• What is Perl?
• Perl is compiled and interpreted
• Perl advantages and disadvantages
• Downloading and installing Perl
• Which version of Perl
• Getting help

• Structure of a Perl program
• Running a Perl script
• Checking syntax and warnings
• Execution of scripts under Unix and Windows

• Numeric and text literals
• Math operators and expressions
• Scalar variables
• Default values
• Writing to standard output
• Command line arguments
• Reading from the standard input

• About flow control
• The if statement and Boolean values
• Using unless and elsif
• Statement modifiers
• warn () and die ()
• The conditional constructvUsing while loop and its variants
• Using the for loop
• Exiting from loops

• The list data type
• Accessing array elements
• Creating arrays
• List interpolation
• Arrays and memory
• Counting elements
• Iterating through an array
• List evaluation
• Slices and ranges

• File I/O overview
• Opening a file
• Reading text files
• Writing to a text file
• Arrays and file I/O
• Using the <> operator

• Growing and shrinking arrays
• The split () function
• Splitting on whitespace
• Assigning to literal lists
• The join () function
• The sort () function
• Alternate sort keys
• Reversing an array

• Using sprintf () and printf ()
• Report formatting overview
• Defining report formats
• The write () function
• Advanced filehandle magic

• Hash overview
• Creating hashes
• Hash attributes
• Traversing a hash
• Testing for the existence of elements
• Deleting hash elements

• What is a reference?
• The two ways to create references
• References to existing data
• References to anonymous data
• Dereferencing scalar, array, and ash references
• Dereferencing elements of arrays and hashes
• Multidimensional arrays and other data structures

• String length
• The substr () function
• The index () and rindex () functions
• String replication
• Pattern matching and substitution
• Regular expressions

• Opening and closing raw (binary) files
• Reading raw data
• Using seek () and tell ()
• Writing raw data
• Raw data manipulation with pack () and unpack ()

• Understanding packages
• Package and lexical variables
• Localizing built-in variables
• Declaring and calling subroutines
• Calling subroutines
• Passing parameters and returning values

• Determining the current OS
• Environment variables
• Running external programs
• User identification
• Trapping signals
• File test operators
• Working with files
• Time of day

• Understanding $_
• shift () with no array specified
• Text file processing
• Using grep () and Using map ()
• Command-line options for file processing

• Quoting in Perl
• Evaluating arrays
• Understanding qw ()
• Getting more out of the <> operator
• Read ranges of lines
• Using m//g in scalar context
• The /o modifier
• Working with embedded newlines
• Making REs more readable

Perl data conversion

• Quoting in Perl
• Evaluating arrays
• Understanding qw ()
• Getting more out of the <> operator
• Read ranges of lines
• Using m//g in scalar context
• The /o modifier
• Working with embedded newlines
• Making REs more readable
• Perl data conversion

• The Perl library
• Old-style library files
• Perl modules
• Modules bundled with Perl
• A selection of modules
• Getting modules from ActiveState
• Getting modules from CPAN
• Using Getopt: Long

• Sending and receiving files with Net: FTP
• Using File: Find to search for files and directories
• Grabbing a web page
• Some good places to find scripts
• Perl man pages for more information
• Zipping and unzipping files