Preface.
Acknowledgments.
1. The Practical Extraction and Report Language.
What Is Perl? Who Uses Perl? Which Perl? Where to Get Perl. What Is CPAN? Perl Documentation.
2. Perl Scripts.
Perl at the Command Line. Script Setup. The Script. Exercise 1: Getting with It Syntactically.
3. Getting a Handle on Printing.
The Filehandle. Words. The print Function. The printf Function. Exercise 2: A String of Perls.
4. What's in a Name.
About Perl Variables. Scalars, Arrays, and Hashes. Reading from STDIN. Array Functions. Hash (Associative Array) Functions. More Hashes. Exercise 3: The Funny Characters.
5. Where's the Operator?
About Perl Operators. Mixing Data Types. Precedence and Associativity. Exercise 4: Operator, Operator.
6. If Only, Unconditionally, Forever.
Control Structures, Blocks, and Compound Statements. Decision Making-Conditional Constructs. Loops. Exercise 5: What Are Your Conditions?
7. Regular Expressions-Pattern Matching.
What Is a Regular Expression? Expression Modifiers and Simple Statements. Regular Expression Operators. Exercise 6: Is it sed, awk, or grep? Give Perl a Whirl!
8. Getting Control-Regular Expression Metacharacters.
Regular Expression Metacharacters. Unicode. Exercise 7: Is it sed, awk, or grep? Give Perl Another Whirl!
9. Getting a Handle on Files.
The User-Defined Filehandle. Passing Arguments. File Testing. Exercise 8: Getting a Handle on Things.
10. How Do Subroutines Function?
Subroutines/Functions. Exercise 9: I Can't Seem to Function Without Subroutines.
11. Modularize It, Package It, and Send It to the Library!
Packages and Modules. The Standard Perl Library. Exercise 10: I Hid All My Perls in a Package. Exercise 11: Pack It up and Take It to the Library.
12. Does This Job Require a Reference?
What Is a Reference? Exercise 12: It's Not Polite to Point!
13. Bless Those Things! (Object-Oriented Perl)
The OOP Paradigm. Classes, Objects, and Methods. Inheritance. Public User Interface-Documenting Classes. Using Objects from the Perl Library. Exercise 13: What's the Object of This Lesson? Exercise 14: Perls in a Pod.
14. Those Magic Ties, DBM Stuff, and the Database Hooks.
Tying Variables to a Class. DBM Files.
15. Introduction to Perl Database Programming.
Chapter Overview. Perl Database Programming. Perl Programming with an RDBMS. Accessing MSS Using ADO and DBI. Accessing Oracle Using ADO and DBI. Exercises: Non-Programming. Exercise 15: Introduction to Using MSS. Exercise 16: Executing persons.sql in MSS. Exercise 17: Introduction to Using Oracle. Exercise 18: Executing persons.sql in Oracle. References.
16. Interfacing with the System.
System Calls. Processes. Other Ways to Interface with the Operating System. Error Handling. Signals.
17. Report Writing with Pictures.
The Template.
18. Send It Over the Net and Sock It To 'Em!
Networking and Perl. Client/Server Model. Network Protocols (TCP/IP). Network Addressing. Sockets. Client/Server Programs. The Socket.pm Module.
19. CGI and Perl: The Hyper Dynamic Duo.
What Is CGI? Internet Communication Between Client and Server. Creating a Web Page with HTML. How HTML and CGI Work Together. Log Files. Where to Find CGI Applications. Getting Information Into and Out of the CGI Script. Processing Forms with CGI. The CGI.pm Module. Exercise 19: Surfing for Perls. Exercise 20: Let's Use CGI.pm.
Appendix A: Perl Built-Ins, Pragmas, Modules, and the Debugger.
Perl Functions. Special Variables. Perl Pragmas. Perl Modules. Command Line Switches. Debugger.
Appendix B: Some Helpful Scripts.
taintperl Script by Mark Houser. maxpstat by John J. Nouveaux. randomize by John J. Nouveaux.
Appendix C: An Object-Oriented Perl/CGI Program.
The analyze.cgi Program and Associated Files.
Appendix D: HTML Documents: A Basic Introduction.
Intro to the Intro. What Is HTML? HTML Tags. The Minimal HTML Document. Character Formatting. Linking. Adding Comments. Case Sensitivity. Graphics and Images. Troubleshooting. Metatags, Cascading Style Sheets, and Java. Looking Behind the Scenes (or, What Did We Do Before the Right-Click?). What About Frames? Some Final Thoughts.
Index.
