UNIX users, programmers, and system administrators who write tools or shell scripts, generate reports, or manipulate text files.

Prior programming experience is strongly encouraged. Since this course does not spend time introducing the fundamental lexicon of computer programming, those with no programming background whatsoever will have a relatively difficult time.

Prior experience with C, C++, Java or any other language employing C-like syntax would be especially helpful.

Introduction

• What Perl is, how to get it, etc.
• Creating a simple program

Data Types

• Scalar data ,scalar variables, and basic operators
• Arrays, array variables, and array operators
• Associative arrays, variables, and operators

Control Structures

• Conditional
• Looping
• Miscellaneous

I/O

• Basic
  • print, printf
  • diamond operator <>
  • ARGV
• Filehandles
  • opening, closing
  • reading, writing
  • file operators
  • stat and lstat

Regular Expressions

• Single character patterns
• Multiple character patterns
• Forming
• Using
• Operators

Formats

• Defining
• Invoking
• Handling pages
• Miscellaneous variables

Process Management

• System
• Backquotes
• Fork, exec, wait

String Manipulation

• Indexing, extracting
• Sorting
• Translating

Functions

• Defining
• Invoking
• Returning values
• Passing arguments

File and Directory Management

• Linking, renaming, removing, etc.
• Passwd and group file manipulation

System Database Access

• accessing /etc/passwd
• accessing /etc/group