Students who can benefit from this course are system administrators and web administrators, although Perl is a language for everyone. The course is taught on the UNIX platform (Solaris Operating Environment), however the material is suitable for any operating system (for example MSDOS, VMS, and so on).

• Use basic UNIX commands such as rm, cp, man, more, mkdir, ps, and chmod (or be able to learn these quickly during the course)
• Create and edit text files in vi or another available text editor
• Exposure to any other programming language (C, C++, BASIC, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Shell...) and shell programming skills (Bourne/Korn) are a large advantage, although not essential

• Write scripts that create and change scalar variables
• Use control structures to branch or loop
• Create and change array variables
• Create and change hash variables
• Read files supplied on the command line, and search the files for specific text patterns
• Execute regular expression tests, and recognize backwards referencing.
• Read and write files and system processes using file handles
• Create, remove, and change directory and file properties
• Create Perl subroutines, packages, and modules and use public modules
• Create real-world administration scripts

Module 1 - The Perl Programming Language

• Determine your version of Perl
• Identify the default directories searched for Perl library files
• Create a command-line script that prints a simple message
• Create a simple script that prints a simple message
• Test a script's syntax without executing the script

Module 2 - Scalars

• Define and describe numeric and string scalar data
• Create string and numeric scalar variables
• Modify scalar variables using operators
• Print scalar values using single and double quotes
• Remove \n from user input using the chomp command
• Calculate a value using scalar operators based on user input

Module 3 - Control Structures

• Print a message using an if statement
• Print a message using an if/else statement
• Print a message using a compound if/elsif/else statement
• Use a for loop to display a list numbers
• Use a foreach loop to perform calculations on a list of numbers
• Use while loops to repeatedly perform logical tests using an if/elsif/else statement
• Print formatted text with a Here document
• Exit from a loop using loop controls and statement modifiers
• Use a switch construct in Perl to print a message

Module 4 - Arrays

• Create an array variable and assign scalar values to the array
• Determine the length of an array using an array operator
• Use array slices to assign new values to an array
• Determine the length of an array using a scalar variable
• Reverse the contents of an array
• Use pop to modify the contents of an array
• Sort an array
• Create an array from a scalar using split
• Process the values passed in the command-line array, @ARGV
• Read the output of a UNIX command into an array

Module 5 - Hashes

• Print a hash using a foreach statement
• Access, add, and delete keys and values from a hash
• Print a hash using a while loop and the each function
• Determine the number of occurrences of a string in an array using a hash
• Determine if a key and value exist in a hash

Module 6 - Basic I/O and Regular Expressions

• Use the <> operator to read a file specified on the command line, line-by-line
• Use the printf command to format the output of the script
• Test for a word or phrase in a file using regular expressions
• Use anchors and character classes in regular expressions
• Use alternation in regular expressions
• Use variable interpolation to define regular expressions
• Substitute one text string for another using regular expressions
• Extract parts of strings using regular expressions

Module 7 - Filehandles and Files

• Use filehandles to open a file
• Use die to display an error message if there is an error accessing a file
• Append data to the end of a file
• Use a filehandle to read the output of a program

Module 8 - Subroutines and Modules

• Create script that uses the strict pragma
• Create subroutines that accept passed parameters and return desired results based on the values passed
• Include a subroutine that uses the my operator to create private variables
• Use a Perl library file in your script
• Use a Perl package in your script
• Create a Perl module and call it from a script

Module 9 - File and Directory Operations

• Use file operators to determine the characteristics of a file
• Display the contents of a directory using chdir and globbing
• Display the contents of a directory using directory handles and readdir
• Rename files
• Create symbolic links to files
• Display all symbolic links in a directory
• Set file permissions for files based on their extensions

Module 10 - Overview of CGI Programming

• Send a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) page to a browser using a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script
• Use a Here document in a CGI script to send an HTML page to a browser
• Read an HTML form using the GET or POST method