Introduction to Perl
- Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) is not a CGI-specific programming language. In fact, it is a powerful language with many applications far beyond the needs of CGI. Thus, as a CGI programmer, your mastery of Perl need only extend initially to a small subset of the Perl universe.
- For the first half of today, we will try to identify the most commonly appearing Perl functions used with CGI applications in order to give the beginner a quick and dirty, but by no means all-inclusive, introduction to Perl.
- If you are a beginner to Perl as well as to CGI, this review should give you the very basic foundation that you will need in order to understand most CGI scripts. Intermediate and advanced Perlites might want to hang around because though the information will be familiar, the discussion will be in terms of CGI that has its own quirks.
- If you would like more than a cheat-sheet, I strongly recommend that you go out and buy "Learning Perl" by Randall Schwartz and "Programming Perl" by Randall Schwartz and Larry Wall that are published by O' Reilly and Associates Inc. Both of these books outline Perl completely and, as such, are invaluable resources for the CGI programmer.
Additional Resources:
Why
Perl
Table of Contents
The First Line of a Perl Script
