Perl Advanced

Perl is a mature, extremely flexible, general-purpose language, which is especially well suited to textual manipulation. In addition to its brilliant built-in facilities, there are vast freely-accessible libraries of Perl code to help build almost every conceivable applica-tion. It is for –instance - in many cases the language of choice for implementing web server-based CGI programs. Perl is available free-of-charge. This two or three-day course (depending on focus) covers the more advanced techniques and programming structures provided by Perl5, suitable for applications of all types. It is a ‘hands-on’ course with many brief, practical examples of everyday use of Perl.

Students should be familiar with Perl and have attended our Perl Introduction course or have comparable experience. Familiarity with other programming languages would also be a distinct advantage.

Basics revisited
Reference constructs
ref() function
Advanced data structure examples

Typeglobs, local() and my()
Applying typeglob aliasing
Typeglobs and references
Typeglobs and filehandles

Namespaces and packages
use and require
Module semantics
File/directory standard library modules
BEGIN...END blocks
AUTOLOADing

Background to object-orientation
Accessing object methods
Class methods and attributes
bless() function
The -> notation and variations
Perl-style inheritance, @ISA special array
Polymorphism
Introduction to the tie command
Private data via closures

Random numbers
eval
Advanced array functions
Other miscellaneous functions

The CGI specification
Using Perl with a web server program
Multiple data items
CGI.pm and related modules

Unix DBM databases and DBM hashes
Pseudo databases
Database modules: DBI/DBM
Win::ODBC

Pragmas
Introduction to Perl security
Introduction to Perl and other languages
Processes, signals, pipes and socket basics