Course Overview

Advanced Perl Programming is an intermediate and beyond hands-on course that focuses on several common application domains (e.g. Networking, database access). Geared for experienced Perl programmers, this course teaches students how to leverage the more advanced features of Perl using the latest skills and best practices.  Students will learn about and explore next-level Perl capabilities and features such as: Using Shortcuts, parsing text, using references, using CPAN to access the Perl library, working with objects in Perl, Exception Handling, Database Access, Network Programming and much more. Students will leave this course armed with the skills they need to handle advanced Perl development and scripting tasks.

Key Learning Areas

  • Create efficient data structures using references
  • Understand advanced text parsing techniques
  • Access data from relational database systems
  • Create reusable modules
  • Design and use objects
  • Create TCP/IP clients and servers

Course Outline

Reference Refresher

  • Creating references
  • Anonymous arrays and hashes
  • Dereferencing
  • References and subroutines
  • References and arrays
  • Complex data structures

Data Wrangling

  • Reading text files
  • Creative use of and $/
  • Matching and substituting
  • RE review
  • Using backreferences
  • Parsing lines
  • Using here documents and __END__
  • Converting data with pack/unpack

Shortcuts and Defaults

  • The ubiquitous $_
  • How to use
  • Pattern matching in brief
  • File tests on _
  • One-liners

Modern Perl

  • Features added since 5.0
  • Higher-order functions
  • Say()
  • Switch statement (given/when)
  • Smart matching
  • Defined-or
  • State variables
  • Lexical $_

Who Benefits

This course is designed for programmers who want to leverage their basic Perl knowledge into production-quality tools.

Prerequisites

Students should have solid development experience in any programming language, along with a working, user-level knowledge of Unix/Linux, Mac, or Windows.