Perl 5 Tutorial, First Edition

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction to Programming

1.1 What is Perl?

1.2 A Trivial Introduction to Computer Programming

1.3 Scripts vs. Programs

1.4 An Overview of the Software Development Process

Chapter 2 Getting Started

2.1 What Can Perl Do?

2.2 Comparison with Other Programming Languages

2.2.1 C/C++

2.2.2 PHP

2.2.3 Java/JSP

2.2.4 ASP

2.3 What do I need to learn Perl?

2.4 Make Good Use of Online Resources

2.5 The Traditional "Hello World" Program

2.6 How A Perl Program Is Executed

2.7 Literals

2.7.1 Numbers

2.7.2 Strings

2.8 Introduction to Data Structures

Chapter 3 Manipulation of Data Structures

3.1 Scalar Variables

3.1.1 Assignment

3.1.2 Nomenclature

3.1.3 Variable Substitution

3.1.4 substr() --- Extraction of Substrings

3.1.5 length() --- Length of String

3.2 Lists and Arrays

3.2.1 Creating an Array

3.2.2 Adding Elements

3.2.3 Getting the Number of Elements in an Array

3.2.4 Accessing Elements in an Array

3.2.5 Removing Elements

3.2.6 splice(): the Versatile Function

3.2.7 Miscellaneous List-Related Functions

3.2.8 Check for Existence of Elements in an Array (Avoid!)

3.3 Hashes

3.3.1 Assignment

3.3.2 Accessing Elements in the Hash

3.3.3 Removing Elements from a Hash

3.3.4 Searching for an Element in a Hash

3.4 Contexts

3.5 Miscellaneous Issues with Lists

Chapter 4 Operators

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Description of some Operators

4.2.1 Arithmetic Operators

4.2.2 String Manipulation Operators

4.2.3 Comparison Operators

4.2.4 Equality Operators

4.2.5 Logical Operators

4.2.6 Bitwise Operators

4.2.7 Assignment Operators

4.2.8 Other Operators

4.3 Operator Precedence and Associativity

4.4 Constructing Your Own sort() Routine

Chapter 5 Conditionals, Loops & Subroutines

5.1 Breaking Up Your Code

5.1.1 Sourcing External Files with require()

5.2 Scope and Code Blocks

5.2.1 Introduction to Associations

5.2.2 Code Blocks

5.3 Subroutines

5.3.1 Creating and Using a Subroutine

5.3.2 Prototypes

5.3.3 Recursion

5.3.4 Creating Context-sensitive Subroutines

5.4 Packages

5.4.1 Declaring a Package

5.4.2 Package Variable Referencing

5.4.3 Package Variables and Symbol Tables

5.4.4 Package Constructors with BEGIN {}

5.5 Lexical Binding and Dynamic Binding

5.6 Conditionals

5.7 Loops

5.7.1 for loop

5.7.2 while loop

5.7.3 foreach loop

5.7.4 Loop Control Statements

5.8 Leftovers

Chapter 6 References

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Creating a Reference

6.3 Using References

6.4 Pass By Reference

6.5 How Everything Fits Together

6.6 Typeglobs

Chapter 7 Object-Oriented Programming

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Object-Oriented Concepts

7.2.1 Programming Paradigms

7.2.2 Basic Ideas

7.2.3 Fundamental Elements of Object-Oriented Programming

7.3 OOP Primer: Statistics

7.3.1 Creating and Using a Perl Class

7.3.2 How A Class is Instantiated

7.4 Inheritance

Chapter 8 Files and Filehandles

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Filehandles

8.2.1 open a File

8.2.2 Output Redirection

8.3 File Input and Output Functions

8.3.1 readline() --- Read a Line from Filehandle

8.3.2 binmode() --- Binary Mode Declaration

8.3.3 read() --- Read a Specified Number of Characters from Filehandle

8.3.4 print()/printf() --- Output to a Filehandle

8.3.5 seek() --- Set File Pointer Position

8.3.6 tell() --- Return File Pointer Position

8.3.7 close() --- Close an opened Filehandle

8.4 Directory Traversal Functions

8.4.1 opendir() --- Open a Directory

8.4.2 readdir() --- Read Directory Content

8.4.3 closedir() --- Close a Directory

8.4.4 opendir() --- Open a Directory

8.5 File Test Operators

8.6 File Locking

Chapter 9 Regular Expressions

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Building A Pattern

9.2.1 Getting Your Feet Wet

9.2.2 Introductions to m// and the Binding Operator

9.2.3 Metacharacters

9.2.4 Quantifiers

9.2.5 Character Classes

9.2.6 Backtracking

9.3 Regular Expression Operators

9.3.1 m// --- Pattern Matching

9.3.2 s/// --- Search and Replace

9.3.3 tr/// --- Global Character Transliteration

9.4 Constructing Complex Regular Expressions

Chapter 10 Runtime Evaluation & Error Trapping

10.1 Warnings and Exceptions

10.2 Error-Related Functions

10.3 eval

10.4 Backticks and system()

10.5 Why Runtime Evaluation Should Be Restricted

10.6 Next Generation Exception Handling

10.6.1 Basic Ideas

10.6.2 Throwing Different Kinds of Errors

10.6.3 Other Handlers

10.7 Other Methods to Catch Programming Errors

10.7.1 The -w Switch --- Enable Warnings

10.7.2 Banning Unsafe Constructs with strict

10.7.3 The -T Switch --- Enable Taint Checking

Chapter 11 CGI Programming

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Static Content and Dynamic Content

11.2.1 The Hypertext Markup Language

11.2.2 The World Wide Web

11.3 What is CGI?

11.4 Your First CGI Program

11.5 GET vs. POST

11.6 File Upload

11.7 Important HTTP Header Fields & Environment Variables

11.7.1 CGI-Related Environment Variables

11.7.2 HTTP Header Fields

11.8 Server Side Includes

11.9 Security Issues

11.9.1 Why Should I Care?

11.9.2 Some Forms of Attack Explained

11.9.3 Safe CGI Scripting Guidelines

Appendix A How A Hash Works

A.1 Program Listing of Example Implementation

A.2 Overview

A.3 Principles

A.4 Notes on Implementation

Appendix B Administration

B.1 CPAN

B.1.1 Accessing the Module Database on the Web

B.1.2 Package Managers

B.1.3 Installing Modules using CPAN.pm

B.1.4 Installing Modules --- The Traditional Way

Appendix C Setting Up a Web Server

C.1 Apache

C.1.1 Microsoft Windows

C.1.2 Unix

Appendix D A Unix Primer

D.1 Introduction

D.1.1 Why Should I Care About Unix?

D.1.2 What Is Unix?

D.1.3 The Overall Structure

D.2 Filesystems and Processes

D.2.1 Overview

D.2.2 Symbolic Links and Hard Links

D.2.3 Permission and Ownership

D.2.4 Processes

D.2.5 The Special Permission Bits

Appendix E In the Next Edition