Part 1: Minimal Perl: for UNIX and Linux Users

Part 1 gives those with at least user-level Unix skills—which includes even the most advanced Unix programmers—a gentle introduction to the use of Minimal Perl’s most essential features.

We’ll start with a humorous allegory about a Traveler from the world of Unix who’s visiting Perlistan, which leads to a discussion of the “less is more” philosophy underlying Minimal Perl. Then in chapter 2 we’ll cover the most essential features of the Minimal Perl dialect, which is a strategically crafted subset of standard Perl designed for easy assimilation by Unix people. In the following chapters, we’ll use those features to develop tiny Perl programs that surpass the limitations of some of the most important Unix commands—grep, sed, awk, and find.

Because they are relevant to a wide range of problem areas, we’ll concentrate on programs that do data validation, file conversion, report generation, and number crunching. For example, we’ll discuss programs that:

• Calculate the growth of an investment over various time periods

• Web-scrape a newspaper’s electronic edition for travel deals

• Scan Unix logfiles for error messages

• Help bad spellers do successful grepping through use of fuzzy matching

Along the way, you’ll acquire an impressive set of new tools to use in your data processing activities. In addition, you’ll learn how to think like a Perl programmer, and how to effectively use some of the most simple—yet powerful—features of the language.