Learning Perl

[MikeA]

Ok, I know how to do some programming, but want to learn Perl. Do you need some kind of a compiler that will run it for you or what? How do you test the programs. Also where is a good tutorial site?

Thanks

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www.webauthorities.com (http://www.webauthorities.com)
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[Deb]

Hey Mike,

There are hundreds of tutorials on the net for perl.... http://www.perl.org is a good url to keep handy http://www.aota.net/ubb/wink.gif

A nice tutorial can also be found at http://www.cybereffects.com/perl/

Just do a search in altavista.digital.com you'll find many..

You don't need much to get started just a good text editor... http://www.ultraedit.com and really you do not even need that... Just telnet into your account and start writing your scripts... we have a couple debuggers etc on the server for you... just surf the forums

It would be very helpful for you to purchase a book... learning perl or something of that sort. Just browse the book store and find one that 'speaks your language'.

Perl is the swiss army knife of all languages.. a million different ways to accomplish the same task.

Good Luck with it
Deb

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[Del]

MikeA,
I learned what I know about Perl the harder way, just started downloading scripts (via http://www.cgi-resources.com/ ) and tweaked on em http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif Eventually (month or so) I started getting an idea of how they worked, and started tweaking on my own (which didn't work for a couple more months). By that time I was hooked. I couldn't stop. Just wanted more and more, until finally I was getting my own scripts to work fairly okay. Then, I bought a Perl book, Programming Perl by Larry Wall (the guy who invented perl), Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz. That was a pretty good book, so I bought another, entitled Perl Cookbook (by Tom Christiansen and Nat Torkington). It was a tremendous help too, so I bought another, Advanced Perl Programming by Sriram Srinivasan. After that came Learning Perl by Randal Schwarz and Tom Christiansen, which was a good buy too, very hapy with it. Then it came time to learn regular expressions better, so I bought the Mastering Regular Expressions book, by Jeffrey Friedl, another wise investment. Finally came the Perl 5 Pocket Reference, which was a handy little (67 pg) reference guide. Terra tells me you can find it online and print it tho, instead of buying it. (BTW all the aforementioned books are published by O'REILLY, http://www.oreilly.com/ )

Anyway, I'm sure that's much more than you cared to read. To put it short, check the URL's Deb gave (I use them too *s*), tinker with existing scripts (you can see mine at http://www.downinit.com/scripts/ ), and get the best books available (listed above). You'll be an upcoming Perl Hacker in no time!

BTW The next book on my list is Effective Perl, http://www.effectiveperl.com/ , by suggestion from Terra.



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Del
http://www.downinit.com/

[MikeA]

Is JanetPro something that you wrote? When do you plan on finishing this? Thanks for the suggestions.

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www.webauthorities.com (http://www.webauthorities.com)
"To continue press any key"...Where's the anykey?

[Del]

Mike,
Yup, it's something I wrote/am writing. As far as a finish date, I have no idea... Got lotsa other stuff I'm doing right now, as well as school starting in about 1.5 weeks, so the JanetPro thing has been back-burnered indefinitely.

If you'd like to discus it more, feel free to email me at del@downinit.com (or hey, there's that little email link hehehe).

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Del
www.downinit.com/ (http://www.downinit.com/)