Lecture GK-2

Perl (1)

Aims

• To introduce the Perl programming language.

Objectives

After this lecture you will be able to:

• write and execute a simple Perl script;
• use scalar variables in Perl programs, including the default variable $_;
• use loops and conditional statements in Perl programs;
• use simple numeric and string operators in Perl programs;
• use the standard input and output file handles (<STDIN> and <STDOUT>) and file handles for external files;
• access command line arguments from within Perl programs.

Supplementary Material

The lecture handout, featuring some of the lecture slides, is available on-line (one per page, four per page).

Programs from the lecture: /chalmers/users/kemp/MVE360/lecture2/

The article "Scripting: Higher Level Programming for the 21st Century" by John K. Ousterhout (designer/developer of the Tcl scripting languages) contains some interesting opinions on the growth of scripting languages and their relationship to system programming languages like C, C++ and Java.

The value of Perl and Unix pipelines in Bioinformatics is illustrated in the article "How Perl Saved the Human Genome Project" by Lincoln Stein.