Introduction to Perl

Patrick M. Ryan
patrick.m.ryan@gsfc.nasa.gov
Hughes STX Corporation

Revised November 16, 1993

• What is Perl?
• Basic Syntax
• Data Types
  • Scalars
  • Arrays of Scalars
  • Associative Arrays of Scalars
• Operators and Comparators
• A Word about Default Arguments
• Regular Expressions
  • Matching Regular Expressions
  • Extracting Matched String from Regexps
• Flow Control
  • If-Then-Else
  • The while statement
  • The for and foreach statements
  • Goto
• Built-In Routines, C Library Routines, and System Calls
  • Built-In Routines
  • UNIX-type Utility Routines
  • C Library Routines
• Operating System Interaction
• File Handling
  • Text I/O
  • Pipes
  • Unformatted File Access
  • Use of the print command
• Some Notes about Perl Array Contexts
• Subroutines and Packages
  • Subroutines
  • Packages
• Predefined Variables
• Command Line Options
• References
  • Manuals and Books
  • How to get Perl
• About this document ...