Perl is a general purpose programming language that is popular for working with files, web programming, and systems administration. This workshop is intended for people who have little or no programming experience. It quickly covers basic programming concepts, Perl in a Unix environment, and Perl syntax. It then provides guided exercises involving data structures, flow control, and read-only file access. Participants will build a command line price check program in the course of the workshop.

Note: This workshop works in a Unix environment, but because Perl is available for most all modern operating systems, nearly everything covered in this workshop works equally well in any other operating system.

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Participants will:

• learn basic Perl syntax
• capture user input
• use scalars, arrays and associative arrays
• control flow with conditionals and loops
• access data from an external file

The following workshops are suggested prerequisites to this workshop:

• Unix: The Basics

Participants should already be able to:

• transfer files using sFTP
• manage files, directories and permissions in a Unix environment
• debug code or markup with a text editor