Picking Up Perl Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2001 Bradley M. Kuhn.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with Invariant Sections being "The GNU Free Documentation License", with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License" (see GNU Free Documentation License).
--- The Detailed Node Listing ---
Preface
Getting Started
Working with Scalars
Strings
Single-quoted Strings
Double-quoted Strings
Numbers
Numeric Literals
print with numeric literals
Scalar Variables
Operators
Arrays
Array Variables
Manipulating Arrays and Lists
Functions
Control Structures
Associative Arrays (Hashes)
Functions
Regular Expressions
The Simple
Subroutines
Background of Perl
This book has been created for a number of reasons. The primary reason is to provide a freely redistributable tutorial for the Perl language. In writing this freely redistributable tutorial, it is our hope that the largest number of people can have access to it and share it.
In the Perl community, we have discovered ways to save time by writing Perl programs that make our jobs and lives easier. Surely, Perl is not a panacea, but it has certainly made our lives a little bit better. It is hoped that you can use Perl to make your jobs and lives easier, too.
Thanks to all those who sent grammar fixes and feedback over the years.
There are far too many of you to name here, but I have tried to list you
all in the THANKS file that comes with the transparent copy of
this book.
This book is still under development. The most recent version can be obtained at http://www.ebb.org/PickingUpPerl.
This book does not that assume any prior knowledge of Perl. However, a reader familiar with standard computer science concepts such as abstraction, stacks, queues, and hash tables will definitely find her1 way through this book with ease. In other words, anyone with a knowledge equivalent to a first-year of college computer science courses should find this book very basic. Those of less experience may find this book challenging.
The material covered in this book is designed to prepare the reader to enter the world of Perl programming. This book covers the basic data and control structures of Perl, as well as the philosophies behind Perl programming. The native search patterns used in Perl, called regular expressions, are introduced and discussed.
These concepts are introduced through the use of examples. It is hoped that readers find these examples fun.
In this text, a variety of conventions are used to explain the material. Certain typographical and display elements are used for didactic purposes.
Any Perl code that is included directly in flowing text appears like
this: $x = 5. Any operating system commands discussed in flowing
text appear like this: program. Operating system files that
are discussed directly in the flowing text appear like this:
file. When a technical term of particular importance is first
introduced and explained, it appears in emphasized text, like this:
an important term.
When Perl code examples or operating system commands need to be separated away from the flowing text for emphasis, or because the code is long, it appears like this:
my $x = "foo"; # This is a Perl assignment print $x, "\n"; # Print out "foo" and newline
All Perl code shown in this manner will be valid in Perl, version
5.6.0. In most cases, you can paste code from one of
these sections into a Perl program, and the code should work, even under
use strict and use warnings.
Sometimes, it will be necessary to include code that is not valid Perl. In this case, a comment will appear right after the invalid statement indicating that it is not valid, like this:
$x = "foo; # INVALID: a " character is missing
When code that we set aside forms an entire Perl program that is self-contained, and not simply a long example code section, it will appear like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; print "Hello World\n";
Finally, when text is given as possible output that might be given as
error messages when perl is run, they will appear like this:
Semicolon seems to be missing syntax error
Keep these standards in mind as you read this book.
This chapter begins the introduction to Perl by giving a simple code example. We do not expect the reader to understand this example completely (yet). We present this example to ease the reader into Perl's syntax and semantics.
So, to begin our study of Perl, let us consider a small Perl program. Do not worry that you are not familiar with all the syntax used here. The syntax will be introduced more formally as we continue on through this book. Just try to infer the behavior of the constructs below as best you can.
For our first Perl program, we will ask the user their username, and print out a message greeting the user by name.
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; # important pragma use warnings; # another important pragma print "What is your username? "; # print out the question my $username; # "declare" the variable $username = <STDIN>; # ask for the username chomp($username); # remove "new line" print "Hello, $username.\n"; # print out the greeting # Now we have said hello to our user
Let us examine this program line by line to ascertain its meaning. Some hand-waving will be necessary, since some of the concepts will not be presented until later. However, this code is simple enough that you need not yet understand completely what each line is doing.
The first line is how the program is identified as a Perl program. All
Perl programs should start with a line like #!/path/perl.
Usually, it is just #!/usr/bin/perl. You should put this line at
the top of each of your Perl programs.
In the lines that follow, halfway through each line, there is a #
character. Everything from the # character until the end of the
line is considered a comment. You are not required to comment
each line. In fact, commenting each line is rare. However, you will
find in this text that we frequently put comments on every line, since
we are trying to explain to the reader exactly what each Perl statement
is doing. When you write Perl programs, you should provide comments,
but you need not do so as verbosely as we do in this text.
Note, too, that comments can also occur on lines by themselves. The last line of the program above is an example of that.
Now, consider the code itself, ignoring everything that follows a
# character. Notice that each line (ignoring comments) ends with
a ;. This is the way that you tell Perl that a statement
is complete. We'll talk more about statements soon; for now, just
consider a statement to be a single, logical command that you give to
Perl.
The first line, use strict, is called a pragma in Perl. It
is not something that "explicitly" gets executed, from your point of
view as the programmer. Instead, a pragma specifies (or changes) the
rules that Perl uses to understand the code that follows. The use
strict; pragma enforces the strictest possible rules for compiling the
code. You should always use this pragma while you are still new to
Perl, as it will help you find the errors in your code more easily.
The second line is another pragma, use warnings. This pragma
tells Perl that you'd like to be warned as much as possible when you
write code that might be questionable. Certain features of Perl can
confuse new (and sometimes even seasoned) Perl programmers. The
use warnings pragma, like use strict, is a way to tell
Perl that you'd like to be warned at run-time when certain operations
seem questionable.
So, you might wonder why two separate pragmas are needed. The reason is
that they are enforced by Perl at different times. The use
strict pragma enforces compile-time constraints on the program source
code. You can even test them without running the program by using
perl -c filename, where filename is the file
containing your program. That option does not run your program, it
merely checks that they syntax of your program is correct. (To remember
this, remember that the letter c in -c stands for
"check the program".)
By contrast, the use warnings pragma controls run-time
behavior. With use warnings, messages could be printed while
your program runs, if Perl notices something wrong. In addition,
different inputs to the program can cause different messages to be
printed (or suppress such messages entirely).
The third line is the first statement of the program the performs an
action directly. It is a call to Perl's built-in print
function. In this case, it is taking a string (enclosed in double
quotes) as its argument, and sending that string to the standard output,
which is, by default, the terminal, window, or console from which the
program is run.
The next line is a variable declaration. When in strict
mode (set by the use strict pragma), all variables must be
declared. In this case, Perl's my keyword is used to declare
the variable $username. A variable like $username
that starts with a $ is said to be a scalar variable. For
more information on scalar variables, see Working with Scalars.
For now, just be aware that scalar variables can hold strings.
The next line, $username = <STDIN> is an assignment statement,
which is denoted by the =. The left hand side of the assignment
is that scalar variable, $username, that we declared in the line
before it. Since $username is on the left hand side of the
=, that indicates $username will be assigned a new value
by this assignment statement.
The right hand side of the assignment is a construct that allows us to
get input from the keyboard, the default standard input. STDIN
is called a file handle that represents the standard input. We
will discuss more about file handles later. For now, just remember that
the construct <STDIN>, when assigned to a scalar variable, places
the next line of standard input into that scalar variable.
Thus, at this point, we have the next line of the input (which is
hopefully the username that we asked for), in the $username
variable. Since we got the contents of $username from the
standard input, we know that the user hit return after typing her
username. The return key inserts a special character, called newline,
at the end of the line. The $username variable contains the
full contents of the line, which is not just the user's name, but also
that newline character.
To take care of this, the next thing we do is chomp($username).
Perl's built-in function, chomp, removes any newline characters
that are on the end of a variable. So, after the chomp
operation, the variable $username
The final statement is another print statement. It uses the
value of the $username variable to greet the user with her
name. Note that it is acceptable to use $username inside of
the string to be printed, and the contents of that scalar are included.
This ends our discussion of our small Perl program. Now that you have some idea of what Perl programs look like, we can begin to look at Perl, its data types, and its constructs in detail.
Before we begin introduce more Perl code examples, we want to explain the ideas of an expression and a statement, and how each looks in Perl.
Any valid "chunk" of Perl code can be considered an expression. That expression always evaluates to some value. Sometimes, the value to which expression evaluates is of interest to us, and sometimes it is not. However, we always must be aware that each expression has some "value" that is the evaluation of that expression.
Zero or more expressions to make a statement in Perl. Statements
in Perl end with a semi-colon. For example, in the Perl code we saw
before, we turned the expression, chomp($userName), into a
statement, chomp($userName); by adding a ; to the end. If
it helps, you can think about the ;s as separating sets of
expressions that you want Perl to evaluate and execute in order.
Given that every expression, even when combined into statements,
evaluate to some value, you might be tempted to ask: What does the
expression chomp($userName) evaluate to? It turns out that
expression evaluates to the total number of characters removed from the
end of the variable $userName. This is actually one of those
cases where we are not particularly interested in the evaluation result
of the code. In this case, we were instead interested in what is called
the side-effect of the expression.
The side-effect of an expression is some change that occurs as a
result of that expression's evaluation. Often, a side-effect causes
some change in the state of the running program, such as changing the
value of a variable. In the expression chomp($userName), the
side-effect is that any newline characters are removed from the end of
the variable, $username.
Let's now consider a slightly more complex statement, and look for the
the expressions and side-effect. Consider the statement,
$username = <STDIN>; from our first program. In this case, we
used the expression, <STDIN> as part of a larger expression,
namely $username = <STDIN>. The expression, <STDIN>
evaluated to a scalar value, namely a string that represented a line
from the standard input. It was of particular interest to us the value
to which <STDIN> evaluated, because we wanted to save that value
in the variable, $username.
