Class overview :

Class goals :

Extensive hands on exercises provide practice in report creation, pattern matching, string manipulation, file I/O, command line processing, and debugging. Students are shown how to extend Perl’s basic functionality with packages and loadable modules. The final day encompasses CGI scripting with Perl as well as database access using the DBI module. Attendees are shown how to validate form data, how to perform robust database access, and how to generate HTML output in order to create a dynamic web site.

Content of Perl Programming and CGI Scripting

• Perl Fundamentals
• Running Perl on UNIX and Windows
• Using Scalar Variables
• Using Arrays
• Operators, Expressions and Precedence
• Arithmetic and String Operators
• Relational and Logical Operators
• Using the Conditional Operator
• Understanding File Test Functions
• Conditional Constructs
• Looping Constructs
• Using Subroutines
• Global vs. Local Variables and Scoping
• Debugger Concepts
• Using Perl Script Arguments
• Using Regular Expressions
• Reading and Writing Files
• Understanding Scope
• Understanding Modules
• Writing to Files and Using Multiple Named Formats
• The Common Gateway Interface
• Configuring a Web Server for CGI
• The Apache httpd.conf File
• Aliasing CGI-Enabled Directories in Apache
• Relationship Between HTML and CGI
• The CGI Output Stream
• Specifying MIME Types
• Printing Dynamic Content
• Working with Form Data
• Using the Perl CGI.pm Module
• Creating Forms with CGI.pm
• Form Processing with CGI.pm
• Setting Cookies
• Using Relational Databases with Perl CGI
• Connecting to a Database
• Procedural and Object Oriented Programming

This hands on Perl programming course provides a thorough introduction to the Perl programming language, teaching attendees how to develop and maintain portable scripts useful for system management, data manipulation, and Web CGI programming.