Perl for Oracle DBAs

Appendix A. The Essential Guide to Perl

In Chapter 1, we briefly explored the history and culture of Perl without examining the language itself in any detail. In this appendix we’ll describe just enough of the language to allow you to understand how Perl DBI works and how you can take advantage of the Oracle applications described in this book. We’ll focus on the following:

• Getting information about Perl

• Running Perl scripts

• Variable types

• Program context

• Program and subroutine parameters

• References

• Object orientation

We’ll also briefly describe how to get information about Perl and how to invoke it. This will be a roller coaster ride, so hang onto your bitmaps!

Of course, there is much more to learn about Perl. Consult the online and offline references listed in Chapter 1 for additional and much more complete resources.

Obtaining Online Information

Perl is one the most heavily documented languages in the known Universe! This appendix only scratches the surface. Fortunately, there exists a wealth of online information that comes automatically with Perl. To get going, type the following command:

$ perldoc perl

This will provide you with a complete list of the many available Perl manpages. The most important of these, besides perldoc perl itself, are listed in Table A-1.

Table A-1. The main Perl manpage documents

Manpage	Description
perltoc	Table of contents for the manpages
perlsyn	Perl syntax
perldata	Data structures
perlop	Operators and precedence
perlrequick, perlretut, ...