To cause that assignment to take place, we used the larger expression,
$username = <STDIN>. The side-effect of that larger expression
is that $username contains the value that <STDIN>
evaluated to. That side-effect is what we wanted in this case, and we
ignore the value to which $username = <STDIN> evaluates. (It
turns out that it evaluates to the value contained in $username
after the assignment took place.)
The concepts of statements, expressions and side-effects will become more clear as we continue. When appropriate, we'll point out various expression and discuss what they evaluate to, and indicate what side-effects are of interest to us.
Scalar data are the most basic in Perl. Each scalar datum is logically a single entity. Scalars can be strings of characters or numbers. In Perl, you write literal scalar strings like this:
For example, the strings "foobar" and 'baz' are scalar
data. The numbers 3, 3.5 and -1 are also scalar
data.
Strings are always enclosed in some sort of quoting, the most common of
which are single quotes, '', and and double quotes, "".
We'll talk later about how these differ, but for now, you can keep in
mind that any string of characters inside either type of quotes are
scalar string data.
Numbers are always written without quotes. Any numeric sequence without quotes are scalar number data.
In this chapter, we will take a look at the variety of scalar data available in Perl, the way to store them in variables, how to operate on them, and how to output them.
Any sequence of ASCII characters put together as one unit, is
a string. So, the word the is a string. This sentence is a
string. Even this entire paragraph is a string. In fact, you could
consider the text of this entire book as one string.
Strings can be of any length and can contain any characters, numbers,
punctuation, special characters (like !, #, and %),
and even characters in natural languages besides English In addition, a
string can contain special ASCII formatting characters like
newline, tab, and the "bell" character. We will discuss special
characters more later on. For now, we will begin our consideration of
strings by considering how to insert literal strings into a Perl
program.
To begin our discussion of strings in Perl, we will consider how to work with "string literals" in Perl. The word literal here refers to the fact that these are used when you want to type a string directly to Perl. This can be contrasted with storing a string in a variable.
Any string literal can be used as an expression. We will find this useful when we want to store string literals in variables. However, for now, we will simply consider the different types of string literals that one can make in Perl. Later, we will learn how to assign these string literals to variables (see Scalar Variables).
String literals can be represented in primarily three ways in Perl. The first way is in single quotes. Single quotes can be used to make sure that nearly all special characters that might be interpreted differently are taken at "face value". If that concept is confusing to you, just think about single quoted strings as being, for the most part, "what you see is what you get". Consider the following single-quoted string:
'i\o'; # The string 'i\o'
This represents a string consisting of the character i, followed
by \, followed by o. However, it is probably easier just
to think of the string as i\o. Some other languages require
you think of strings not as single chunks of data, but as some
aggregation of a set of characters. Perl does not work this way. A
string is a simple, single unit that can be as long as you would
like.2
Note in our example above that 'i\o' is an expression. Like all
expressions, it evaluates to something. In this case, it evaluates to
the string value, i\o. Note that we made the expression
'i\o' into a statement, by putting a semi-colon at the end
('i\o';). This particular statement does not actually perform any
action in Perl, but it is still a valid Perl statement nonetheless.
There are two characters in single quoted strings that do not always
represent themselves. This is due to necessity, since single-quoted
strings start and end with the ' character. We need a way to
express inside a single-quoted string that we want the string to contain
a ' character.
The solution to this problem is to preceded any ' characters we
actually want to appear in the string itself with the backslash
(\ character). Thus we have strings like this:
'xxx\'xxx'; # xxx, a single-quote character, and then xxx
We have in this example a string with 7 characters exactly. Namely,
this is the string: xxx'xxx. It can be difficult at first to
become accustomed to the idea that two characters in the input to Perl
actually produce only one character in the string itself. 3 However, just keep
in mind the rules and you will probably get used to them quickly.
Since we have used the \ character to do something special with
the ' character, we must now worry about the special cases for
the backslash character itself. When we see a \ character in a
single-quoted string, we must carefully consider what will happen.
Under most circumstances, when a \ is in a single-quoted string,
it is simply a backslash, representing itself, as most other characters
do. However, the following exceptions apply:
\' yields the character ' in the actual
string. (This is the exception we already discussed above).
\\ yields the character \ in the actual
string. In other words, two backslashes right next to each other
actually yield only one backslash.
\ to escape the closing '.
The following examples exemplify the various exceptions, and use them properly:
'I don\'t think so.'; # Note the ' inside is escaped with \ 'Need a \\ (backslash) or \?'; # The \\ gives us \, as does \ 'You can do this: \\'; # A single backslash at the end 'Three \\\'s: "\\\\\"'; # There are three \ chars between ""
In the last example, note that the resulting string is
Three \'s: "\\\". If you can follow that example, you have
definitely mastered how single-quoted strings work!
Note that there is no rule against having a single-quoted string span several lines. When you do this, the string has newline characters embedded in it.
A newline character is a special ASCII character that indicates that a new line should be started. In a text editor, or when printing output to the screen, this usually indicates that the cursor should move from the end of the current line to the first position on the line following it.
Since Perl permits the placement of these newline characters directly into single quoted strings, we are permitted to do the following:
'Time to
start anew.'; # Represents the single string composed of:
# 'Time to' followed by a newline, followed by
# 'start anew.'
This string has a total of twenty characters. The first seven are
Time to. The next character following that is a newline. Then,
the eleven characters, start anew. follow. Note again that this
is one string, with a newline as its eighth character.
Further, note that we are not permitted to put a comment in the middle
of the string, even though we are usually allowed to place a #
anywhere on the line and have the rest of the line be a comment. We
cannot do this here, since we have yet to terminate our single-quoted
string with a ', and thus, any # character and comment
following it would actually become part of the single-quoted string!
Remember that single-quotes strings are delimited by ' at the
beginning, and ' at the end, and everything in between is
considered part of the string, included newlines, # characters
and anything else.
In finishing our discussion of singled-quoted strings, consider these examples of strings that are not legal because they violate the exceptions we talked about above:
'You cannot do this: \'; # INVALID: the ending \ cannot be alone
'It is 5 o'clock!' # INVALID: the ' in o'clock should be escaped
'Three \'s: \\\\\'; # INVALID: the final \ escapes the ', thus
# the literal is not terminated
'This is my string; # INVALID: missing close quote
Sometimes, when you have invalid string literals such as in the example above, the error message that Perl gives is not particularly intuitive. However, when you see error messages such as:
(Might be a runaway multi-line '' string starting on line X) Bareword found where operator expected Bareword "foo" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
It is often an indication that you have runaway or invalid strings. Keep an eye out for these problems. Chances are, you will forget and violate one of the rules for single-quoted strings eventually, and then need to determine why you are unable to run your Perl program.
Before we move on to our consideration of double-quoted strings, it is necessary to first consider a small digression. We know how to represent strings in Perl, but, as you may have noticed, the examples we have given thus far do not do anything interesting. If you try placing the statements that we listed as examples in Single-quoted Strings, into a full Perl program, like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; 'Three \\\'s: "\\\\\"'; # There are three \ chars between "" 'xxx\'xxx'; # xxx, a single-quote character, and then xxx 'Time to start anew.';
you probably noticed that nothing of interest happens. Perl gladly runs this program, but it produces no output.
Thus, to begin to work with strings in Perl beyond simple hypothetical
considerations, we need a way to have Perl display our strings for us.
The canonical way of accomplishing this in Perl is to use the
print function.
The print function in Perl can be used in a variety of ways.
The simplest form is to use the statement print STRING;, where
STRING is any valid Perl string.
So, to reconsider our examples, instead of simply listing the strings, we could instead print each one out:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; print 'Three \\\'s: "\\\\\"'; # Print first string print 'xxx\'xxx'; # Print the second print 'Time to start anew. '; # Print last string, with a newline at the end
This program will produce output. When run, the output goes to what is called the standard output. This is usually the terminal, console or window in which you run the Perl program. In the case of the program above, the output to the standard output is as follows:
Three \'s: "\\\"xxx'xxxTime to start anew.
Note that a newline is required to break up the lines. Thus, you need to put a newline at the end of every valid string if you want your string to be the last thing on that line in the output.
Note that it is particularly important to put a newline on the end of the last string of your output. If you do not, often times, the command prompt for the command interpreter that you are using may run together with your last line of output, and this can be very disorienting. So, always remember to place a newline at the end of each line, particularly on your last line of output.
Finally, you may have noticed that formatting your code with newlines in the middle of single-quoted strings hurts readability. Since you are inside a single-quoted string, you cannot change the format of the continued lines within the print statement, nor put comments at the ends of those lines because that would insert data into your single-quoted strings. To handle newlines more elegantly, you should use double-quoted strings, which are the topic of the next section.
Double-quoted strings are another way of representing scalar string
literals in Perl. Like single-quoted strings, you place a group of
ASCII characters between two delimiters (in this case, our
delimiter is "). However, something called interpolation
happens when you use a double-quoted string.
Interpolation is a special process whereby certain special strings
written in ASCII are replaced by something different. In
Single-quoted Strings, we noted that certain sequences in
single-quoted strings (namely, \\ and \') were treated
differently. This is very similar to what happens with interpolation.
For example, in interpolated double-quoted strings, various sequences
preceded by a \ character act different.
Here is a chart of the most common of these:
| String | Interpolated As
|
\\ | an actual, single backslash character
|
\$ | a single $ character
|
\@ | a single @ character
|
\t | tab
|
\n | newline
|
\r | hard return
|
\f | form feed
|
\b | backspace
|
\a | alarm (bell)
|
\e | escape
|
\033 | character represented by octal value, 033
|
\x1b | character represented by hexadecimal value, 1b
|
Let us consider an example that uses a few of these characters:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; print "A backslash: \\\n"; print "Tab follows:\tover here\n"; print "Ring! \a\n"; print "Please pay bkuhn\@ebb.org \$20.\n";
This program, when run, produces the following output on the screen:
A backslash: \ Tab follows: over here Ring! Please pay bkuhn@ebb.org $20.
