[ Team LiB ] |
4.1 IntroductionThe fourth letter in the LAMP acronym stands for Perl (along with the other Ps). Although you don't have to understand any Perl to build a web site, it helps (Python and PHP work too). In many examples that follow throughout this book, we use the basics of Perl extensively. The purpose of this chapter is to familiarize the Perl novice with the basics. If you already know a C-like language, much of this will be familiar. If not, this chapter should introduce you to the concepts we use throughout the rest of the book. If you already know Perl, good for you! But this will be a rehash�feel free to move on. Perl has become a popular all-purpose programming language because of its power and ease of use. Once you have mastered the language rules, you can do a lot with a little. One of the mottoes of Perl is Perl Makes Easy Tasks Easy and Hard Tasks Possible. Another is There's More Than One Way To Do It�TMTOWTDI, pronounced "Tim-Toe-Di." Perl originated as a text processing language.
The name Perl is an uncapitalized acronym for Practical Extraction and Report Language, or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister� TMTOWTDI. As it evolved, Perl grew (some would say mutated) from a text processing language into a powerful, multipurpose object-oriented programming language used to solve all kinds of real-world problems: system administration, network programming, database management, and CGI programming. Perl's syntax is C-like.
We give only a basic overview here; the Camel Book [Wall+ 00] is the bible for Perl. Perl is the big, fat, top-of-the-line Swiss Army knife. We don't talk about all the nifty gadgets, only the major functionality. We can't teach you programming in this short chapter, so this is a high-level introduction. Again, we assume you know the basics of programming: variables, flow constructs (if statements, while loops), functions, reading from and writing to files, and so on. |
[ Team LiB ] |
No comments:
Post a Comment