Table of Contents

• Home
• Introduction
• Introduction
• This tutorial is...
• This tutorial is not...
• How to Use...
• The Table of Contents
• Conventions used in this Tutorial
• What you need to know
• Use of this document
• Personal Printouts
• Intranet usage
• Mirroring
• Translations
• A Short Introduction To Perl
• A Short Introduction To Perl
• What is Perl?
• What is ActivePerl? Are the other Perls inactive?
• Can I run Perl on my computer?
• What can I do with Perl ?
• The Internet
• Systems Administration
• What can't I do with Perl ?
• Support
• Setup
• Setup
• 1. Getting the Software
• 2. Installation
• 3. Testing - Your First Perl Script
• The Tutorial: The Journey Begins
• The Tutorial: The Journey Begins
• Your First Time
• What if it doesn't...?
• Assuming it's now all right...
• Shebang
• Variables
• Scalars
• $ % @ are Good Things
• Typing
• Variable Interpolation
• Changing Variables
• Auto(de|in)crements
• Escaping
• Context: About Perl and @^$%&~`/?
• Strings and Increments
• Print: A List Operator
• Subroutines -- A First Look
• Comments
• Comparisons
• Comparisons
• An iffy start
• The Truth According to Perl
• Equality and Perl
• All Equality is Not Equal: Numeric versus String
• An interlude -- The Perl Motto
• The Comparison Operators Listed
• The Golden Rule of Comparisons
• More About If: Multiples
• elsif
• User Input
• User Input
• STDIN and other filehandles
• Chop
• Safe Chopping with Chomp
• Arrays
• Arrays
• Lists, herds -- what are arrays?
• Basic Array Work
• Elements of Arrays
• How to refer to elements of an array
• More ways to access arrays
• For Loops
• A for Loop demonstrated
• For loops with .. , the range operator
• foreach
• The infamous $_
• A Premature End to your loop
• A little more control over the premature ending: Labels
• Changing the Elements of an Array
• Jiggerypokery with Arrays
• A table of array hacking functions
• Splice
• Deleting Variables
• Deleting Variables
• False values versus Existence: It is, therefore...
• Basic Regular Expressions
• Basic Regular Expressions
• An introduction
• Senstivity -- regexes in touch with their inner child
• Character Classes
• Matching at specific points
• Negating the regex
• Returning the Match
• * + -- regexes become line noise
• The Difference Between + and *
• Re-using the match -- \1, $1...
• How to Avoid Making Mountains while Escaping Special Characters
• Subsitution and Yet More Regex Power
• Subsitution and Yet More Regex Power
• Basic changes
• \w
• Replacing with what was found
• x
• More Matching
• Parentheses Again: OR
• (?: OR Efficiency)
• Matching specific amounts of...
• Pre, Post, and Match
• RHS Expressions
• /e
• /ee
• A Worked Example: Date Change
• Split and Join
• Split and Join
• Splitting
• A very FAQ
• What Humpty Dumpty needs : Join
• A recap, but with some new functions
• A recap, but with some new functions
• Randomness
• Concatenation
• Files
• Files
• Opening
• An unforgivable error
• \\ or / in pathnames -- your choice
• Reading a file
• Writing to a File
• A simple write
• Appending
• @ARGV: Command Line Arguments
• Modifying a File with $^I
• $/ -- Changing what is read into $_
• HERE Docs
• Reading Directories
• Reading Directories
• Globbing
• readdir : How to read from directories
• Associative Arrays
• Associative Arrays
• The Basics
• A Hash in Action
• When you should use hashes
• Hash Hacking Functions
• More Hash Access: Iteration, keys and values
• Sorting
• Sorting
• A Simple Sort
• Numeric Sorting -- How Sort Really Works
• Sorting Multiple Lists
• Grep and Map
• Grep and Map
• Grep
• Map
• Writing your own grep and map functions
• External Commands
• External Commands
• Some ways to...
• Exec
• System
• Backticks
• When to use external calls
• Opening a Process
• Quote execute
• Oneliners
• Oneliners
• A short example
• File access
• Modifying files with a oneliner and $^I
• Subroutines and Parameters
• Subroutines and Parameters
• Parameters
• Namespaces
• Variable Scope
• my Variables
• Multiple Returns
• Local
• Returning arrays
• Modules
• Modules
• An introduction
• File::Find -- using a module
• ChangeNotify
• Your Very Own Module
• Bondage and Discipline
• Bondage and Discipline
• -w
• Shebang
• use strict;
• Debugging
• Logical Operators
• Logical Operators
• or
• Precedence: What comes First
• And
• Other Logical Operators
• Last words
• Thanks to...

This tutorial is not...

• A reference manual. You won't find all the regex stuff under Regex. I think it's more fun to learn the basics then add little extras along the way. Keeps you awake, and it is a good excuse for not organising it better.
• A FAQ.
• Politically correct.
• Complete. Please don't finish the course and assume you know all there is to know about Perl. There is certainly enough here to get you started, but consider the contents of this course as the tip of the iceberg. Except maybe a little warmer.
• Eror three.