In addition, when running, you should hear the computer beep. That is
the output of the \a character, which you cannot see on the
screen. However, you should be able to hear it.
Notice that the \n character ends a line. \n should
always be used to end a line. Those students familiar with the C
language will be used to using this sequence to mean newline.
When writing Perl, the word newline and the \n character
are roughly synonymous.
With the exception of \n, you should note that the interpolated
sequences are simply shortcuts for actually ASCII characters
that can be expressed in other ways. Specifically, you are permitted to
use the actual ASCII codes (in octal or hexadecimal) to
represent characters. To exemplify this, consider the following
program:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; print "A backslash: \134\n"; print "Tab follows:\11over here\n"; print "Ring! \7\n"; print "Please pay bkuhn\100ebb.org \04420.\n";
This program generates exactly the same output as the program we first discussed in this section. However, instead of using the so-called "shortcuts" for the ASCII values, we wrote each character in question using the octal value of that character. Comparing the two programs should provide some insight into the use of octal values in double-quoted strings.
Basically, you simply write \XYZ, where XYZ is the octal
number of the ASCII character desired. Note that you don't
always need to write all three digits. Namely, notice that the
double-quoted string, "Ring! \7\n", did not require all the
digits. This is because in the string, the octal value is immediately
followed by another \, and thus Perl could figure out what we
meant. This is one of the many cases where you see Perl trying to "do
the right thing" when you do something that is technically not
completely legal.
However, note that, in the last string, the three digits are required
for the sequence ("\04420"), because the 20 immediately
following the octal code could be easily confused with the octal value
preceding it. The point, however, is that as long as you obey the rules
for doing so, you can often add characters to your double-quoted strings
by simply using the ASCII value.
You need not use only the octal values when interpolating ASCII characters into double-quoted strings. You can also use the hexadecimal values. Here is our same program using the hexadecimal values this time instead of the octal values:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; print "A backslash: \x5C\n"; print "Tab follows:\x09over here\n"; print "Ring! \x07\n"; print "Please pay bkuhn\x40ebb.org \x2420.\n";
As you can see, the theme of "there's more than one way to do it" is
really playing out here. However, we only used the ASCII codes as a
didactic exercise. Usually, you should use the single character
sequences (like \a and \t), unless, of course, you are
including an ASCII character that does not have a shortcut, single
character sequence.
The final issue we have yet to address with double-quoted strings is the
use of $ and @. These two characters must always be
quoted. The reason for this is not apparent now, but be sure to keep
this rule in mind until we learn why this is needed. For now, it is
enough to remember that in double-quoted strings, Perl does something
special with $ and @, and thus we must be careful to
quote them. (If you cannot wait to find out why, you should read
Scalar Interpolation and Array Interpolation.
Perl has the ability to handle both floating point and integer numbers in reasonable ranges4.
Numeric literals are simply constant numbers. Numeric literals are much easier to comprehend and use than string literals. There are only a few basic ways to express numeric literals.
The numeric literal representations that Perl users are similar to those used in other languages such as C, Ada, and Pascal. The following are a few common examples:
42; # The number 42
12.5; # A floating point number, twelve and a half
101873.000; # 101,873
.005 # five thousandths
5E-3; # same number as previous line
23e-100; # 23 times 10 to the power of -100 (very small)
2.3E-99; # The same number as the line above!
23e6; # 23,000,000
23_000_000; # The same number as line above
# The underscores are for readability only
As you can see, there are three basic ways to express numeric literals.
The most simple way is to write an integer value, without a decimal
point, such as 42. This represents the number forty-two.
You can also write numeric literals with a decimal point. So, you can
write numbers like 12.5, to represent numbers that are not
integral values. If you like, you can write something like
101873.000, which really simply represents the integral value
101,873. Perl does not mind that you put the extra 0's on the end.
Probably the most complex method of expressing a numeric literal is
using what is called exponential notation. These are numbers of
the form
b * 10^x
, where b is some decimal number, positive or negative, and
x is some integer, positive or negative. Thus, you can express
very large numbers, or very small numbers that are mostly 0s
(either to the right or left of the decimal point) using this notation.
However, when you write such a number as a literal in Perl, you must
write it in the from bEx, where b and x are the
desired base and exponent, but E is the actual character,
E (or e, if you prefer). The examples of 5E-3,
23e-100, 2.3E-99, and 23e6 in the code above show
how the exponential notation can be used.
Finally, if you write out a very large number, such as 23000000,
you can place underscores inside the number to make it more
readable. 5 Thus, 23000000 is exactly the
same as 23_000_000.
print with numeric literals
As with string literals, you can also use the print
function in Perl to print numerical literals. Consider this program:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
print 2E-4, ' ', 9.77E-5, " ", 100.00, " ", 10_181_973, ' ', 9.87E9,
" ", 86.7E14, "\n";
which produces the output:
0.0002 9.77e-05 100 10181973 9870000000 8.67e+15
First of all, we have done something new here with print.
Instead of giving print one argument, we have given it a
number of arguments, separated by commas. Arguments are simply the
parameters on which you wish the function to operate. The print
function, of course, is used to display whatever arguments you give it.
In this case, we gave a list of arguments that included both string and numeric literals. That is completely acceptable, since Perl can usually tell the difference! The string literals are simply spaces, which we are using to separate our numeric literals on the output. Finally, we put the newline at the end of the output.
Take a close look at the numeric literals that were output. Notice that
Perl has made some formatting changes. For example, as we know, the
_'s are removed from 10_181_973. Also, those decimals and
large integers in exponential notation that were relatively reasonable
to expand were expanded by Perl. In addition, Perl only printed
100 for 100.00, since the decimal portion was zero. Of
course, if you do not like the way that Perl formats numbers by default,
we will later learn a way to have Perl format them differently
(see Output of Scalar Data).
Since we have now learned some useful concepts about strings and numbers in Perl, we can consider how to store them in variables. In Perl, both numeric and string values are stored in scalar variables.
Scalar variables are storage areas that you can use to store any scalar value. As we have already discussed, scalar values are strings or numbers, such as the literals that we discussed in previous sections.
You can always identify scalar variables because they are in the form
$NAME, where NAME is any string of alphanumeric characters
and underscores starting with a letter, up to 255 characters total.
Note that NAME will be case sensitive, thus $xyz is
a different variable than $xYz.
Note that the first character in the name of any scalar variable must be
$. All variables that begin with $ are always scalar.
Keep this in mind as you see various expressions in Perl. You can
remember that anything that begins with $ is always scalar.
As we discussed (see A First Perl Program), it is best to always
declare variables with the my function. You do not need to do
this if you are not using strict, but you should always use
strict until you are an experienced Perl programmer.
The first operation we will consider with scalar variables is assignment. Assignment is the way that we give a value from some scalar expression to a scalar variable.
The assignment operator in Perl is =. On the left hand side of
the =, we place the scalar variable whose value we wish to
change. On the right side of the =, we place the scalar
expression. (Note that so far, we have learned about three types of
scalar expressions: string literals, numeric literals, and scalar
variables).
Consider the following code segment:
use strict;
my $stuff = "My data"; # Assigns "My data" to variable $stuff
$stuff = 3.5e-4; # $stuff is no longer set to "My data";
# it is now 0.00035
my $things = $stuff; # $things is now 0.00035, also.
Let us consider this code more closely. The first line does two
operations. First, using the my function, it declares the
variable $stuff. Then, in the same statement, it assigns the
variable $stuff with the scalar expression, "My data".
The next line uses that same variable $stuff. This time, it is
replacing the value of "My data" with the numeric value of
0.00035. Note that it does not matter that $stuff once
contained string data. We are permitted to change and assign it with a
different type of scalar data.
Finally, we declare a new variable $things (again, using the
my function), and use assignment to give it the value of the
scalar expression $stuff. What does the scalar expression,
$stuff evaluate to? Simply, it evaluates to whatever scalar
value is held by $stuff. In this case, that value is
0.00035.
Recall that when we discussed double-quotes strings
(see Double-quoted Strings), we noted that we had to backslash the
$ character (e.g., "\$"). Now, we discuss the reason that
this was necessary. Any scalar variable, when included in a
double-quoted string interpolates.
Interpolation of scalar variables allows us to insert the value of a scalar variable right into a double-quoted string. In addition, since Perl largely does all data conversion necessary, we can often use variables that have integer and float values and interpolate them right into strings without worry. In most cases, Perl will do the right thing.
Consider the following sample code:
use strict;
my $friend = 'Joe';
my $greeting = "Howdy, $friend!";
# $greeting contains "Howdy, Joe!"
my $cost = 20.52;
my $statement = "Please pay \$$cost.\n";
# $statement contains "Please pay $20.52.\n"
my $debt = "$greeting $statement";
# $debt contains "Howdy, Joe! Please pay $20.52.\n"
As you can see from this sample code, you can build up strings by placing scalars inside double-quotes strings. When the double-quoted strings are evaluated, any scalar variables embedded within them are replaced with the value that each variable holds.
Note in our example that there was no problem interpolating
$cost, which held a numeric scalar value. As we have discussed,
Perl tries to do the right thing when converting strings to numbers and
numbers to strings. In this case, it simply converted the numeric value
of 20.52 into the string value '20.52' to interpolate
$cost into the double-quoted string.
Interpolation is not only used when assigning to other scalar
variables. You can use a double-quoted string and interpolate it in any
context where a scalar expression is appropriate. For example, we could
use it as part of the print statement.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $owner = 'Elizabeth';
my $dog = 'Rex';
my $amount = 12.5;
my $what = 'dog food';
print "${owner}'s dog, $dog, ate $amount pounds of $what.\n";
This example produces the output:
Elizabeth's dog, Rex, ate 12.5 pounds of dog food.
