S4   Learning Perl (Bring Your Own Laptop) 
Tom Christiansen, Consultant

Who should attend: Programmers with previous experience either in a structured programming language, like C, C++, Pascal, Python, or Java, or else in a scripting language like the Bourne shell, Javascript, or Tcl. While some previous exposure to Perl is beneficial, it's not essential.

This is the first of two classes - "Learning Perl" (S4) and "Learning More Perl" (M4) - that were designed to be taken one after the other, although this is not a requirement.

Designed to be programmer-friendly and platform-neutral, Perl is a high-level, general-purpose programming language that makes easy things easy and hard things possible. Now moving into its second decade, Perl has become the language of choice across all platforms for programmers engaged in rapid prototyping, system utilities, software tools, system management tasks, database access, graphical and web programming. Perl programming is an essential skill for any system administrator or web programmer, and an important one for nearly everyone else.

Because Perl incorporates aspects of more than a dozen well-known UNIX tools, experienced UNIX programmers and administrators can come up to speed on Perl very rapidly. However, because Perl is portable to all major platforms, programmers and administrators everywhere will benefit from this high-powered tool.

Topics in this first full-day class include:

	Getting started with Perl, command-line switches
	Debugging, common beginner "gotchas"
	Control flow structures, such as loops and conditionals
	Strings and numbers
	Detailed description of basic data types (scalar, array, and hash variables)
	Key built-in functions and operators that act on these

Bring your own laptop:This course uses a new strategy: practical lab work is added to the traditional lecture format to reinforce the lectures. Students should bring their own laptop on which they can work through instructor-assisted lab exercises. Laptops should have Perl already installed on them, but no specific operating system is required. Detailed directions can be found on the web at: www.perl.com/perl/training/byo-setup.html