Minimal Perl

Chapter 2. Perl essentials

2.1	Perl’s invocation options	17
2.2	Using variables	23
2.3	Loading modules: -M	27
2.4	Writing simple scripts	29
2.5	Additional special variables	42
2.6	Standard option clusters	44
2.7	Constructing programs	47
2.8	Summary	51

This chapter introduces the most essential features of Perl, to pave your way for the programming examples you’ll see in the following chapters. Among the topics we’ll cover here are the use of Perl’s special variables, how to write Perl one-line commands and scripts, and the fundamentals of using Perl modules.

But we don’t discuss everything you need to know about Perl in this chapter. Further details on this chapter’s topics—and more specialized ones not discussed here—are presented in later chapters, in the context of ...