Notice how we are able to build up a large string using four variables,
some text, and a newline character, all contained within one
interpolated double-quoted string. We needed only to pass one
argument to print! Recall that previously (see Printing Numeric Literals) we had to separate a number of scalar arguments by
commas to pass them to print. Thus, using interpolation, it is very
easy to build up smaller scalars into larger, combined strings. This is
a very convenient and frequently used feature of Perl.
You may have noticed by now that we did something very odd with
$owner in the example above. Instead of using $owner, we
used ${owner}. We were forced to do this because following a
scalar variable with the character ' would confuse
Perl. 6 To make it
clear to Perl that we wanted to use the scalar with name owner,
we needed to enclose owner in curly braces ({owner}).
In many cases when using interpolation, Perl requires us to do this.
Certain characters that follow scalar variables mean something special
to Perl. When in doubt, however, you can wrap the name of the scalar in
curly braces (as in ${owner}) to make it clear to Perl what you
want.
Note that this can also be a problem when an interpolated scalar variable is followed by alpha-numeric text or an underscore. This is because Perl cannot tell where the name of the scalar variable ends and where the literal text you want in the string begins. In this case, you also need to use the curly braces to make things clear. Consider:
use strict;
my $this_data = "Something";
my $that_data = "Something Else ";
print "_$this_data_, or $that_datawill do\n"; # INVALID: actually refers
# to the scalars $this_data_
# and $that_datawill
print "_${this_data}_, or ${that_data}will do\n";
# CORRECT: refers to $this_data and $that_data,
# using curly braces to make it clear
You may have begun to wonder: what value does a scalar variable have if you have not given it a value? In other words, after:
use strict; my $sweetNothing;
what value does $sweetNothing have?
The value that $sweetNothing has is a special value in Perl
called undef. This is frequently expressed in English by saying
that $sweetNothing is undefined.
The undef value is a special one in Perl. Internally, Perl keeps
track of which variables your program has assigned values to and which
remain undefined. Thus, when you use a variable in any expression, Perl
can inform you if you are using an undefined value.
For example, consider this program:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $hasValue = "Hello"; my $hasNoValue; print "$hasValue $hasNoValue\n";When this program is run, it produces the following output:
Use of uninitialized value at line 8. Hello
What does this mean? Perl noticed that we used the uninitialized (i.e.,
undefined) variable, $hasNoValue at line 8 in our program.
Because we were using warnings, Perl warned us about that use of
the undefined variable.
However, Perl did not crash the program! Perl is nice enough not to
make undefined variables a hassle. If you use an undefined variable and
Perl expected a string, Perl uses the empty string, "", in its
place. If Perl expected a number and gets undef, Perl
substitutes 0 in its place.
However, when using warnings, Perl will always warn you when you
have used an undefined variable at run-time. The message will print to
the standard error (which, by default, is the screen) each time Perl
encounters a use of a variable that evaluates to undef. If you
do not use warnings, the warnings will not print, but you should
probably wait to turn off warnings until you are an experienced
Perl programmer.
Besides producing warning messages, the fact that unassigned variables
are undefined can be useful to us. The first way is that we can
explicitly test to see if a variable is undefined. There is a
function that Perl provides called defined. It can be used to
test if a variable is defined or not.
In addition, Perl permits the programmer to assign a variable the value
undef. The expression undef is a function provided by
Perl that we can use in place of any expression. The function
undef is always guaranteed to return an undefined value. Thus,
we can take a variable that already has a value and make it undefined.
Consider the following program:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $startUndefined;
my $startDefined = "This one is defined";
print "defined \$startUndefined == ",
defined $startUndefined,
", defined \$startDefined == ",
defined $startDefined, "\n";
$startUndefined = $startDefined;
$startDefined = undef;
print "defined \$startUndefined == ",
defined $startUndefined,
", defined \$startDefined == ",
defined $startDefined, "\n";
Which produces the output:
defined $startUndefined == , defined $startDefined == 1 defined $startUndefined == 1, defined $startDefined ==
Notice a few things. First, since we first declared
$startUndefined without giving it a value, it was set to
undef. However, we gave $startDefined a value when it was
declared, thus it started out defined. These facts are exemplified by
the output.
To produce that output, we did something that you have not seen yet.
First, we created some strings that "looked" like the function calls
so our output would reflect what the values of those function calls
were. Then, we simply used those functions as arguments to the
print function. This is completely legal in Perl. You can use
function calls as arguments to other functions.
When you do this, the innermost functions are called first, in their
argument order. Thus, in our print statements, first
defined $startUndefined is called, followed by defined
$startDefined. These two functions each evaluate to some value. That
value then becomes the argument to the print function.
So, what values did defined return? We can determine the answer
to this question from the printed output. We can see that when we
called defined on the variable that we started as undefined,
$startUndefined, we got no output for that call (in fact,
defined returned an empty string, ""). When we called
defined on the value that we had assigned to,
$startDefined, we got the output of 1.
Thus, from the experiment, we know that when its argument is not
defined, defined returns the value "", otherwise known as
the empty string (which, of course, prints nothing to the standard
output when given as an argument to print).
In addition, we know that when a variable is defined, defined
returns the value 1.
Hopefully, you now have some idea of what an undef value is, and
what defined does. It might not yet be clear why defined
returns an empty string or 1. If you are particularly curious
now, see A Digression--Truth Values.
There are a variety of operators that work on scalar values and variables. These operators allow us to manipulate scalars in different ways. This section discusses the most common of these operators.
The basic numerical operators in Perl are like others that you might see in other high level languages. In fact, Perl's numeric operators were designed to mimic those in the C programming language.
First, consider this example:
use strict; my $x = 5 * 2 + 3; # $x is 13 my $y = 2 * $x / 4; # $y is 6.5 my $z = (2 ** 6) ** 2; # $z is 4096 my $a = ($z - 96) * 2; # $a is 8000 my $b = $x % 5; # 3, 13 modulo 5
As you can see from this code, the operators work similar to rules of algebra. When using the operators there are two rules that you have to keep in mind--the rules of precedence and the rules of associativity.
Precedence involves which operators will get evaluated first when the
expression is ambiguous. For example, consider the first line in our
example, which includes the expression, 5 * 2 + 3. Since the
multiplication operator (*) has precedence over the addition
operator (+), the multiplication operation occurs first. Thus,
the expression evaluates to 10 + 3 temporarily, and finally
evaluates to 13. In other words, precedence dictates which
operation occurs first.
What happens when two operations have the same precedence? That is when
associativity comes into play. Associativity is either left or right
7. For example, in the expression 2 * $x / 4
we have two operators with equal precedence, * and /.
Perl needs to make a choice about the order in which they get carried
out. To do this, it uses the associativity. Since multiplication and
division are left associative, it works the expression from left to
right, first evaluating to 26 / 4 (since $x was
13), and then finally evaluating to 6.5.
Briefly, for the sake of example, we will take a look at an operator
that is left associative, so we can contrast the difference with right
associativity. Notice when we used the exponentiation (**)
operator in the example above, we had to write (2 ** 6) ** 2, and
not 2 ** 6 ** 2.
What does 2 ** 6 ** 2 evaluate to? Since **
(exponentiation) is right associative, first the 6 ** 2
gets evaluated, yielding the expression 2 ** 36, which yields
68719476736, which is definitely not 4096!
Here is a table of the operators we have talked about so far. They are listed in order of precedence. Each line in the table is one order of precedence. Naturally, operators on the same line have the same precedence. The higher an operator is in the table, the higher its precedence.
| Operator | Associativity | Description
|
| ** | right | exponentiation
|
| *, /, % | left | multiplication, division, modulus
|
| +, - | left | addition, subtraction
|
Comparing two scalars is quite easy in Perl. The numeric
comparison operators that you would find in C, C++, or Java are
available. However, since Perl does automatic conversion between
strings and numbers for you, you must differentiate for Perl between
numeric and string comparison. For example, the scalars "532"
and "5" could be compared two different ways--based on numeric
value or ASCII string value.
The following table shows the various comparison operators and what they
do. Note that in Perl "", 0 and undef are false
and anything else as true. (This is an over-simplified definition of
true and false in Perl. See A Digression--Truth Values, for a
complete definition.)
The table below assumes you are executing $left <OP> $right,
where <OP> is the operator in question.
| Operation | Numeric Version | String Version | Returns
|
| less than | < |
lt | 1 iff. $left is less than $right
|
| less than or equal to | <= |
le | 1 iff. $left is less than or equal to $right
|
| greater than | > |
gt | 1 iff. $left is greater than $right
|
| greater than or equal to | >= |
ge | 1 iff. $left is greater than or equal to $right
|
| equal to | == |
eq | 1 iff. $left is the same as $right
|
| not equal to | != |
ne | 1 iff. $left is not the same as $right
|
| compare | <=> |
cmp | -1 iff. $left is less than $right,
0 iff. $left is equal to $right
1 iff. $left is greater than $right
|
Here are a few examples using these operators.
use strict; my $a = 5; my $b = 500; $a < $b; # evaluates to 1 $a >= $b; # evaluates to "" $a <=> $b; # evaluates to -1 my $c = "hello"; my $d = "there"; $d cmp $c; # evaluates to 1 $d ge $c; # evaluates to 1 $c cmp "hello"; # evaluates to ""
The auto-increment and auto-decrement operators in Perl work almost identically to the corresponding operators in C, C++, or Java. Here are few examples:
use strict; my $abc = 5; my $efg = $abc-- + 5; # $abc is now 4, but $efg is 10 my $hij = ++$efg - --$abc; # $efg is 11, $abc is 3, $hij is 8
The final set of operators that we will consider are those that operate specifically on strings. Remember, though, that we can use numbers with them, as Perl will do the conversions to strings when needed.
