PERL HELP, PERL PROGRAMMING, PERL CODE, PERL TUTORIALS, PERL DEVELOPMENT

In this final part of a three part series covering subroutines in Perl, we will discuss returns and return values, as well as prototypes. This article is excerpted from chapter nine of the book Perl Best Practices, written by Damian Conway (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596001738). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

In this second part of a three-part series covering subroutines in Perl, you will learn about missing arguments, default argument values, and more. It is excerpted from chapter nine of the book Perl Best Practices, written by Damian Conway (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596001738). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

Subroutines let programmers extend the Perl language...at least in theory. There are certain pitfalls for which you need to be alert. This article, the first of three parts, will warn you about those pitfalls and help you avoid them. It is excerpted from chapter nine of the book Perl Best Practices, written by Damian Conway (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596001738). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

In this article, you will learn how to find out useful information about files in Perl. It is excerpted from chapter 11 of the book Learning Perl, Fourth Edition, written by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix and brian d foy (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596101058). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

This article covers some API methods of the XML::XSLT module and shows you how to create a new XML file without needing to do any Perl programming. You will also learn how to transform a dynamically generated XML data structure.

Perl may not be as well known as some of the other languages, but it boasts a powerful library of packages and modules that everyone can use to work with XML. In this article, Harish Kamath explains how to get started with the "XML::XSLT" package that allows you to transform XML documents by using XSLT style sheets using Perl.

CVS backs up, distributes, and simplifies your configuration files. In this article, Teodor Zlatanov discusses how to save time, energy and frustration when working with Linux configuration files by using your CVS tree. (This introductory-level article was first published by IBM developerWorks, June 10, 2004, at http://www.ibm.com/developerWorks).

See how the Template Toolkit simplifies the process of building and managing web site content. Examples illustrate the use of template variables and template components that allow web content to be constructed in a modular fashion. Other topics include managing the site structure, generating menus and other navigation components, and defining and using complex data. (From Perl Template Toolkit, Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross, and Andy Wardley, O'Reilly Media, 2004, ISBN: 0596004761.)

This chapter compares the Template Toolkit to other templating systems such as HTML::Mason and HTML::Template, describes how to install it, then shows you what templates look like and how to process them. (From the book, Perl Template Toolkit, O'Reilly Media, ISBN: 0596004761, by Darren Chamberlain, Dave Cross and Andy Wardley.)

In this article, Rahul shows us how to create a client-server socket program in Perl and then demonstrates it by pinging the server.

Perl hashes are extremely useful data structures that allow us to associate one piece of data to another. In this article, Jasmine will review hashes and introduce some of their more advanced uses.

Over the course of the next few pages, I will introduce you to one of the more interesting modules in the Perl pantheon, the Getopt::Long.pm module. This module provides a simple API to parse options passed to your Perl scripts at the command line and convert them into Perl scalars or arrays.

Over the course of this tutorial, I'll be examining Perl's arrays in detail, explaining what they are, how they work, and how you can use them to get things done faster, better and cheaper. In addition to providing a gentle introduction to Perl arrays and hashes in general, this article will also offer you a broad overview of Perl's array manipulation functions, providing you with a handy reference that should help you write more efficient code.

Perl comes with a whole bunch of cryptically-named built-invariables, which clever Perl programmers exploit to reduce the number oflines of code in their scripts. This article examines some of the morecommonly-used special variable in Perl, with examples and illustrations ofhow they may be used.

One of Perl's better-kept secrets is its built-in debugger, a powerful utility that allows developers to rapidly track down errors in their Perl scripts. This article introduces you to the Perl debugger, explaining how to use it to step through scripts, set breakpoints, inspect variables and objects, watch expressions and perform stack traces.