Introduction.
How to Use This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
I. PERL FUNDAMENTALS.
Hour 1: Getting Started with Perl.
Installing Perl
Stop! Wait! Maybe You Already Have Perl
Installing Perl on Windows
Installing Perl on Unix
Installing Perl on Mac OS
Documentation
Some Special Documentation Cases
What If You Can't Find the Documentation?
Your First Program
Typing Your First Program
Running the Program
It Worked! So What Happened?
Perl Play-by-Play
Something You Should Know
Hour 2: Perl's Building Blocks: Numbers and Strings.
Literals
Numbers
Strings
Scalar Variables
The Special Variable $_
Expressions and Operators
Basic Operators
Numeric Operators
String Operators
More Operators
One-Operand (Unary) Operators
Increment and Decrement
Angle Operator (<>)
More Assignment Operators
A Few Words on Strings and Numbers
Exercise: Interest Calculator
Hour 3: Controlling the Program's Flow.
Blocks
The if Statement
The Other Relational Operators
What Truth Means to Perl
Logical Operators
Looping
Looping with while
Looping with for
Other Flow Control Tools
Odd Arrangements
Fine-Grained Control
Labels
Leaving Perl
Exercise: Finding Primes
Hour 4: Stacking Building Blocks: Lists and Arrays.
Putting Things into Lists and Arrays
Arrays
Getting Elements Out of an Array
Finding the End of an Array
Learning More about Context
More about the Size and End of an Array
Context with Operators and Functions
Manipulating Arrays
Stepping Through an Array
Converting Between Arrays and Scalars
Reordering Your Array
Exercise: Playing a Little Game
Hour 5: Working with Files.
Opening Files
Pathnames
A Good Defense
Dieing Gracefully
Reading
Writing
Free Files, Testing Files, and Binary Data
Free Filehandles
Text Files and Binary Files
File Test Operators
Hour 6: Pattern Matching.
Simple Patterns
Rules of the Game
The Metacharacters
A Simple Metacharacter
The Unprintables
Quantifiers
Character Classes
Grouping and Alternation
Anchors
Substitution
Exercise: Cleaning Up Input Data
Pattern Matching Odds and Ends
Working with Other Variables
Modifiers and Multiple Matching
Backreferences
A New Function: grep
Hour 7: Hashes.
Filling Your Hash
Getting Data Out of a Hash
Lists and Hashes
Hash Odds and Ends
Testing for Keys in a Hash
Removing Keys from a Hash
Useful Things to Do with a Hash
Determining Frequency Distributions
Finding Unique Elements in Arrays
Computing the Intersection and Difference of Arrays
Sorting Hashes
Exercise: Creating a Simple Customer Database with Perl
Hour 8: Functions.
Creating and Calling Subroutines
Returning Values from Subroutines
Arguments
Passing Arrays and Hashes
Scope
Other Places for my
Exercise: Statistics
Function Footnotes
Declaring Variables local
Making a Stricter Perl
Recursion
II. ADVANCED FEATURES.
Hour 9: More Functions and Operators.
Searching Scalars
Searching with index
Searching Backward with rindex
Picking Apart Scalars with substr
Transliteration, Not Substitution
A Better Way to print
Formatted Printing with printf
Specifying the Field Formats
Formatted Output to a String
Exercise: A Formatted Report
New Ways with Arrays
A List as a Stack
Splicing Arrays
Hour 10: Files and Directories.
Getting a Directory Listing
Globbing
Exercise: The Unix grep
Directories
Navigating Directories
Creating and Removing Directories
Removing Files
Renaming Files
Unix Stuff
A Crash Course in File Permissions
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About THAT File
Exercise: Renaming Files En Masse
Hour 11: System Interaction.
The system() Function
The Underlying Command Interpreter
Capturing Output
Avoiding Your Shell
Pipes
First Lesson in Portability
Telling the Difference: An Example
Hour 12: Using Perl's Command-Line Tools.
What Is the Debugger?
Starting the Debugger
Basic Debugger Commands
Breakpoints
Other Debugger Commands
Exercise: Finding the Bug
Other Command-Line Stuff
One-Liners
Other Switches
Empty Angle Brackets and More One-Liners
Hour 13: References and Structures.
