Picking Up Perl

A Tutorial Book for New Perl Programmers

0.12th Edition, Covering Perl Version 5.6.0

Feedback and comments are always welcome. Send them to pup-comments@ebb.org

January 2001

• Preface
  • Purpose of this Book
  • Acknowledgments
  • Obtaining the Most Recent Version
  • Audience
  • Material Covered
  • Conventions Used in this Book
• Getting Started
  • A First Perl Program
  • Expressions, Statements, and Side-Effects
• Working with Scalars
  • Strings
    • Single-quoted Strings
      • Special Characters in Single-quoted Strings
      • Newlines in Single-quoted Strings
      • Examples of Invalid Single-quoted Strings
    • A Digression--The print Function
    • Double-quoted Strings
      • Interpolation in Double-quoted Strings
      • Examples of Interpolation
      • Examples of Interpolation (ASCII Octal Values)
      • Examples of Interpolation (ASCII Hex Values)
      • Characters Requiring Special Consideration
  • Numbers
    • Numeric Literals
      • Printing Numeric Literals
  • Scalar Variables
    • Scalar Interpolation
    • Undefined Variables
  • Operators
    • Numerical Operators
    • Comparison Operators
    • Auto-Increment and Decrement
    • String Operators
    • Assignment with Operators
  • Output of Scalar Data
  • Special Variables
  • Summary of Scalar Operators
• Arrays
  • The Semantics of Arrays
  • List Literals
  • Array Variables
    • Array Variables
    • Associated Scalars
  • Manipulating Arrays and Lists
    • It Slices!
    • Functions
      • Arrays as Stacks
      • Arrays as Queues
    • The Context--List vs. Scalar
    • Array Interpolation
• Control Structures
  • Blocks
  • A Digression--Truth Values
  • The if/unless Structures
  • The while/until Structures
  • The do while/until Structures
  • The for Structure
  • The foreach Structure
• Associative Arrays (Hashes)
  • What Is It?
  • Variables
  • Literals
  • Functions
    • Keys and Values
    • Each
  • Slices
  • Context Considerations
• Regular Expressions
  • The Theory Behind It All
  • The Simple
    • Simple Characters
    • The * Special Character
    • The . Character
    • The | Character
    • Grouping with ()s
    • The Anchor Characters
  • Pattern Matching
  • Regular Expression Shortcuts
• Subroutines
  • Defining Subroutines
  • Returning Values
  • Using Arguments
• Background of Perl
  • A Brief History of Perl
  • Perl as a Natural Language
  • The Slogans
• GNU Free Documentation License
  • ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
• General Index

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