Perl - Essentials

Overview of Perl

• What is Perl?
• Perl Interpreter
• Installing PERL
• Running Perl Programs

Perl Variables   

• Three Types of Variables
• Scalar, Array, Hash
• Variable Names and Syntax
• Scalar data functions -length, chomp, chop, index, rindex, substr, reverse, lc, lcfirst, uc, ucfirst, hex, ord, chr, abs, int, oct, sqrt
• Variable Naming conventions

Operators

• Perl operators
• Operators Precedence and associativity
• String Concatenation and Repetition Operators
• Comparison Operators
• Assignment Operator Notations
• Shift Operators
• The Range Operator
• Quotation Operators
• The Repetition Operator

Flow Control

• Simple Statements
• Compound Statements
• The next, last Statements
• if/if-else, if-elsif-else, while, unless, until loops
• The for Loop
• The foreach Loop

Arrays

• Lists
• Scalar and List Contexts
• Arrays
• Special variable - @ARGV
• Array Functions - push,pop,shift,unshift,splice
• Array Slices
• List Functions - grep,map,reverse,sort,join

Hashes

• Associative arrays
• Hash functions
• keys, values, each, exists, delete
• special variable - %ENV

I/O: Input Operations and File I/O Filehandles

• The open Function
• The Input Operator <> , stdin, stdout
• Default Input Operator
• The print Function
• File Operation Functions
• Reading Directories
• File Test Operators
• Directory-Manipulation Functions

Subroutines   

• Overview of Subroutines
• Passing Arguments
• Local Variables
• Passing Names
• Returning Values

References

• References
• Creating References
• Using References
• Passing References as Arguments to Subroutines
• Anonymous Data - Array, Hash
• Two-dimensional Arrays in Perl

Packages

• Define Packages, Modules
• import package keywords-use, require
• Package Variables , @INC

Regular Expressions

• Pattern Matching Overview ,m// Operator
• The Substitution Operator , s/// Operator
• Regular Expressions
• Special Characters
• Quantifiers (*, +, ?, {})
• Assertions (^, $, \b, \B)
• RE Special Variables
• Matching any character
• Matching a Specified Number of Occurrences
• Substituting with an Expression
• Split and grep functions

Database connectivity using DBI

• Overview of DBI programming
• Using DBI module
• Executing DDL, DML queries etc.

Testing/QA Automation

• Use of Test::Simple
• Use Test::More
• Use Test::Harness
• use of Test::Builder

Debugging

• Overview of debugging