Perl for Beginners

Perl is a popular programming language, often mentioned in job adverts. It is heavily used for system admin, and for Web development. And it is fun. Compared with Perl, other languages can feel worthy but tedious.

However, few universities use Perl as a teaching language. Hence the need for a self-instruction textbook, like this one.

Beginners need to focus on the core of the language, bypassing features which are not essential in the early stages. This book does that: it covers all you need to write successful Perl programs, while shielding you from confusing inessentials.

Note

1 Introduction

2 Getting started

3 Data types

4 Operators
4.1 Number and string operators
4.2 Combining operator and assignment
4.3 Truth-value operators

5 Flow of control: branches

6 Program layout

7 Built-in functions

8 Flow of control: loops

9 Reading from a file

10 Pattern matching
10.1 Matching and substitution
10.2 Character classes
10.3 Complement classes and indefinite repetition
10.4 Capturing subpatterns
10.5 Alternatives
10.6 Escaping special characters
10.7 Greed versus anorexia
10.8 Pattern-internal back-reference
10.9 Transliteration

11 Writing to a file
11.1 Reading, writing, appending
11.2 Pattern-matching modifier letters
11.3 Generalizing special cases

12 Arrays
12.1 Tables with numbered cells
12.2. An example
12.3 Assigning a list to an array
12.4 Adding elements to and removing them from arrays
12.5 Other operations on arrays

13 Lists

14 Scalar versus list context

15 Two-dimensional tables

16 User-defined functions
16.1 Adapting Perl to our own tasks
16.2 The structure of a user-defined function
16.3 A second example
16.4 Multi-argument functions
16.5 Divide and conquer
16.6 Returning a list of values
16.7 “Subroutines” and “functions”

17 Hash tables
17.1 Tables indexed by strings
17.2 Creating a hash
17.3 Working through a hash table
17.4 Advantages of hash tables
17.5 Hashes versus references to hashes

18 Formatted printing

19 Built-in variables

20 The debugger

21 Beyond the introduction

Endnotes

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