Reference Basics
References to Arrays
References to Hashes
References as Arguments
Building Structures
Recipes for Structures
Example: A List of Lists
Other Structures
Debugging with References
Exercise: Another Game, Maze
Hour 14: Using Modules.
A Gentle Introduction
Reading the Documentation
What Can Go Wrong?
A Quick Tour
Exploring Files and Directories
Copying Files
Is Anybody Out There?
Once Again, in English?
More Diagnostics
Full List of Standard Modules
Where Do You Go from Here?
Hour 15: Finding Permanence.
DBM Files
Important Points to Know
Walking Through DBM-Tied Hashes
Exercise: A Free-Form Memo Pad
Text Files as Databases
Inserting into or Removing from a Text File
Random File Access
Opening Files for Read and Write
Moving Around in a Read/Write File
Locking
Locking with Unix and Windows
Reading and Writing with a Lock
Locking with Windows 95 and Windows 98
Locking Elsewhere
Hour 16: The Perl Community.
What's Perl All About, Anyway?
A Brief History of Perl
Open Source
The Development of Perl
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
What Is CPAN?
Why Do People Contribute?
Your Next Steps
Your First Step
Your Most Useful Tool
Debug Your Program
First, Help Yourself
Learn from the Mistakes of Others
When All Else Fails, Ask
Another Place to Look and Ask: PerlMonks
Other Resources
III. APPLYING PERL.
Hour 17: Writing Modules.
Building a Module
Calling the Module
Namespaces
Scoping Revisited
Another statement: our
Forcing Your Names on Others
Example: A Module to Handle Common File Information Requests
Hour 18: Object Primer.
Classes, Properties, and Methods
A Thought-class: Car
Example: Implementation of Car in Perl
Using the Car Class
Example: File Information Class
Using the File Information Class
Hour 19: Data Processing.
How to Look at Data
Unstructured Data
Table Data
Hierarchical Data
Binary Data
Dealing with Table Data
Example: Email Order Taker
Example: Verifier for the Email Order
XML Data
Reading XML Using Regular Expressions
Reading XML with XML::Simple
Example: Extending Your Ordering System for XML Input
Hour 20: Perl as a Glue Language.
Weather Station
Part 1: Finding Out Where You Are
Part 2: Finding the Local Airport
Part 3: Fetching the Weather and Putting It All Together
Presenting Data as PDF
Example: Weather Report as PDF
Reading and Writing Excel Spreadsheets
Using Perl to Create a Spreadsheet
Reading the Spreadsheet
Hour 21: Introduction to CGI.
Browsing the Web
Fetching a Static Web Page
Dynamic Web Content-The CGI
Don't Skip This Section
The Checklist
Your First CGI Program
Installing the CGI Program on the Server
Running Your CGI Program
What to Do When Your CGI Program Doesn't Work
Is It Your CGI Program?
Server Problems
Fixing Internal Server or 500 Errors
Hour 22: Basic Forms.
How Forms Work
Short Review of HTML Form Elements
What Happens When You Click Submit?
Passing Information to Your CGI Program
GET and POST Methods
Web Security 101
A Clear Link
Watching for Insecure Data
Doing the Impossible
Denial of Service
A Guestbook
Hour 23: Complex Forms.
The Stateless Web
Hidden Fields
The Online Store
A Multipage Survey
Hour 24: Manipulating HTTP and Cookies.
The HTTP Conversation
Example: Fetching a Page Manually
Redirection
More Details on Calling CGI Programs
Passing Parameters to CGI Programs
Special Parameter Considerations
Cookies
How to Make Cookies
Example: Using Cookies
Restricting Cookies
Long Term Cookies
Problems with Cookies
Cookies Are Ephemeral
Cookies Aren't Always Supported
Some People Don't Like Cookies
IV. APPENDIXES.
Appendix A: Installing Modules.
Picking the Right Module
Installing the Modules Under
Windows
UNIX, Using CPAN
UNIX, The Hard Way
Mac OS X
What to Do When You're Not Allowed to Install Modules
Using Modules Installed in Strange Places
Index.
