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Tinkering with Perl
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Most books you will find on Perl or any other programming language, are books intended to be a one-size-fits-all -- or, at least, that's how they're advertised. This book does not attempt or pretend to be appropriate to most users; instead, I am trying to do one thing well.
Well, what am I trying to do? Let me first tell what I am not trying to do:
Well, if I am not trying to do all of that, then what am I trying todo?
I wrote this because trying to do this: create a book that would help my brothers learn to tinker.
I first tried to start my brothers straight off with Java. And Java is a ood language -- it might have been better for them to know than Perl, and I think it would be a good second language to teach, when they are ready to mature, so that they can produce high quality software. But to learn all of those principles all at once is a heavy load, and one which can be confusing. I was telling them very good things, but I was boring them.
Then I began to think about how I first began to program. I first began to tinker in middle school with BASIC, on Apple ][ series computers. I wrote spaghetti code laced with gotos and all sorts of other things I would shudder to do now. I did not then learn to be a good programmer -- at all. But I did learn to be a tinkerer, to play around and explore and put things together. It has been said that education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. That experience lit my fire; it started the curiosity and enjoyment that later caused me to become a more serious programmer.
This book is not an attempt to immediately achieve the end result of a good programmer. It has a goal which might be called more modest, but which might be called much more ambitious: lighting a fire. Once the fire is lit, it can be tended and carefully pruned; there will be plenty of time for the channeling and discipline necessary to let the fire achieve truly great things. I am not trying to do everything; I am trying, for now, to do just one thing. And do it reasonably well.
Chapter Zero: Preliminaries
Unix preliminaries
Directories
pwd
cd
mkdir
ls
Files
Editors
joe
Shebang
Permissions
chmod
Running your programs
Chapter One: Fundamentals
Comments
Variables
Scalars
Lists
Hashes
Statements
Assignment of
variables
Assignment of
scalars
Arithmetic
Assignment of
lists
Assignment of
hashes
Input and output
Input
Output
Flow control
Blocks
Conditional
clauses
If-then
If-then-else
If-then-else
chains
Loops
Foreach loops
While loops
For loops
Subroutines and
functions
Arguments
Subroutines
Functions
Chapter two: Sample programs
Friends and pets
Running average
Chapter three: Debugging
Common types of bugs
Syntax errors
Misspelling
Forgotten semicolon
Single and double equals
signs
Scientific debugging
Tinkering with Perl is a free book that provides an introduction to programming in Perl, as well as a basic reference for things like foreach in Perl, if-then, and if-then-else, in addition to providing a glossary where you can find definitions for concatenate and other terms.
Tinkering with Perl may be one of the most popular offerings on this site, but it's not the only attraction. You can read a tongue-in-cheek Game Review: Meatspace, read an even more offbeat customer service survey (whether or not you actually fill it out), and spend a few minutes wishing your boss would read, The Administrator Who Cried, "Important!" (Not to mention that there are other things you can read here besides tech stuff, from Janra Ball: The Headache to The Spectacles.)
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Tinkering with Perl
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