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| Introduction | |
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| Introducing Perl | |
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| Perl Basics | |
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| Project Preview: The Perl Humor Script | |
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| Perl Scripting Overview | |
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| A Little Perl History | |
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| Where's Perl 6? | |
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| What Can Perl Scripts Do? | |
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| The Programming Language, the Interpreter, and Scripts | |
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| Working from the Command Prompt | |
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| Accessing the Command Prompt on Windows XP | |
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| Accessing the Command Prompt on Mac OS X | |
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| Accessing the Command Prompt in Unix and Linux | |
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| Not Everything Smells Like Roses | |
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| Determining if Perl Is Installed on Your Computer | |
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| Where to Find Perl | |
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| Where to Find Perl's Documentation | |
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| Perldoc | |
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| Man Pages | |
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| ActiveState Documentation | |
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| Writing Your First Perl Scripts | |
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| Creating Perl One-liners | |
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| Writing Your First Perl Script File | |
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| Dissecting Hello.pl | |
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| How Perl Executes Your Script | |
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| Back to the Perl Humor Script | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Working with Strings, Numbers, and Operators | |
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| Project Preview: The Story of William the Great | |
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| Perl's Free-Wheeling Approach to Code Structure | |
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| Perl's Flexible View of Data | |
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| Working with Strings | |
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| Working with Numbers | |
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| Converting Scalar Data | |
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| Storing Data in Scalar Variables | |
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| Variable Scope | |
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| Assigning Data to Scalar Variables | |
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| Variable Interpolation | |
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| Understandings How to Work with Perl Operators | |
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| String Operators | |
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| Arithmetic Operators | |
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| Increment and Decrement Operators | |
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| Assignment Operators | |
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| Relational Operators | |
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| Logical Operators | |
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| Input and Output | |
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| Working with Standard Input | |
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| Working with Standard Output | |
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| Back to the Story of William the Great | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Mastering Key Perl Programming Constructs | |
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| Controlling Program Flow | |
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| Project Preview: The Perl Fortune Teller Game | |
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| Code Blocks | |
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| Applying Conditional Logic | |
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| Perl's View of What's True and False | |
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| Variations of the if Statement | |
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| The unless Statement | |
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| Creating More Sophisticated Conditional Logic | |
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| Nesting | |
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| Working with the ?...: Conditional Operator | |
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| Creating Custom Conditional Structures | |
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| Setting Up Loops | |
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| While | |
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| Until | |
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| Do | |
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| For | |
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| Foreach | |
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| Adding Continue Blocks to Your Loops | |
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| Loop Controls | |
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| The last Statement | |
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| The next Statement | |
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| The redo Statement | |
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| Adding Labels to Your Code Blocks and Loops | |
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| Back to the Perl Fortune Teller Game | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Working with Collections of Data | |
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| Project Preview: The Star Wars Quiz | |
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| Working with Collections of Related Data | |
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| Assigning Data to a List | |
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| Working with Arrays | |
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| Declaring an Array | |
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| Populating and Modifying Arrays with Data | |
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| Retrieving Data from an Array | |
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| Sorting Array Elements | |
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| Deleting Array Elements | |
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| Using Arrays to Populate Variables and Other Arrays | |
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| Ensuring That Array Elements Exist | |
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| Dealing with Undefined Array Elements | |
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| Creating Hashes | |
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| Adding and Deleting Hash Elements | |
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| Processing Hash Contents | |
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| Sorting Hash Values | |
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| Converting Between Arrays and Hashes | |
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| Understanding Context within Perl | |
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| Scalar Context | |
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| Numeric Context | |
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| Boolean Context | |
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| Scalar Versus List Context | |
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| Context and Lists, Arrays, and Hashes | |
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| Back to the Star Wars Quiz | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Improving Script Organization and Structure | |
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| Project Preview: The Pick a Number Game | |
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| Enhancing Script Organization | |
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| Organizing Perl Scripts Using Subroutines | |
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| Defining Subroutines | |
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| Executing Subroutines | |
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| A Template for Organizing Your Scripts and Subroutines | |
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| The Fortune Teller Game Revisited | |
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| Passing Arguments to Subroutines | |
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| Passing Data to Subroutines for Processing | |
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| Accessing Subroutine Arguments | |
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| Reassigning Subroutine Arguments | |
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| Passing Lists, Arrays, and Hashes as Arguments | |
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| Getting Data Back from Subroutines | |
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| Controlling Variable Scope | |
