Enhance Your Skill Set with Perl

In this lecture, you will write and run your first Perl program -- the helloworld.pl program.  We'll examine each statement in the program so that what it does is clearly understandable.  You'll also see the helloworld program run on both a Unix and a Windows computer.

After completing this lecture, you will know what String Literals are, you'll know what String Scalars are, you will have gotten exposure to Perl's string operators, you'll understand the differences in how Perl interprets strings between single quotes versus those between double quotes, you'll have gotten a view of Perl's "backslash escape" sequences and you'll know how to make use of them.  In addition, you'll do an exercise using strings.

You will go over a solution to the exercise presented in the last video.  Also, to help lock in your new knowledge, you will get a quick review of what's been covered so far concerning strings in Perl.

After going through this lecture, you'll know how to get user input into your Perl programs by using the "line input operator".  Also, you'll know what the "chomp" function is, what it's for, and how to use it.  You will also begin to see how what you've learned so far can be used to create a program (the "calculator" program), and how pseudo code can be useful in creating your Perl programs.

You'll learn about Perl's "Binary Assignment Operators", how to assign values to variables, how to use Perl's operators on variables, and how to use Perl to solve a classic Computer Science problem -- the "Exchange the values in Two Variables" problem.

After completing this lecture, you'll know about "if" control structures and Perl's string and numerical comparison operators.  You'll also know how Perl decides if a condition is "true" or "false".  You will use this knowledge as you continue to build the "calculator" program.

You'll learn to create and use while loops in Perl, you will learn about Perl operator precedence and associativity, you will see how to set your own operator precedence and associativity by using parentheses, and you will see how to complete the "calculator" program.

These are additional array related exercises.  They are optional and for those that want more opportunities to exercise newly acquired knowledge.

Additional exercises to help lock in input and output knowledge.

Additional 'hash' related activities to exercise your new hash knowledge.

These are additional exercises that will help sharpen skills using regular expressions.  Two of the exercises use real client data so the student gets experience dealing with an actual real-world data set.