Background, rationale and purpose of Perl

• What is Perl?
• Benefits and Concerns for Perl
• CPAN
• Installing Perl
• Perl Program Concepts
• Simple Perl Programs Explained
• Compiling and Executing Perl Programs
• Documentation with perldoc
• Lab: Writing and testing simple Perl programs

Scalar Data, variables and operators

• Number literals and operators
• String literals and operators
• Automatic conversion
• Working with Scalar Variables
• The use strict Pragma
• Variable Interpolation
• Operator Precedence and Associativity
• AutoIncrement and AutoDecrement
• Input with <STDIN>
• chomp()
• Lab: Writing interactive programs

Formatting and Printing

• Output with print()
• Formatted output with printf()
• Lab: Formatted output using Perl

Control structures

• Blocks
• if condition
• else clause
• nested if conditions
• unless condition
• elsif clause
• Ternary Operator?
• Boolean values
• Logical Operators
• while iteration
• until iteration 
• undef and defined
• for
• last, next and redo
• Labelled Blocks
• Logical Operators
• Short-circuit Operation
• Lab: Writing simple Perl programs using conditions and iterations

Lists and Arrays

• List Concepts
• List Literals
• qw
• foreach and $_
• List assignment
• Array Concepts
• Array Assignment
• Array Element Assignment
• Special Array Indexes
• push() and pop()
• shift() and unshift()
• sort() and reverse()
• Context
• Lab: Writing Perl programs to manipulate lists and arrays

Functions

• Modular Programming
• Function concepts
• Creating a subroutine
• Calling a subroutine
• Subroutine arguments
• Returning a value.
• my vs local
• Variable Length Parameter Lists
• Lab: Developing modular programs in Perl

Hashes

• Hash Concepts
• Assigning values to a Hash
• Accessing a Hash
• keys() and values()
• each() and exists()
• delete()
• Lab: Using Hashes to manage data

Debugging Perl Scripts

• Debugging Concepts
• The Perl Debugger
• Using the Debugging Commands
• Lab: Debugging Perl Programs

Input/Output

• Input/Output Concepts
• Using <STDIN>
• Using <>
• Using @ARGV
• Processing <STDERR>
• Lab:  Perl problems using further input and output

Pattern matching with Regular expressions

• Patterns Concepts
• Metacharacters
• Character Classes
• Quantifiers
• Anchors
• Memory Parentheses
• Precedence
• Matches with m//
• Option modifiers
• Binding Operator =~
• Interpolating into Patterns
• Match Variables
• Matches with s///
• split() and join()
• Lab: Searching/Replacing text using Regular expressions

Files and Directories

• File Organization
• Filehandle Concepts
• Opening files
• warn and die
• Reading and writing files
• File Tests
• Globbing()
• Closing Files
• unlink and rename
• Opening Directories
• Working with Directories
• Closing Directories
• chdir, mkdir, rmdir
• stat() and lstat()
• localtime()
• link and symlink
• chmod, chown, utime
• Lab: Manipulating Files and Directories

Process Management

• system()
• Environment Variables
• Backquotes (``)
• Processes as FileHandles
• fork() and exec()
• Sending and Receiving Signals
• Lab: Working with Processes