The string operators that you will see and use the most are . and
x. The . operator is string concatenation, and the x
operator is string duplication.
use strict; my $greet = "Hi! "; my $longGreet = $greet x 3; # $longGreet is "Hi! Hi! Hi! " my $hi = $longGreet . "Paul."; # $hi is "Hi! Hi! Hi! Paul."
It should be duly noted that it is possible to concatenate, like in C, an operator onto the assignment statement to abbreviate using the left hand side as the first operand. For example,
use strict;
my $greet = "Hi! ";
$greet .= "Everyone\n";
$greet = $greet . "Everyone\n"; # Does the same operation
# as the line above
This works for any simple, binary operator.
To output a scalar, you can use the print and printf built-in
functions. We have already seen examples of the print command, and
the printf command is very close to that in C or C++. Here are a few
examples:
use strict; my $str = "Howdy, "; my $name = "Joe.\n"; print $str, $name; # Prints out: Howdy, Joe.<NEWLINE> my $f = 3e-1; printf "%2.3f\n", $f; # Prints out: 0.300<NEWLINE>
It is worth noting here that there are some variables that are considered "special" by Perl. These variables are usually either read-only variables that Perl sets for you automatically based on what you are doing in the program, or variables you can set to control the behavior of how Perl performs certain operations.
Use of special variables can be problematic, and can often cause unwanted side effects. It is a good idea to limit your use of these special variables until you are completely comfortable with them and what they do. Of course, like anything in Perl, you can get used to some special variables and not others, and use only those with which you are comfortable.
In this chapter, we have looked at a number of different scalar operators available in the Perl language. Earlier, we gave a small chart of the operators, ordered by their precedence. Now that we have seen all these operators, we should consider a list of them again, ordered by precedence. Note that some operators are listed as "nonassoc". This means that the given operator is not associative. In other words, it simply does not make sense to consider associative evaluation of the given operator.
| Operator | Associativity | Description
|
++, -- | nonassoc | auto-increment and auto-decrement
|
** | right | exponentiation
|
*, /, % | left | multiplication, division, modulus
|
+, -, . | left | addition, subtraction, concatenation
|
<, >, <=, >=, lt, gt, le, ge | nonassoc | comparison operators
|
==, !=, <=>, eq, ne, cmp | nonassoc | comparison operators
|
This list is actually still quite incomplete, as we will learn more
operators later on. However, you can always find a full list of all
operators in Perl in the perlop documentation page, which you can
get to on most systems with Perl installed by typing perldoc
perlop.
Now that we have a good understanding of the way scalar data and variables work and what can be done with them in Perl, we will look into the most basic of Perl's natural data structures--arrays.
The arrays in Perl are semantically closest to lists in Lisp or Scheme (sans cons cells), however the syntax that is used to access arrays is closer to arrays in C. In fact, one can often treat Perl's arrays as if they were simply C arrays, but they are actually much more powerful than that.
Perl arrays grow and shrink dynamically as needed. The more data you put into a Perl list, the bigger it gets. As you remove elements from the list, the list will shrink to the right size. Note that this is inherently different from arrays in the C language, where the programmer must keep track and control the size of the array.
However, Perl arrays are accessible just like C arrays. So, you can subscript to anywhere within a given list at will. There is no need to process through the first four elements of the list to get the fifth element (as in Scheme). In this manner, you get the advantages of both a dynamic list, and a static-size array.
The only penalty that you pay for this flexibility is that when an array is growing very large very quickly, it can be a bit inefficient. However, when this must occur, Perl allows you to pre-build an array of certain size. We will show how to do this a bit later.
A Perl array is always a list of scalars. Of course, since Perl makes no direct distinction between numeric and string values, you can easily mix different types of scalars within the same array. However, everything in the array must be a scalar8.
Note the difference in terminology that is used here. Arrays refer to variables that store a list of scalar values. Lists can be written as literals (see List Literals) and used in a variety of ways. One of the ways that list literals can be used is to assign to array variables (see Array Variables). We will discuss both list literals and array variables in this chapter.
Like scalars, it is possible to write lists as literals right in your code. Of course, as with inserting string literals in your code, you must use proper quoting.
There are two primary ways to quote list literals that we will discuss
here. One is using (), and the other is using what is called a
quoting operator. The quoting operator for lists is qw. A
quoting operator is always followed by a single character, which is the
"stop character". It will eat up all the following input until the
next "stop character". In the case of qw, it will use each
token that it finds as an element in a list until the second "stop
character" is reached. The advantage of the qw operator is that
you do not need to quote strings in any additional way, since qw
is already doing the quoting for you.
Here are a few examples of some list literals, using both () and
the qw operator.
(); # this list has no elements; the empty list
qw//; # another empty list
("a", "b", "c",
1, 2, 3); # a list with six elements
qw/hello world
how are you today/; # another list with six elements
Note that when we use the (), we have to quote all strings, and we
need to separate everything by commas. The qw operator does not
require this.
Finally, if you have any two scalar values where all the values between
them can be enumerated, you can use an operator called the ..
operator to build a list. This is most easily seen in an example:
(1 .. 100); # a list of 100 elements: the numbers from 1 to 100
('A' .. 'Z'); # a list of 26 elements: the uppercase letters From A to Z
('01' .. '31'); # a list of 31 elements: all possible days of a month
# with leading zeros on the single digit days
You will find the .. operator particularly useful with slices, which
we will talk about later in this chapter.
As with scalars, what good are literals if you cannot have variables? So, Perl provides a way to make array variables.
Each variable in Perl starts with a special character that identifies
what type of variable it is. We saw that scalar variables always start
with a $. Similarly, all array variables start with the
character, @, under the same naming rules that are used for
scalar variables.
Of course, we cannot do much with a variable if we cannot assign things to it, so the assignment operator works as perfectly with arrays as it did with scalars. We must be sure, though, to always make the right hand side of the assignment a list, not a scalar! Here are a few examples:
use strict;
my @stuff = qw/a b c/; # @stuff a three element list
my @things = (1, 2, 3, 4); # @things is a four element list
my $oneThing = "all alone";
my @allOfIt = (@stuff, $oneThing,
@things); # @allOfIt has 8 elements!
Note the cute thing we can do with the () when assigning
@allOfIt. When using (), Perl allows us to insert other
variables in the list. These variables can be either scalar or array
variables! So, you can quickly build up a new list by "concatenating"
other lists and scalar variables together. Then, that new list can be
assigned to a new array, or used in any other way that list literals can
be used.
Every time an array variable is declared, a special set of scalar variables automatically springs into existence, and those scalars change along with changes in the array with which they are associated.
First of all, for an array, @array, of n elements. There
are scalar variables $array[0], $array[1], ...,
$array[n-1] that contain first, second, third, ...,
nth elements in the array, respectively. The variables in this
format are full-fledged scalar variables. This means that anything you
can do with a scalar variable, you can do with these elements. This
provides a way to access array elements by subscript. In addition, it
provides a way to change, modify and update individual elements without
actually using the @array variable.
Another scalar variable that is associated to any array variable,
@array, is $#array. This variable always contains the
subscript of the last element in the array. In other words,
$array[$#array] is always the last element of the array. The
length of the array is always $#array + 1. Again, you are
permitted to do anything with this variable that you can normally do
with any other scalar variable; however, you must always make sure to
leave the value as an integer greater than or equal to -1. In fact, if
you know an array is going to grow very large quickly, you probably want
to set this variable to a very high value. When you change the value of
$#array, you not only resize the array for your use, you also
direct Perl to allocate a specific amount of space for @array.
Here are a few examples that use the associated scalar variables for an array:
use strict;
my @someStuff = qw/Hello and
welcome/; # @someStuff: an array of 3 elements
$#someStuff = 0; # @someStuff now is simply ("Hello")
$someStuff[1] = "Joe"; # Now @someStuff is ("Hello", "Joe")
$#someStuff = -1; # @someStuff is now empty
@someStuff = (); # does same thing as previous line
Clearly, arrays and lists are very useful. However, there are a few more things in Perl you can use to make arrays and lists even more useful.
Sometimes, you may want to create a new array based on some subset of elements from another array. To do this, you use a slice. Slices use a subscript that is itself a list of integers to grab a list of elements from an array. This looks easier in Perl than it does in English:
use strict; my @stuff = qw/everybody wants a rock/; my @rock = @stuff[1 .. $#stuff]; # @rock is qw/wants a rock/ my @want = @stuff[ 0 .. 1]; # @want is qw/everybody wants/ @rock = @stuff[0, $#stuff]; # @rock is qw/everybody rock/
As you can see, you can use both the .. operator and commas to
build a list for use as a slice subscript. This can be a very useful
feature for array manipulation.
Perl also provides quite a few functions that operate on arrays. As you learn more and more Perl, you will see lots of interesting functions that work with arrays.
Now, we'll discuss a few of these functions that work on arrays:
push, pop, shift, and unshift.
The names shift and unshift are an artifact of the
Unix shells that used them to "shift around" incoming arguments.
What more is a stack than an unbounded array of things? This attitude
is seen in Perl through the push and pop functions. These
functions treat the "right hand side" (i.e., the end) of the array as
the top of the stack. Here is an example:
use strict;
my @stack;
push(@stack, 7, 6, "go"); # @stack is now qw/7 6 go/
my $action = pop @stack; # $action is "go", @stack is (7, 6)
my $value = pop(@stack) +
pop(@stack); # value is 6 + 7 = 13, @stack is empty
If we can do stacks, then why not queues? You can build a queue in Perl
by using the unshift and pop functions
together.9 Think of the unshift function as "enqueue" and the
pop function as "dequeue". Here is an example:
use strict;
my @queue;
unshift (@queue, "Customer 1"); # @queue is now ("Customer 1")
unshift (@queue, "Customer 2"); # @queue is now ("Customer 2" "Customer 1")
unshift (@queue, "Customer 3");
# @queue is now ("Customer 3" "Customer 2" "Customer 1")
my $item = pop(@queue); # @queue is now ("Customer 3" "Customer 2")
print "Servicing $item\n"; # prints: Servicing Customer 1\n
$item = pop(@queue); # @queue is now ("Customer 3")
print "Servicing $item\n"; # prints: Servicing Customer 2\n
This queue example works because unshift places items onto the
front of the array, and pop takes items from the end of the
array. However, be careful using more than two arguments on the
unshift when you want to process an array as a queue. Recall
that unshift places its arguments onto the array in order
as they are listed in the function call. Consider this example:
use strict;
my @notAqueue;
unshift(@notAqueue, "Customer 0", "Customer 1");
# @queue is now ("Customer 0", "Customer 1")
unshift (@notAqueue, "Customer 2");
# @queue is now ("Customer 2", "Customer 0", "Customer 1")
Notice that this variable, @notAqueue, is not really a queue, if
we use pop to remove items. The moral here is to be careful when
using unshift in this manner, since it places it arguments on the
array in order.
