Some notes on Perl

Author: John M. Gabriele | back to index

Some notes on Perl

• Other notes
• Links

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Perl is quite useful for writing scripts that deal with files, text, and the usual things that shell scripts often deal with. It seems to be optimized for making short work of these types of jobs, while at the same time having a very well-worn feel to it. Perl contains a number of shortcuts for things you'll be doing all the time (like opening and sifting through files), and also tries hard to "do what you mean". You can often get a lot of work done with very little Perl code.

With Perl, there's a bit more to remember than with, say, Python. Perl has more globals, more operators and functions. There's more syntax. And more shortcuts. Also some warts. But once you've absorbed it, small jobs can be done very easily (Perl really stays out of your way), with big ones still remaining possible.

One final note: great care was taken by Larry for Perl to "feel right". To be tasteful. I think he succeeded. Perl6 may even be nicer. :)

Other notes

• my Perl quickref
• building your own Perl
• installing modules
• The CPAN
• perldoc and pod
• lists and arrays
• DBI
• date and time -- Quick note on converting to and from seconds since epoch.
• plots -- making graphical plots with Perl.
• XML
• Just some short scripts and one-liners.

See also some notes on Perl 6.

Links

Some useful sites:

• http://www.perl.org/
• http://perldoc.perl.org/
• http://www.perlmonks.net/
• http://www.cpan.org/
• http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/
• http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/10/DBI.html -- MJD's DBI intro.
• http://www.perl.com/