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| Creating Private Variables | |
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| Getting Strict with Private Variables | |
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| Creating Local Variables | |
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| Back to the Pick a Number Game | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Scope and Modules | |
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| Project Preview: The Rock, Paper, Scissors Game | |
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| Exercising Additional Control over Variable Scope | |
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| Working with Perl Modules | |
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| The Perl Library | |
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| Accessing Module Documentation | |
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| Importing Modules into Perl Scripts | |
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| Building Custom Modules | |
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| Defining a New Perl Module | |
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| Saving Your Custom Modules | |
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| Importing and Using Custom Perl Modules | |
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| Using Other People's Perl Modules | |
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| PPM | |
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| CPAN | |
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| Back to the Rock, Paper, Scissors Game | |
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| Building the Clear_the_screen Module | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Advanced Topics | |
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| Regular Expressions | |
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| Project Preview: The Lottery Picker Game | |
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| Introducing Regular Expressions | |
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| Matching Simple Patterns | |
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| Creating Simple Patterns | |
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| Shorter Pattern Footprints | |
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| Working with Metacharacters | |
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| Matching Patterns at the Beginning of a String | |
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| Matching Patterns at the End of a String | |
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| Matching One or Fewer Times | |
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| Matching Any Single Character | |
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| Matching Zero or More Instances | |
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| Matching One or More Instances | |
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| Matching a Range of Instances | |
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| Matching Alternative Patterns | |
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| Matching Any of a Collection of Characters | |
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| Other Regular Expression Tips and Tricks | |
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| Using Patterns to Replace Data | |
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| Performing Character Translation | |
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| Handling Differences in Case | |
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| Matching Data Stored in Lists | |
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| Back to the Lottery Picker Game | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Debugging | |
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| Project Preview: The Tic Tac Toe Game | |
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| Understanding Perl Script Errors | |
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| Syntax Errors | |
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| Runtime Errors | |
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| Logical Errors | |
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| Examining Perl Error Messages | |
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| Tracing Logical Flow with the Print Function | |
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| Using the Perl Debugger to Track Down Pesky Bugs | |
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| Starting the Debugger | |
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| Executing Additional Code Statements | |
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| Resuming or Restarting Execution | |
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| Tracing Logic Flow | |
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| Quitting the Debugger | |
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| Locating Your Position within the Script | |
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| Displaying and Modifying Variable Values | |
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| Displaying Help Information | |
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| Executing any Perl Statement | |
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| Setting and Working with Breakpoints | |
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| Using the Perl Debugger as an Interactive Test Environment | |
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| Using a Graphical Perl IDE/Debugger | |
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| Tips for Writing Cleaner Code | |
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| Document What Your Script Is Doing | |
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| Enable Warnings | |
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| Add Use Strict | |
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| Keep Things Simple | |
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| Break Things Down into Subroutines | |
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| Back to the Tic Tac Toe Game | |
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| Designing the Game | |
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| The Final Result | |
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| Summary | |
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| Appendices | |
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| Perl Scripting Examples | |
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| CGI Scripting | |
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| Creating a Basic CGI File | |
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| Executing Perl CGI Scripts | |
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| Working with the CGI.pm Module | |
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| Creating Reports and Documents | |
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| Opening Files for Reading | |
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| Reacting to Failures when Opening Files | |
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| Reading File Contents | |
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| Opening Files for Writing | |
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| Writing File Output | |
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| Closing Files when Done | |
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| Managing Files and Directories | |
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| Managing Files | |
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| Managing Directories | |
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| PerlScript and the WSH | |
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| What's on the Companion Website? | |
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| The Book's Source Code | |
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| Advanced Text Editors | |
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| JGsoft EditPad Lite | |
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| JGsoft EditPad Pro | |
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| Perl Editors | |
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| Perl Code Editor | |
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| Perl Builder 2.0 | |
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| DzSoft Perl Editor | |
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| Komodo | |
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| PerlEdit | |
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| What Next? | |
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| Recommended Reading | |
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| Locating Perl Resources Online | |
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| perl.com | |
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| The Perl Directory at Perl.org | |
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| Perlmonks | |
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| The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network | |
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| The Perl Foundation | |
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| Perl Mailing Lists | |
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| perl.beginners | |
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| Yahoo! Groups: perl.beginners | |
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| Glossary | |
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| Index | |