CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 1 Perl Practical Extraction and Report Language Shell-level scripting language: Glue that ties together programs written in other languages. Perl: Developed by Larry Wall in the late 1980s. Builds on... sh awk sed c

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 2 Perl and the Web One-pass compilation means Perl programs can be efficiently compiled on demand. Perl makes it easy to process text (and generate HTML!). With contributed modules in the CPAN library, Perl has become a defacto standard for CGI programming on the Web, esp. on Unix servers.

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 3 Perl vs Java Server vs Client... Input info may be too sensitive to send over the net to an applet. Applet downloading and startup cause high latency. No special browser plugins are needed, since Perl doesn’t run in the browser.

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 4 Perl has a “Little Language” philosophy Small numbers of variables means less concern about name conflicts... declarations not required. Perl grows out of a systems-programming context. Conciseness was valued over transparency. The meanings of language features are often dependent on context (e.g., list context vs scalar context). One system may consist of many Perl scripts.

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 5 Comments on the Book by Schwartz and Christiansen Learning Perl, 2nd edition, is a relatively recent book (1997). It covers Perl 5, the latest version and not completely compatible with version 4. “A gentle introduction to Perl” The companion book is Programming Perl, 3rd edition, by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen and Jon Orwant.

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 6 Running a Perl Program #!/usr/bin/perl print("Out of the oyster!\n"); # comment Make sure the file is executable: chmod +x howdy.pl Run the program from the command line:./howdy.pl

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 7 A Perl Script for the Web #!/usr/bin/perl print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; $now = localtime(); print " "; print " The time is $now\n"; print " ";

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 8 Online help perldoc perl (overview) perldoc perlfaq (freq. asked questions) perldoc perldata (data structures) perldoc perlsyn (syntax) perldoc perlop (operators and precedence) perldoc perlre (regular expressions) perldoc perlrun (execution and options) perldoc -f split (info on a function)

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 9 The Fundamental Data Types $n = 25; # a numeric scalar $str = "Here is a string"; print('The value of $n is '. $n); # Note strings with ' ' do not have # variable "interpolation" performed # But strings with " " DO have it. print("The value is $n.");

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 10 String Operations "string1". "string2" # concatenation Can also be done using interpolation: $str1 = "abc"; $str2 = "def"; $newstr = "$str1$str2";

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 11 Support for processing text: Immediate, embedded (“Here”) Documents print << "END-OF-PRINT"; Hello there. This is a two-line immediate text doc. END-OF-PRINT

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 12 Choice of Interpolating or Not $dollars = 64000; print <<”EOT”; The $dollars question. Are $dollars printed out here? EOT

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 13 Choice of Interpolating or Not $dollars = 64000; print <<’EOT’; The $64000 question. Are $dollars printed out here? EOT

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 14 Interpolation -- Not The $64000 question. Are $dollars printed out here?

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 15 = ("Oak", "Maple", = qw(pine alter = (75, 50.5, "twenty"); $mytree = $trees[1]; # "Maple"

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 16 Hashes (Associative Arrays) $foodtype{"Spaghetti"} = "Italian"; $thetype = $foodtype{"Spaghetti"}; foreach $food (keys %foodtype) { $thetype = $foodtype{$food}; print "Food $food is $thetype\n"; }

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 17 Quick Example of CGI Processing: The HTML Form Type your user name:

CSE S. Tanimoto Perl-Intro - 18 CGI Processing: The Perl Script #!/usr/bin/perl use CGI qw/:standard/; $theName = param("username"); print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; print " "; print " Your user name is $theName"; print " ";