SAMS Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours THIRD EDITION

Hour 19. Data Processing

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• How to determine what kind of data you're dealing with

• Basic techniques for breaking down common data types in Perl

• How to parse table data and XML

If you're old enough, the phrase “data processing” probably conjures up images of magazine ads from the 1970s proclaiming that you could “make big money as a Data Processor,” or minicomputers with whirling tape drives from the 1980s.

But that's not really what we're talking about in this hour. This hour is about taking data from its presented form and making it more useful. This takes a few different stages.

First, you have to examine the raw data to see if it can be cut apart, sliced up, stretched, and massaged into the final form that you need. ...