About the Book
Meeting the need of software professionals who wish to use the PERL language in various was such as: to develop and maintain software in various languages, prototyping new applications, and converting data to different formats. This text provides a toolkit written in PERL. It shows how to create individually-crafted software tools written for a specific problem and how to use rapid prototyping in PERL to eliminate unknowns.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction, 1. Why We Wrote This Book, 1. Software Tools Enable Big Productivity Gains, 1. Along Comes CASE, 2. Little CASE's Larger History, 3. Why Perl Is Good for Software Engineering Tools, 5. Testing Too, 6. Software Development Processes and Prototyping, 6. How to Use This Book, 7. Your Friends Along the Way, 8. Equipped Better, 10. 2. Why Perl? 11. What Is Perl? 11. Why Is Perl Useful for Rapid Prototyping? 12. "Functional quickly", 12. "Easy to modify", 12. "A working model written in a fourth-generation language", 12. "Always rewritten in a procedural language for implementation", 13. "Always discarded", 13. "Something that models human interfaces to computers", 13. "A miniature model of a proposed system", 13. "A model used to determine design correctness" and "A quick way to approximate a problem solution", 13. "Always used with 'live' data", 14. How Perl Stacks Up, 14. Perl Beats the Combined Forces, 17. Converting Existing Scripts to Perl, 17. Really Learning Perl, 17. 3. Prototyping with Perl, 19. Why Prototype? 19. Risk Area #1: Unknowns in Customer Requirements, 20. Risk Area #2: Unknowns in Technology, 21. Risk Area #3: Unknowns in Interfaces, 22. The Waterfall Development Model, 22. The Spiral Model, 26. Structured Rapid Prototyping, 27. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, 28. Other Development Methodologies, 28. Prototyping Methods, 29. Risks of Prototyping, 30. The General Case of Prototyping, 31. Requirements Analysis, 32. Design, 32. Implementation and Test, 33. The Final Spin Cycle, 34. Case History: Prototyping Power Estimation, 37. 4. Productivity Tools, 43. Generic Tags File Generator Tool, 44. Reuse Library System, 51. Documentation Extraction Tool, 52. Reuse Browser, 53. AutoDoc, 53. Code Generators, 56. Command-Line Processing and Help Code Generator, 56. Test Fixtures, 63. Stretch Yourself on Productivity Tools, 63. 5. Software Metrics with Perl, 65. Why Metrics? 65. What Are Software Metrics? 66. Counting Lines of Code, 67. Halstead's Metrics, 71. McCabe's Metric, 73. Using Software and Other Metrics, 74. Misusing Metrics, 75. Metrics, Management, and Misconception, 76. Not in My Code, 76. Look What I've Done, 78. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, 78. Those Who Live By The Books... 79. Taken as Directed, 79. Stretch Yourself on Software Metrics, 80. 6. Configuration Management, 81. The How and Why of Configuration Management, 81. Two Ways of Managing Versions, 83. Revision Control System (RCS) Basics, 84. Jumpstarting Revisions, 87. Viewing History, 87. How Far Does It Take Us? 88. Identifying Object Files, 88. Automatic History, 90. Handling Systems or Packages, 91. Another Option, 92. RCS Perl Scripts, 94. Smart ci and co Tools, 94. Problem Reporting, 95. Stretch Yourself on Configuration Management, 97. Appendix A: Perl Quick Tour, 101. Perl Data Types, 101. Variables, 102. Literals, 104. Basic Syntax, 106. Subroutines, 111. Packages, 112. Operators, 113. Regular Expressions, 120. Special Variables, 126. Perl Formatting Capabilities, 128. Wrapping Up, 132. Appendix B: Portable Perl, 133. Appendix C: Toolkit Libraries, 135. Langdef File Format and Access Routines, 135. Langdef Regular Expressions, 136. Langdef Capabilities, 137. Langdef Routines, 138. Routines Found in main Package, 139. Useful Routines Found in "Langdef" Package, 145. The Perl Forms System, 158. What is a Form? 158. Defining a Form, 158. Attributes Common to All Fields, 161. Function Keys, 166. Text Editing in Fields, 167. Using Text Fields, 168. Using Hidden Text Fields, 169. Using Cyclic Fields, 169. Using Enumerated Fields, 169. Using the Forms System, 170. Appendix D: Software Engineering with Perl Scripts, 207. 4. Productivity Tools, 208 Tags.pl, 208. doc_builter.pl, 217. doc_browser.pl, 226. AutoDoc.pl, 231. 5. Software Metrics with Perl, 235. countlines.pl, 235. halstead.pl, 242. mccabe.pl, 251. 6. Configuration Management, 259. smart_diff.pl, smart_ci.pl, smart_co.pl, send-pr.pl, 259. Appendix E: Bibliography, 267. Appendix F: GNU General Public License, 269.