It may have occurred to you by now that in certain places we can use a list, and in other places we can use a scalar. Perl knows this as well, and decides which is permitted by something called a context.
The context can be either list context or scalar context. Many operations do different things depending on what the current context is.
For example, it is actually valid to use an array variable, such as
@array, in a scalar context. When you do this, the array variable
evaluates to the number of elements in the array. Consider this example:
use strict; my @things = qw/a few of my favorite/; my $count = @things; # $count is 5 my @moreThings = @things; # @moreThings is same as @things
Note that Perl knows not to try and stuff @things into a scalar,
which does not make any sense. It evaluates @things in a scalar
context and given the number of elements in the array.
You must always be aware of the context of your operations. Assuming the wrong context can cause a plethora of problems for the new Perl programmer.
Array variables can also be evaluated through interpolation into a double-quoted string. This works very much like the interpolation of scalars into double-quoted strings (see Scalar Interpolation). When an array variable is encountered in a double-quoted string, Perl will join the array together, separating each element by spaces. Here is an example:
use strict;
my @saying = qw/these are a few of my favorite/;
my $statement = "@saying things.\n";
# $statement is "these are a few of my favorite things.\n"
my $stuff = "@saying[0 .. 1] @saying[$#saying - 1, $#saying] things.\n"
# $stuff is "these are my favorite things.\n"
Note the use of slices when assigning $stuff. As you can see,
Perl can be very expressive when we begin to use the interaction of
different, interesting features.
The center of any imperative programming language is control structures. Although Perl is not purely an imperative programming language, it has ancestors that are very much imperative in nature, and thus Perl has inherited those same control structures. It also has added a few of its own.
As you begin to learn about Perl's control structures, realize that a good number of them are syntactic sugar. You can survive using only a subset of all the control structures that are available in Perl. You should use those with which you are comfortable. Obey the "hubris" of Perl, and write code that is readable. But, beyond that, do not use any control structures that you do not think you need.
The first tool that you need to begin to use control structures is the
ability to write code "blocks". A block of code could be any of the code
examples that we have seen thus far. The only difference is, to make them a
block, we would surround them with {}.
use strict;
{
my $var;
Statement;
Statement;
Statement;
}
Anything that looks like that is a block. Blocks are very simple, and are much like code blocks in languages like C, C++, and Java. However, in Perl, code blocks are decoupled from any particular control structure. The above code example is a valid piece of Perl code that can appear just about anywhere in a Perl program. Of course, it is only particularly useful for those functions and structures that use blocks.
Note that any variable declared in the block (in the example,
$var) lives only until the end of that block. With variables
declared my, normal lexical scoping that you are familiar with in
C, C++, or Java applies.
We have mentioned truth and "true and false" a few times now; however, we have yet to give a clear definition of what truth values are in Perl.
Every expression in Perl has a truth value. Usually, we ignore the truth value of the expressions we use. In fact, we have been ignoring them so far! However, now that we are going to begin studying various control structures that rely on the truth value of a given expression, we should look at true and false values in Perl a bit more closely.
The basic rule that most Perl programmers remember is that 0, the
empty string and undef are false, and everything else is true.
However, it turns out that this rule is not actually completely
accurate.
The actual rule is as follows:
Everything in Perl is true, except:
"" (the empty string) and "0" (the
string containing only the character, 0), or any string expression that
evaluates to either "" (the empty string) or "0".
0.
undef).
If that rule is not completely clear, the following table gives some example Perl expressions and states whether they are true or not:
| Expression | String/Number? | Boolean value
|
| 0 | number | false
|
| 0.0 | number | false
|
| 0.0000 | number | false
|
| "" | string | false
|
| "0" | string | false
|
| "0.0" | string | true
|
| undef | N/A | false
|
| 42 - (6 * 7) | number | false
|
| "0.0" + 0.0 | number | false
|
| "foo" | string | true
|
There are two expressions above that easily confuse new Perl
programmers. First of all, the expression "0.0" is true. This
is true because it is a string that is not "0". The only string
that is not empty that can be false is "0". Thus, "0.0"
must be true.
Next, consider "0.0" + 0.0. After what was just stated, one
might assume that this expression is true. However, this expression is
false. It is false because + is a numeric operator,
and as such, "0.0" must be turned into its numeric equivalent.
Since the numeric equivalent to "0.0" is 0.0, we get the
expression 0.0 + 0.0, which evaluates to 0.0, which is the
same as 0, which is false.
Finally, it should be noted that all references are true. The topic of Perl references is beyond the scope of this book. However, if we did not mention it, we would not be giving you the whole truth story.
The if and unless structures are the simplest control
structures. You are no doubt comfortable with if statements from
C, C++, or Java. Perl's if statements work very much the same.
use strict;
if (expression) {
Expression_True_Statement;
Expression_True_Statement;
Expression_True_Statement;
} elsif (another_expression) {
Expression_Elseif_Statement;
Expression_Elseif_Statement;
Expression_Elseif_Statement;
} else {
Else_Statement;
Else_Statement;
Else_Statement;
}
There are a few things to note here. The elsif and the else
statements are both optional when using an if. It should also be
noted that after each if (expression) or elsif (expression),
a code block is required. These means that the {}'s are
mandatory in all cases, even if you have only one statement inside.
The unless statement works just like an if statement.
However, you replace if with unless, and the code block is
executed only if the expression is false rather than true.
Thus unless (expression) { } is functionally equivalent to
if (! expression) { }.
The while structure is equivalent to the while structures
in Java, C, or C++. The code executes while the expression remains
true.
use strict;
while (expression) {
While_Statement;
While_Statement;
While_Statement;
}
The until (expression) structure is functionally equivalent
while (! expression).
The do/while structure works similar to the while structure,
except that the code is executed at least once before the condition is
checked.
use strict;
do {
DoWhile_Statement;
DoWhile_Statement;
DoWhile_Statement;
} while (expression);
Again, using until (expression) is the same as using
while (! expression).
The for structure works similarly to the for structure
found in C, C++ or Java. It is really syntactic sugar for the
while statement.
Thus:
use strict;
for(Initial_Statement; expression; Increment_Statement) {
For_Statement;
For_Statement;
For_Statement;
}
is equivalent to:
use strict;
Initial_Statement;
while (expression) {
For_Statement;
For_Statement;
For_Statement;
Increment_Statement;
}
The foreach control structure is the most interesting in this
chapter. It is specifically designed for processing of Perl's native data
types.
The foreach structure takes a scalar, a list and a block, and
executes the block of code, setting the scalar to each value in the list,
one at a time. Consider an example:
use strict;
my @collection = qw/hat shoes shirts shorts/;
foreach my $item (@collection) {
print "$item\n";
}
This will print out each item in collection on a line by itself. Note that
you are permitted to declare the scalar variable right with the
foreach. When you do this, the variable lives only as long as the
foreach does.
You will find foreach to be one of the most useful looping structures
in Perl. Any time you need to do something to each element in the list,
chances are, using a foreach is the best choice.
This chapter will introduce the third major Perl abstract data type, associative arrays. Also known as hashes, associative arrays provide native language support for one of the most useful data structures that programmers implement--the hash table.
Associative arrays, also frequently called hashes, are the third major data type in Perl after scalars and arrays. Hashes are named as such because they work very similarly to a common data structure that programmers use in other languages--hash tables. However, hashes in Perl are actually a direct language supported data type.
We have seen that each of the different native data types in Perl has a
special character that identify that the variable is of that type.
Hashes always start with a %.
Accessing a hash works very similar to accessing arrays. However, hashes are
not subscripted by numbers. They can be subscripted by an arbitrary scalar
value. You simply use the {} to subscript the value instead of
[] as you did with arrays. Here is an example:
use strict;
my %table;
$table{'schmoe'} = 'joe';
$table{7.5} = 2.6;
In this example, our hash, called, %table, has two entries. The key
'schmoe' is associated with the value 'joe', and the key
7.5 is associated with the value 2.6.
Just like with array elements, hash elements can be used anywhere a scalar variable is permitted. Thus, given a %table built with the code above, we can do the following:
print "$table{'schmoe'}\n"; # outputs "joe\n"
--$table{7.5}; # $table{7.5} now contains 1.6
Another interesting fact is that all hash variables can be evaluated in
the list context. When done, this gives a list whose odd elements are
the keys of the hash, and whose even elements are the corresponding
values. Thus, assuming we have the same %table from above, we
can execute:
my @tableListed = %table; # @tableListed is qw/schmoe joe 7.5 1.6/
If you happen to evaluate a hash in scalar context, it will give you
undef if no entries have yet been defined, and will evaluate to true
otherwise. However, evaluation of hashes in scalar context is not
recommended. To test if a hash is defined, use defined(%hash).
"Hash literals" per se do not exist. However, remember that when we evaluate a hash in the list context, we get the pairs of the hash unfolded into the list. We can exploit this to do hash literals. We simply write out the list pairs that we want placed into the hash. For example:
use strict; my %table = qw/schmoe joe 7.5 1.6/;would give us the same hash we had in the previous example.
