book

Beginning Perl

by Curtis Ovid Poe

September 2012

Beginner

744 pages

15h 48m

English

Wrox

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Perl TodayGetting PerlThe Perl CommunityUsing perldocUsing a Terminal WindowCreating Hello, World!Summary
CPAN and METACPANCPAN ClientsSummary
What is Programming?A Few Things to Note Before Getting StartedScalarsArraysHashesSlicesContextScopeStrict, Warnings, and DiagnosticsPerl’s Built-in VariablesSummary
Using ScalarsArray and List FunctionsBuilt-in Hash FunctionsScoping KeywordsSummary
Using the if Statementfor/foreach loopsUsing while/until LoopsStatement Modifiersgiven/whenSummary
References 101Working with ReferencesSummary
Subroutine SyntaxReturning DataFAIL!Subroutine ReferencesPrototypesRecursionThings to Watch ForSummary

Basic MatchingAdvanced MatchingCommon Regular Expression IssuesSummary
Basic File HandlingDirectoriesUnicodeUseful ModulesSummary
Basic Sortingmap and grepPutting It All TogetherSummary
Namespaces and PackagesSubroutines in Other PackagesBEGIN, UNITCHECK, CHECK, INIT, and ENDPlain Old Documentation (POD)Creating and Installing ModulesSummary
What Are Objects? The Ævar the Personal ShopperThree Rules of Perl OOObjects – Another ViewA Brief RecapGotchasSummary
Understanding Basic Moose SyntaxAdvanced Moose SyntaxMoose Best PracticesSummary
Basic TestsUnderstanding Test::More Test FunctionsUsing Other Testing ModulesUnderstanding xUnit Style Using TestingSummary
A Brief Introduction to HTTPWeb ClientsSummary
Using the DBISelecting Basic DataSummary
The Command LineOther ProgramsSummary
Using CSV DataUnderstanding Basic XMLHandling DatesUnderstanding Your ProgramSummary
What Next?Understanding Object-Relational MappersUsing the Template ToolkitUsing Catalyst to Build AppsSummary

Content preview from Beginning Perl

Chapter 18 Common Tasks

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

Working with CSV Data
Reading and writing XML
Parsing and manipulating dates
Using the built-in debugger
Profiling your program

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOAD FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=1118013847 on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

example_18_1_jobs.csv
example_18_2_parse_csv.pl
example_18_3_write_csv.pl
example_18_4_library.xml
example_18_5_xml_simple.pl
example_18_6_xml_twig.pl
example_18_7_xml_writer.pl
example_18_8_palindrome.pl
example_18_9_factorial.pl
listing_18_1_cal.pl

By now you have a good idea of what Perl programming is about, and you should have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. If you’ve followed along carefully and worked through the exercises, you could possibly even qualify for some entry-level developer positions. However, developers constantly get strange tasks thrown at them all the time and must handle them. These last two chapters cover some of those tasks. This chapter handles common tasks that you’ll likely need to perform and the next chapter touches on some advanced topics that mastering can take you to the next level of Perl.

By now, you should know that the CPAN is the first place you look to see if someone else has already handled your task, and you’ll explore a few of the popular CPAN modules to handle various tricky data tasks and also how to ...