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Learning Perl (Introduction)
Randal Schwarz
Abstract
This course is based on Randal and Tom's popular O'Reilly Nutshell book, Learning Perl. The course presumes no prior knowledge of Perl, and exposes the course participants to the most important parts of Perl - those items that are needed to accomplish many common tasks, and to lay the groundwork for more advanced study on an as-needed basis.
This course is not for non-programmers. Participants are expected to understand fundamental programming concepts - for example, "What is a subroutine? What is an array?" - and be able to edit text files. A knowledge of Unix shell scripting and/or C programming is also very helpful, but not necessary.
Biography
Randal L. Schwartz is a renowned expert on the Perl programming language (the lifeblood of the Internet), having contributed to a dozen top-selling books on the subject, and over 200 magazine articles. Schwartz runs a Perl training and consulting company (Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc of Portland, Oregon), and is a highly sought-after speaker for his masterful stage combination of technical skill, comedic timing, and crowd rapport. Schwartz is also infamous amongst the System Administration community for his arguable 1995 criminal conviction while performing activities for the Intel Corporation, and publicly advocates for appropriate computer crime laws. His presentation about the landmark case (titled "Just Another Convicted Perl Hacker") has inspired action for computer professionals and lobbyists at computer conferences all over the world. And he's a pretty good Karaoke singer, winning contests regularly.
Books authored/coauthored:
- Programming Perl (multiple editions)
- Learning Perl (multiple editions)
- Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
- Learning Perl Objects References and Modules (multiple editions)
- Effective Perl Programming: Writing Better Programs with Perl
- Object Oriented Perl
- Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom