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

Managing Dates and Times in Perl

• Time-keeping concepts
• Built-in time functions
• The DateTime modules
• Storing dates for retrieval

Internationalization and Locales in Perl

Writing Cross-Platform Perl

Handling XML Data in Perl

Handling Unicode in Perl