You should realize that any function you already know that works on arrays will also work on hashes, since you can always evaluate a hash in the list context and get the pair list. However, there are a variety of functions that are specifically designed and optimized for use with hashes.
When we evaluate a hash in a list context, Perl gives us the paired list
that can be very useful. However, sometimes we may only want to look at
the list of keys, or the list of values. Perl provides two optimized
functions for doing this: keys and values.
use strict; my %table = qw/schmoe joe smith john simpson bart/; my @lastNames = keys %table; # @lastNames is: qw/schmoe smith simpson/ my @firstNames = values %table; # @firstNames is: qw/joe john bart/
The each function is one that you will find particularly useful when
you need to go through each element in the hash. The each function
returns each key-value pair from the hash one by one as a list of two
elements. You can use this function to run a while across the hash:
use strict;
my %table = qw/schmoe joe smith john simpson bart/;
my($key, $value); # Declare two variables at once
while ( ($key, $value) = each(%table) ) {
# Do some processing on $key and $value
}
This while terminates because each returns undef
when all the pairs have been exhausted. However, be careful. Any
change in the hash made will "reset" the each function for that
hash.
So, if you need to loop and change values in the hash, use the following
foreach across the keys:
use strict;
my %table = qw/schmoe joe smith john simpson bart/;
foreach my $key (keys %table) {
# Do some processing on $key and $table{$key}
}
It turns out you can slice hashes just like you were able to slice arrays. This can be useful if you need to extract a certain set of values out of a hash into a list.
use strict;
my %table = qw/schmoe joe smith john simpson bart/;
my @friends = @table{'schmoe', 'smith'}; # @friends has qw/joe john/
Note the use of the @ in front of the hash name. This shows that we
are indeed producing a normal list, and you can use this construct in any
list context you would like.
We have now discussed all the different ways you can use variables in list and scalar context. At this point, it might be helpful to review all the ways we have used variables in different contexts. The table that follows identifies many of the ways variables are used in Perl.
| Expression | Context | Variable | Evaluates to
|
$scalar | scalar | $scalar, a scalar
| the value held in $scalar
|
@array | list | @array, an array
| the list of values (in order) held in @array
|
@array | scalar | @array, an array
| the total number of elements in @array (same as
$#array + 1)
|
$array[$x] | scalar | @array, an array
| the ($x+1)th element of @array
|
$#array | scalar | @array, an array
| the subscript of the last element in @array (same as
@array -1)
|
@array[$x, $y] | list | @array, an array
| a slice, listing two elements from @array (same as
($array[$x], $array[$y]))
|
"$scalar" | scalar (interpolated) | $scalar, a scalar
| a string containing the contents of $scalar
|
"@array" | scalar (interpolated) | @array, an array
| a string containing the elements of @array, separated by
spaces
|
%hash | list | %hash, a hash
| a list of alternating keys and values from %hash
|
$hash{$x} | scalar | %hash, a hash
| the element from %hash with the key of $x
|
@hash{$x, $y} | list | %hash, a hash
| a slice, listing two elements from %hash (same as
($hash{$x}, $hash{$y})
|
One of Perl's original applications was text processing (see A Brief History of Perl). So far, we have seen easy manipulation of scalar and list data is in Perl, but we have yet to explore the core of Perl's text processing construct--regular expressions. To remedy that, this chapter is devoted completely to regular expressions.
Regular expressions are a concept borrowed from automata theory. Regular expressions provide a a way to describe a "language" of strings.
The term, language, when used in the sense borrowed from automata theory, can be a bit confusing. A language in automata theory is simply some (possibly infinite) set of strings. Each string (which can be possibly empty) is composed of a set of characters from a fixed, finite set. In our case, this set will be all the possible ASCII characters10.
When we write a regular expression, we are writing a description of some set of possible strings. For the regular expression to have meaning, this set of possible strings that we are defining should have some meaning to us.
Regular expressions give us extreme power to do pattern matching on text documents. We can use the regular expression syntax to write a succinct description of the entire, infinite class of strings that fit our specification. In addition, anyone else who understands the description language of regular expressions, can easily read out description and determine what set of strings we want to match. Regular expressions are a universal description for matching regular strings.
When we discuss regular expressions, we discuss "matching". If a regular expression "matches" a given string, then that string is in the class we described with the regular expression. If it does not match, then the string is not in the desired class.
We can start our discussion of regular expression by considering the simplest of operators that can actually be used to create all possible regular expressions 11. All the other regular expression operators can actually be reduced into a set of these simple operators.
In regular expressions, generally, a character matches itself. The only
exceptions are regular expression special characters. To match one of
these special characters, you must put a \ before the character.
For example, the regular expression abc matches a set of strings
that contain abc somewhere in them. Since * happens to be
a regular expression special character, the regular expression \*
matches any string that contains the * character.
As we mentioned * is a regular expression special character. The
* is used to indicate that zero or more of the previous
characters should be matched. Thus, the regular expression a*
will match any string that contains zero or more a's.
Note that since a* will match any string with zero or more
a's, a* will match all strings, since all strings
(including the empty string) contain at least zero a's. So,
a* is not a very useful regular expression.
A more useful regular expression might be baa*. This regular
expression will match any string that has a b, followed by one or
more a's. Thus, the set of strings we are matching are those
that contain ba, baa, baaa, etc. In other words,
we are looking to see if there is any "sheep speech" hidden in our
text.
The next special character we will consider is the . character. The
. will match any valid character. As an example, consider the
regular expression a.c. This regular expression will match any
string that contains an a and a c, with any possible character
in between. Thus, strings that contain abc, acc, amc,
etc. are all in the class of strings that this regular expression
matches.
The | special character is equivalent to an "or" in regular
expressions. This character is used to give a choice. So, the regular
expression abc|def will match any string that contains either
abc or def.
Sometimes, within regular expressions, we want to group things together.
Doing this allows building of larger regular expressions based on smaller
components. The ()'s are used for grouping.
For example, if we want to match any string that contains abc or
def, zero or more times, surrounded by a xx on either side,
we could write the regular expression xx(abc|def)*xx. This
applies the * character to everything that is in the parentheses.
Thus we can match any strings such as xxabcxx, xxabcdefxx,
etc.
Sometimes, we want to apply the regular expression from a defined point. In other words, we want to anchor the regular expression so it is not permitted to match anywhere in the string, just from a certain point.
The anchor operators allow us to do this. When we start a regular
expression with a ^, it anchors the regular expression to the
beginning of the string. This means that whatever the regular
expression starts with must be matched at the beginning of the
string. For example, ^aa* will not match strings that contain
one or more a's; rather it matches strings that start with
one or more a's.
We can also use the $ at the end of the string to anchor the
regular expression at the end of the string. If we applied this to our
last regular expression, we have ^aa*$ which now matches
only those strings that consist of one or more a's. This
makes it clear that the regular expression cannot just look anywhere in
the string, rather the regular expression must be able to match the
entire string exactly, or it will not match at all.
In most cases, you will want to either anchor a regular expression to the start of the string, the end of the string, or both. Using a regular expression without some sort of anchor can also produce confusing and strange results. However, it is occasionally useful.
Now that you are familiar with some of the basics of regular
expressions, you probably want to know how to use them in Perl. Doing
so is very easy. There is an operator, =~, that you can use to
match a regular expression against scalar variables. Regular
expressions in Perl are placed between two forward slashes (i.e.,
//). The whole $scalar =~ // expression will evaluate to
1 if a match occurs, and undef if it does not.
Consider the following code sample:
use strict;
while ( defined($currentLine = <STDIN>) ) {
if ($currentLine =~ /^(J|R)MS speaks:/) {
print $currentLine;
}
}
This code will go through each line of the input, and print only those lines that start with "JMS speaks:" or "RMS speaks:".
Writing out regular expressions can be problematic. For example, if we want to have a regular expression that matches all digits, we have to write:
(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9)
It would be terribly annoying to have to write such things out. So, Perl gives an incredible number of shortcuts for writing regular expressions. These are largely syntactic sugar, since we could write out regular expressions in the same way we did above. However, that is too cumbersome.
For example, for ranges of values, we can use the brackets, []'s.
So, for our digit expression above, we can write [0-9]. In fact,
it is even easier in perl, because \d will match that very same
thing.
There are lots of these kinds of shortcuts. They are listed in the
perlre online manual. They are listed in many places, so there
is no need to list them again here.
However, as you learn about all the regular expression shortcuts,
remember that they can all be reduced to the original operators we
discussed above. They are simply short ways of saying things that can
be built with regular characters, *, (), and |.
Until now, all the Perl programs that we have written have simply a set of instructions, line by line. Like any good language, Perl allows one to write modular code. To do this, at the very least, the language must allow the programmer to set aside subroutines of code that can be reused. Perl, of course, provides this feature.
Note that many people call Perl subroutines "functions". We prefer to use the term "functions" for those routines that are built in to Perl, and "subroutines" for code written by the Perl programmer. This is not standard terminology, so you may hear others use subroutines and functions interchangeably, but that will not be the case in this book. We feel that it is easier to make the distinction if we have two different terms for functions and subroutines.
Note that user subroutines can be used anywhere it is valid to use a native Perl function.
Defining a subroutine is quite easy. You use the keyword sub,
followed by the name of your subroutine, followed by a code block. This
friendly subroutine can be used to greet the user:
use strict;
sub HowdyEveryone {
print "Hello everyone.\nWhere do you want to go with Perl today?\n";
}
Now, anywhere in the code where we want to greet the user, we can simply say:
&HowdyEveryone;and it will print that message to the user. In fact, in most cases, the
& for invoking subroutines is optional.
Perhaps we did not want our new subroutine to actually print the
message. Instead, we would like it to return the string of the message,
and then we will call print on it.
