Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days, 2/e

Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days covers the basics of Perl in the first few chapters, and then moves on to practical issues of Perl and in-depth discussions of more advanced topics. Later chapters also delve into software engineering topics, with discussions of modular code and object-oriented programming. CGI is covered in one chapter, but it is not the focus on the book. The book relies heavily on longer working examples and code, as opposed to small snippets and code fragments, and each chapter includes two to three smaller complete examples and one major one that illustrates most of the concepts for that chapter and builds on the chapters before it. Written by Laura Lemay, this is her third major book after Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in 21 Days and Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days.

Table of Contents

Introduction.

WEEK 1. GETTING STARTED.

Day 1. An Introduction to Perl.
Day 2. Working with Strings and Numbers (Scalar Data).
Day 3. More Scalar Data and Operators.
Day 4. Working with Lists and Arrays.
Day 5. Working with Hashes.
Day 6. Conditionals and Loops.
Day 7. Exploring a Few Longer Examples.

WEEK 2. DOING MORE.

Day 8. Manipulating Lists and Strings.
Day 9. Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions.
Day 10. Doing More with Regular Expressions.
Day 11. Creating and Using Subroutines.
Day 12. Debugging Perl.
Day 13. Scope, Modules, and Importing Code.
Day 14. Exploring a Few Longer Examples.

WEEK 3. ADVANCED PERL.

Day 15. Working with Files and I/O.
Day 16. Using Perl for CGI Scripting.
Day 17. Managing Files and Directories.
Day 18. Perl and the Operating System.
Day 19. Working with References.
Day 20. Odds and Ends.
Day 21. Exploring a Few Longer Examples.

APPENDIXES.

Appendix A. Perl Functions.
Appendix B. Installing Perl on a Unix System.
Appendix C. Installing Perl for Windows.
Index.