Introduction to perl
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Perl is a widely used general purpose programming language. It was originally developed for text manipulation and is now used for tasks like web development, system administration, and more. Perl runs on many platforms including Windows, Mac OS, and various Unix systems. It features modules for databases, HTML/XML, Unicode support, and more. Over 20,000 additional modules are available through CPAN. Perl is interpreted at runtime and compiles source code to bytecode. It can be run interactively from the command line or within integrated development environments.
Introduction to perl
- 1. INTRODUCTION TO PERL By Sana Mateen 6/15/2016 1
- 2. PERL—PRACTICAL EXTRACTION REPORT LANGUAGE Perl is a programming language developed by Larry Wall, especially designed for text processing. Though Perl is not officially an acronym but many times it is used as it stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. It runs on a variety of platforms, such as Windows, Mac OS, and the various versions of UNIX. Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development(wxperl and perl-tk interfaces), and more. 6/15/2016 2
- 3. WHAT IS PERL? AND PERL FEATURES ? 1. Perl is a stable, cross platform programming language. 2. Though Perl is not officially an acronym but few people used it as Practical Extraction and Report Language. 3. It is used for mission critical projects in the public and private sectors. 4. Perl is an Open Source software, licensed under its Artistic License, or the GNU General Public License (GPL). 5. Perl takes the best features from other languages, such as C, awk, sed, sh, and BASIC, among others. Features: 1. Perls database integration interface DBI supports third-party databases including Oracle, Sybase, Postgres, MySQL and others. 2. Perl works with HTML, XML, and other mark-up languages. 3. Perl supports Unicode. 4. Perl is Y2K compliant. 5. Perl supports both procedural and object-oriented programming. 6. Perl interfaces with external C/C++ libraries through XS or SWIG. 7. Perl is extensible. There are over 20,000 third party modules available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). 6/15/2016 3
- 4. PERL AND THE WEB Perl used to be the most popular web programming language due to its text manipulation capabilities and rapid development cycle. Perl is widely known as " the duct-tape of the Internet". Perl can handle encrypted Web data, including e-commerce transactions. Perl can be embedded into web servers to speed up processing by as much as 2000%. Perl's mod_perl allows the Apache web server to embed a Perl interpreter. Perl's DBI package makes web-database integration easy. 6/15/2016 4
- 5. PERL IS INTERPRETED Perl is an interpreted language, which means that your code can be run as is, without a compilation stage that creates a non portable executable program. Traditional compilers convert programs into machine language. When you run a Perl program, it's first compiled into a byte code, which is then converted ( as the program runs) into machine instructions. So it is not quite the same as shells, or Tcl, which are strictly interpreted without an intermediate representation. It is also not like most versions of C or C++, which are compiled directly into a machine dependent format. 6/15/2016 5
- 6. PERL - ENVIRONMENT SETUP There is a set up of Perl Programming environment online. Before we start writing our Perl programs, let's understand how to setup our Perl environment. Perl is available on a wide variety of platforms − •Unix •Win 9x/NT/2000/ •WinCE •Macintosh (PPC, 68K) •Solaris (x86, SPARC) •OpenVMS •Symbian •And many more... This is more likely that your system will have perl installed on it. Just try giving the following command at the $ prompt − $perl -v If you have perl installed on your machine then you will get a message something as follows − 6/15/2016 6
- 7. Getting Perl Installation The most up-to-date and current source code, binaries, documentation, news, etc. are available at the official website of Perl. Perl Official Website − http://www.perl.org/ Install Perl Perl distribution is available for a wide variety of platforms. You need to download only the binary code applicable for your platform and install Perl. If the binary code for your platform is not available, you need a C compiler to compile the source code manually. Compiling the source code offers more flexibility in terms of choice of features that you require in your installation. Here is a quick overview of installing Perl on various platforms. 1) Unix and Linux Installation Here are the simple steps to install Perl on Unix/Linux machine. Open a Web browser and go to http://www.perl.org/get.html. Follow the link to download zipped source code available for Unix/Linux. 6/15/2016 7
- 8. oDownload perl-5.x.y.tar.gz file and issue the following commands at $ prompt. oNOTE − Here $ is a Unix prompt where you type your command, so make sure you are not typing $ while typing the above mentioned commands. oThis will install Perl in a standard location o/usr/local/bin and oits libraries are installed in /usr/local/lib/perlXX, where XX is the version of Perl that you are using. oIt will take a while to compile the source code after issuing the make command. oOnce installation is done, you can issue perl -v command at $ prompt to check perl installation. If everything is fine, then it will display details of perl . 2) Windows Installation oHere are the steps to install Perl on Windows machine. oFollow the link for the Strawberry Perl installation on Windows http://strawberryperl.com oDownload either 32bit or 64bit version of installation. oRun the downloaded file by double-clicking it in Windows Explorer. This brings up the Perl install wizard, which is really easy to use. Just accept the default settings, wait until the installation is finished, and you're ready to roll! 6/15/2016 8
- 9. RUNNING A PERL These are the different ways to start Perl. (1) Interactive Interpreter You can enter perl and start coding right away in the interactive interpreter by starting it from the command line. You can do this from Unix, DOS, or any other system, which provides you a command-line interpreter or shell window. -e option ------ Runs Perl script sent in as program 6/15/2016 9
- 10. (2) Script from the Command-line A Perl script is a text file which keeps perl code in it and it can be executed at the command line by invoking the interpreter on your application, as in the following (3) Integrated Development Environment You can run Perl from a graphical user interface (GUI) environment as well. All you need is a GUI application on your system that supports Perl. You can download Padre, the Perl IDE. You can also use Eclipse Plugin EPIC - Perl Editor and IDE for Eclipse if you are familiar with Eclipse. 6/15/2016 10