Perl Training: Introduction to Perl Programming

Course Number: PRL-100
Duration: 5 days
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Perl Training Overview

Perl is a powerful scripting language that has been popular for more than a decade. In this engaging, hands-on Perl training class, attendees learn how to use Perl to build data-driven reporting and systems administration applications.

Location and Pricing

Most Accelebrate courses are taught on-site at our clients' locations worldwide for groups of 3 or more attendees and are customized to their specific needs. Please visit our client list to see organizations for whom we have recently delivered training. These courses can also be delivered as live, private online classes for groups that are geographically dispersed or wish to save on the instructor's or students' travel expenses. To receive a customized proposal and price quote private training at your site or online, please contact us.

In addition, some courses are available as live, online classes for individuals. To see a schedule of online courses, please visit http://www.accelebrate.com/online_training/?action=course&page=PRL101.

Perl Training Prerequisites

We strongly recommend that all attendees have some prior programming experience.

Hands-on/Lecture Ratio

This Perl training class is 70% hands-on, 30% lecture, with the longest lecture segments lasting for 20 minutes. Students "learn by doing," with immediate opportunities to apply the material they learn to real-world problems.

Perl Training Materials

All Perl training students receive copies of the latest editions of O'Reilly's acclaimed Learning Perl and Programming Perl, as well as related courseware.

Software Needed on Each Student PC (or a Server Accessible via Telnet or Remote Desktop Connection)

Windows, MacOS, or Unix operating system
The latest version of Perl installed
A text editor for editing the Perl scripts (please contact us to discuss the best editor for your environment)
DBI.pm (downloadable from CPAN at http://search.cpan.org/search?module=DBI)
A database of the customer's choice (MySQL recommended; almost all major databases can be accommodated)
The appropriate DBD (DBI database driver) for the database

Accelebrate welcomes the opportunity to assist its clients with configuring their environment for class.

Perl Training Objectives

To learn the fundamentals of the Perl programming language and how it can be used to write data reporting and systems administration applications.
To discover how to use of the DBI.pm module and related DBD (driver) files with Perl to build database-driven applications.

Perl Training Outline

Overview of Perl

What is Perl?
Running Perl Programs
Sample Program
Another Sample Program
Yet Another Example

Perl Variables

Three Data Types
Variable Names and Syntax
Variable Naming
Lists
Scalar and List Contexts
The Repetition Operator

Arrays and Hashes

Arrays
Array Functions
The foreach Loop
The @ARGV Array
The grep Function
Array Slices
Hashes
Hash Functions
Scalar and List Contexts Revisited

Quoting and Interpolation

String Literals
Interpolation
Array Substitution and Join
Backslashes and Single Quotes
Quotation Operators
Command Substitution
Here Documents

Operators

Perl Operators
Operators, Functions and Precedence
File Test Operators
Assignment Operator Notations
The Range Operator

Flow Control

Simple Statements
Simple Statement Modifiers
Compound Statements
The next, last, and redo Statements
The for Loop
The foreach Loop

I/O: Input Operations and File I/O

Overview of File I/O
The open Function
The Input Operator < >
Default Input Operator
The print Function
Reading Directories

Regular Expressions

Pattern Matching Overview
The Substitution Operator
Regular Expressions
Special Characters
Quantifiers (*, +, ?, {})
Assertions (^, $, \b, \B)

Advanced Regular Expressions

Substrings
Substrings in List Context
RE Special Variables
RE Options
Multi-line REs
Substituting with an Expression
Perl RE Extensions

Subroutines

Overview of Subroutines
Passing Arguments
Private Variables
Returning Values

References

References
Creating References
Using References
Passing References as Arguments to Subroutines
Anonymous Composers
The Symbol Table

Complex Data Structures

Two-dimensional Arrays in Perl
Anonymous Arrays and Anonymous Hashes
Arrays of Arrays
Arrays of References
A Hash of Arrays
A Hash of Hashes
And So On...

Packages and Modules

Packages
BEGIN and END Routines
require vs. use
Modules
The bless Function

Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming in Perl

What is Object-Oriented?
Why Use Object-Oriented Programming?
Classes, Objects, and Methods in Perl
Inheritance, the "is-a" Relationship
Containment, the "has-a" Relationship
Overloaded Operators
Destructors

Binary Data Structures

Variable-Length (Delimited) Fields
Variable vs. Fixed
Handling Binary Data
The pack Function
The unpack Function
The read Function
C Data Structures

Multitasking with Perl

What are Single and Multitasking?
UNIX Multitasking Concepts
Process Creation with fork
Program Loading with exec
File Descriptor Inheritance
How UNIX Opens Files
One-Way Data Flow - Pipes
Example
Final Result - Page Viewing

Sockets Programming in Perl

Clients and Servers
Ports and Services
Berkeley Sockets
Data Structures of the Sockets API
Socket System Calls
Generic Client/Server Models
A Client/ServerExample
A Little Web Server

Introduction to DBI/DBD

The Old Way - DBPerls
A Better Way - DBI/DBD
Database Programming
Handles
Connecting to the Database
Creating a SQL Query
Getting the Results
Updating Database Data
Transaction Management
Finishing Up

DBI/DBD SQL Programming

Error Checking in DBI
Getting Connected
Drivers
Using Parameterized Statements
Statement Handle Attributes
Other Handle Attributes
Column Binding
The do Method
BLOBs and LONGs and Such
Installing DBI Drivers

Conclusion

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“Accelebrate,” “Accelerated Learning Celebrated Results,” and the Accelebrate logo are registered trademarks of Accelebrate, Inc. All other product names and trademarks are property of their respective owners. Course outline content may mirror or be derived from the book that each student receives with the course. Otherwise, all content is copyright © 2003- by Accelebrate, Inc. of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. To contact us, please use the contact form, email info@accelebrate.com us, or call 1 877 849 1850 in the US and Canada, 0808 234 2132 in the UK, 1 800 550 311 in Ireland, or +1 678 648 3113 from all other locations.