Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours

Learn Perl programming quickly and easily with 24 one-hour lessons in Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours. The book's step-by-step lessons teach you the basics of Perl and how to apply it in web development and system administration. Plus, the third edition has been updated to include five chapters on new technologies, information on the latest version of Perl, and a look ahead to Perl 6. Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours focuses on real-world development, teaching you how to: Effectively use Perl for large development projects using Perl modules Use Perl for data processing Utilize Perl as a "glue" language with other programming languages Use Perl as a web development language

Table of Contents:
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.