Audience
This is a beginner course suitable for anyone wanting to use Perl for system administration, QA, Configuration Management or Web Programming.

Objectives

• To be able to write simple programs in Perl.
• To learn the fundamentals of Perl that will enable you to learn more complex and specialized features.

Course format

• Duration of the course is 32-40 academic hours. (Usually 4-5 days).
• The course includes approximately 40% hands on lab work.
• In the 5 day long version we allocate more time for exercises and have more time for individual help.

Prerequisite

• Basic programming background in either a high-level language such as C, Java or a scripting language such as Shell, VBSscript or Javascript.
• Experience with a text editor like emacs, vi, pico or notepad.
• Understanding of files and directories.

Syllabus

• History, how to install Perl, how to run scripts
• Basic I/O
• Scalar values and variables (numbers and strings)
• Control flow
• Lists and arrays (context)
• Hash (associative arrays)
• Regular expressions, pattern matching
• Functions, subroutines
• Accessing files
• Interaction with the file system
• Error handling
• Processes and Signals
• Using references
• Using modules
• Using OOP style
• Installing modules on UNIX/Linux and on Windows systems
• Using CGI to write simple Web applications
• Using LWP to write web scraping programs