This is very easy to do with the return statement.
use strict;
sub HowdyEveryone {
return "Hello everyone.\nWhere do you want to go with Perl today?\n";
}
print &HowdyEveryone;
A subroutine is not much good if you cannot give it input on which to operate. Of course, Perl allows you to pass arguments to subroutines just like you would to native Perl functions.
At the start of each subroutine, Perl sets a special array variable,
@_, to be the list of arguments sent into the subroutine. By
standard convention, you can access these variables through
$_[0 .. $#_]. However, it is a good idea to instead immediately
declare a list of variables and assign @_ to them. For example,
if we want to greet a particular group of people, we could do the
following:
use strict;
sub HowdyEveryone {
my($name1, $name2) = @_;
return "Hello $name1 and $name2.\n" .
"Where do you want to go with Perl today?\n";
}
print &HowdyEveryone("bart", "lisa");
Note that since we used my, and we are in a new block, the
variables we declared will live only as long as the subroutine
execution.
This subroutine leaves a bit to be desired. It would be nice if we could have a custom greeting, instead of just "Hello". In addition, we would like to greet as many people as we want to, not just two. This version fixes those two problems:
use strict;
sub HowdyEveryone {
my($greeting, @names) = @_;
my $returnString;
foreach my $name (@names) {
$returnString .= "$greeting, $name!\n";
}
return $returnString .
"Where do you want to go with Perl today?\n";
}
print &HowdyEveryone("Howdy", "bart", "lisa", "homer", "marge", "maggie");
We use two interesting techniques in this example. First of all, we use
a list as the last parameter when we accept the arguments. This means
that everything after the first argument will be put into
@names. Note that had any other variables followed
@names, they would have remained undefined. However, scalars
before the array (like $greeting) do receive values out of
@_. Thus, it is always a good idea to only make the array the
last argument.
In this appendix, we introduce a brief historical, sociological and psychological reasons for why Perl works the way it does. We also include a brief history of Perl.
When learning a new language, it is often helpful to learn the history, motivations, and origins of that language. In natural languages such as English, this helps us understand the culture and heritage of the language. Such understanding leads to insight into the minds of those who speak the language. This newly found insight, obtained through learning culture and heritage, assists us in learning the new language.
This philosophy of language instruction can often be applied to programming languages as well. Although programming languages grow from a logical or mathematical basis, they are rarely purely mathematical. Often, the people who design, implement and use the language influence the language, based on their own backgrounds. Because of the influence the community has upon programming languages, it is useful, before learning a programming language, to understand its history, motivations, and culture. To that end, this chapter examines the history, culture, and heritage of the Perl language.
Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, first posted Perl to the
comp.sources Usenet newsgroup in late 1987. Larry had created
Perl as a text processing language for Unix-like operating systems.
Before Perl, almost all text processing on Unix-like systems was done
with a conglomeration of tools that included AWK, sed, the
various shell programming languages, and C programs. Larry wanted to
fill the void between "manipulexity" (the ability of languages like C
to "get into the innards of things") and "whipuptitude" (the
property of programming languages like AWK or sh that allows
programmers to quickly write useful programs).
Thus, Perl, the Practical Extraction and Report Language 12, was born. Perl filled a niche that no other tool before that date had. For this reason, users flocked to Perl.
Over the next four years or so, Perl began to evolve. By 1992, Perl version 4 had become very stable and was a "standard" Unix programming language. However, Perl was beginning to show its limitations. Various aspects of the language were confusing at best, and problematic at worst. Perl worked well for writing small programs, but writing large software applications in Perl was unwieldy.
The designers of the Perl language, now a group, but still under Larry's guidance, took a look around at the other languages that people were using. They seemed to ask themselves: "Why are people choosing other languages over Perl?" The outcome of this self-inspection was Perl, version 5.
The first release of version 5 came in late 1994. Many believed that version 5 made Perl "complete". Gone were the impediments and much of the confusion that were prevalent in version 4. With version 5, Perl was truly a viable, general purpose programming language and no longer just a convenient tool for system administrators.
Natural languages, languages (such as English) that people use on a daily basis to communicate with each other, are rich and complete. Most natural languages allow the speaker to express themselves succinctly and clearly. However, most natural languages are also full of arcane constructs that carry over from the language's past. In addition, for a given natural language, it is impossible to fully master the vocabulary and grammar because they are very large, extremely complex, and always changing.
You may wonder what these facts about natural languages have to do with a programming language like Perl. Surprising to most newcomers to Perl, the parallels between Perl and a natural language like English are striking. Larry Wall, the father of Perl, has extensive scholastic training as a linguist. Larry applied his linguistic knowledge to the creation of Perl, and thus, to the new student of Perl, a digression into these language parallels will give the student insight into the fundamentals of Perl.
Natural languages have the magnificent ability to provide a clear communication system for people of all skill levels and backgrounds. The same natural language can allow a linguistic neophyte (like a three-year-old child) to communicate herself nearly completely to others, while having only a minimal vocabulary. The same language also provides enough flexibility and clarity for the greatest of philosophers to write their works.
Perl is very much the same. Small Perl programs are easy to write and can perform many tasks easily. Even the newest student of Perl can write useful Perl programs. However, Perl is a rich language with many features. This allows the creation of simple programs that use a "limited" Perl vocabulary, and the creation of large, complicated programs that seem to work magic.
When studying Perl, it is helpful to keep the "richness" of Perl in mind. Newcomers find Perl frustrating because subtle changes in syntax can produce deep changes in semantics. It can even be helpful to think of Perl as another natural language rather than another programming language. Like in a natural language, you should feel comfortable writing Perl programs that use only the parts of Perl you know. However, you should be prepared to have a reference manual in hand when you are reading code written by someone else.
The fact that one cannot read someone else's code without a manual handy and the general "natural language" nature of Perl have been frequently criticized. These arguments are well taken, and Perl's rich syntax and semantics can be confusing to the newcomer. However, once the initial "information overload" subsides, most programmers find Perl exciting and challenging. Discovering new ways to get things done in Perl can be both fun and challenging! Hopefully, you will find this to be the case as well.
Clearly, Perl is a unique language. This uniqueness has brought forth a community and an ideology that is unprecedented with other languages. One does not have to be a member of this community or agree with this ideology to use Perl, but it helps to at least understand the ideology to get the most out of Perl.
The common Perl slogans have become somewhat famous. These slogans make up the "Perl ethic"--the concepts that guide the way Perl itself is built, and the way most Perl programs are written.
"There's more than one way to do it". This slogan, often abbreviated TMTOWTDI (pronounced TIM-toady), is common among many programmers, but Perl takes this idea to its logical conclusion. Perl is rich with non-orthogonality and shortcuts. Most major syntactic constructs in Perl have two or three exact equivalents. This can be confusing to newcomers, but if you try to embrace this diversity rather than be frustrated by it, having "more than one way to do it" can be fun.
"The Swiss Army chain-saw". This is the somewhat "less friendly" summary of the previous term. Sometimes, all these diverse, powerful features of Perl make it appear that there are too many tools that are too powerful to be useful all together on one "Swiss Army knife". However, eventually, most Perl users find all these different "chain-saw"-style tools on one "Swiss Army" knife are a help rather than a hindrance.
"Perl makes easy jobs easy, and the hard jobs possible." This is a newer phrase in the Perl community, although it was originated by Alan Kay decades ago, but it is quite valid. Most easy tasks are very straightforward in Perl. As the saying goes, most programmers find that there are very few jobs that Perl cannot handle well. However, despite what the saying might indicate, Perl is not a panacea; the programmer should always choose the right tool for the job, and that right tool may not always be Perl.
"Perl promotes laziness, impatience and hubris." These seem like strange qualities to be promoting, but upon further analysis, it becomes clear why they are important.
Lazy programmers do not like to write the same code more than once. Thus, a lazy programmer is much more likely to write code to be reusable and as applicable in as many situations as possible.
Laziness fits well with impatience. Impatient programmers do not like to do things that they know very well the computer could do for them. Thus, impatient programmers (who are also lazy) will write programs to do things that they do not want to have to do themselves. This makes these programs more usable for more tasks.
Finally, laziness and impatience are insufficient without hubris. If programmers have hubris, they are much less likely to write unreadable code. A good bit of hubris is useful--it makes programmers want to write code that they can show off to friends. Thus, hubris, when practiced in the conjunction with laziness and impatience, causes programmers to write reusable, complete and readable code. In other words, it is possible to exploit these three "bad" traits to obtain a "good" outcome.
Version 1.1, March 2000
Copyright © 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ascii without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.
If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History" in the various original documents, forming one section entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgments", and any sections entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled "Endorsements."
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version of the Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation. Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this License does not apply to the other self-contained works thus compiled with the Document, on account of their being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License provided that you also include the original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original English version of this License, the original English version will prevail.
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts being list. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections" instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts being list"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
#: A First Perl Program
;: A First Perl Program
chomp: A First Perl Program
Female pronouns are used throughout this book. It can be assumed that they refer to both genders.
Actually, it cannot be longer than your computer has virtual memory, but that is rarely a problem.
C programmers are already probably used to this idea.
There are also standard packages available to handle very large and very small numbers, and packages to force use of integers only for all calculations.
Language historians may notice that this is a feature from the Ada language.
The ' character is a synonym for :: which
is used for packages, a topic not covered in this text.
Some operators are not associative at all (see Summary of Scalar Operators).
It is possible to make an array of arrays using a concept called "references", but that topic is beyond the scope of this book.
For another way to do this, see the exercises in this section.
Perl will eventually support unicode, or some other extended character format, in which case it will no longer merely be ASCII characters.
Actually, Perl regular expressions have a few additional features that go beyond the traditional, simple set of regular expressions, but these are an advanced topic.
Perl has also been given the name, Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. Choose the one with which you feel more comfortable. Some even insist that Perl is no longer an acronym for anything. This argument has merit, since Perl is never written PERL.