Perl is an interpreted high-level programming language developed by Larry Wall. According to Larry, he included in Perl all the cool features found in other languages and left out those features that weren't so cool.
Perl has become the premier scripting
language of the Web, as most CGI programs are written in Perl. However,
Perl is widely used as a rapid prototyping language and a "glue"
language that makes it possible for different systems to work well
together. Perl is popular with system administrators who use it for an
infinite number of automation tasks.
Perl Homepage
| Information about Perl in Unisite | |
| Version: | 5.005_03 |
| Path: | /usr/local/bin/perl or /usr/bin/perl |
| file Extensions: | .cgi or .pl |
| Extension library path: | /home2/lib/perl |
Documentation
This section contains the
core documentation for the Perl language. Please note that many
applications use Perl modules and the documentation for those modules can
be found on CPAN as well as in our Modules section. Also, the FAQs are an
excellent source of information about many different applications of Perl.
Practical
Extraction and Report Language
The main perl manpage that explains what Perl is and how to get started
programming in Perl.
Perl's
Builtin functions
A listing of the built-in functions in Perl, grouped by category and
alphabetically.
Perl syntax
An overview of the syntactic elements of the Perl language such as
declarations, statements and loops. Also includes an explanation of
embedding POD documentation.
Perl
data types
An introduction to Perl's three basic data structures: scalars, arrays of
scalars, and associative arrays of scalars, also known as hashes.
Perl
Subroutines
An introduction to user-defined subroutines.
Perl
Operators and Precedence
A listing of all of Perl's operators from lowest to highest in precedence.
Perl
Regular Expressions
An introduction to the syntax of regular expressions in Perl.
Writing
Portable Perl Programs
A introduction to writing Perl programs that are portable across different
systems. Covers newlines, file systems, system interaction and IPC
differences.
Perl
Style Guide
A set of general guidelines for writing Perl programs using a style that
makes the code easier to read.
How
To Execute the Perl Interpreter
A description of how to invoke Perl programs and identify the location of
the Perl interpreter on different platforms.
Perl
Report Formatting
An introduction to generating simple reports and charts in Perl using the
format statement.
Perl Predefined Variables
A listing of reserved names that have special meaning to Perl. Also includes a discussion of variables that contain information about various error conditions.
Perl
references and nested data structures
An introduction to using references in Perl, distinguishing between
symbolic references and "hard" references introduced in 5.005.
Data
Manipulation
Manipulating numbers, dates, strings, arrays, hashes, and including
miscellaneous data issues.
Manipulating
Lists of Lists in Perl
A tutorial describing how the build and use lists of lists (arrays of
arrays).
Complex
Data Structures Cookbook
This document describes Perl's complex data structures, which were
introduced in 5.0. It covers arrays of arrays, hashes of arrays, hashes of
hashes, and other more elaborate constructs.
Perl Release History
A record of Perl source code releases.
What's
new for perl5.004
A description of differences between the 5.003 release (as documented in
Programming Perl, second edition--the Camel Book) and this 5.004.
What's
new for perl5.005
A summary of the differences between the 5.004 and 5.005 releases. It also
describes the dual-track release schedule begun with 5.005.
Perl Traps for the Unwary
A useful listing for troubleshooting common problems with Perl programs.
Perl
Diagnostics and Error Messages
This document describes Perl's error messages, including warnings and
fatal errors. It provides an alphabetical list of errors.
Perl
debugging
An introduction to Perl's debugger, covering how to invoke it and use its
command set.
Perl interprocess communication
The basic IPC facilities of Perl are built out of the good old Unix signals, named pipes, pipe opens, the Berkeley socket routines, and SysV IPC calls.
Perl
security
An introduction to security issues for writing and deploying Perl
programs.
Internationalization
and Localization: Perl's locale system
A description of how to set and use the locale system to support
international character sets. Introduced in 5.004.
Perl modules
A description of how to work with modules in your programs.
Installing
CPAN Modules
An explanation of how to download modules from CPAN and installing modules
on on most platforms.
Constructing
new Perl modules and finding existing ones
A description of the Perl Module Library including a description of pragma,
standard and extension modules.
Tom's Object-oriented Tutorial for Perl
An introduction to object-oriented programming in Perl.
Perl
objects
An explanation of how to think of objects in Perl as references and of
classes as packages. This document is meant to demystify object-oriented
programming terminology.
How
to hide an object class in a simple variable
An explanation of the tie() function introduced in Perl 5.0 that binds a
variable to a class.
Bag'o
Object Tricks
A collection of tricks and hints related to object-oriented programming in
Perl covering, for example, the use of instance variables and the
mechanics of object and class relationships.
How To Embed Perl In Your C program
This document describes how to embed a perl interpreter and perl programs in a C program.
Calling
Perl from C Programs
An introduction to calling Perl subroutines directly from C, i.e., how to
write callbacks. Examples of error handlers and event-driven programming
are shown.
XS
language reference manual
A description of XS and XSUB, an extension interface for defining external
subroutines.
Tutorial
for XSUBs
A tutorial on using XSUB to create extensions.
Perl's Internal Functions
A description of some of the internal functions of the Perl executable. Covers the magic structure.
Perl's
IO abstraction interface.
A listing of the I/O functions that are used in Perl's source code, based
on ANSI C's stdio.h.