SUMMARY:   This introductory level course presents the basic concepts and capabilities of the Perl program scripting language. More than 130 complete programs are used to illustrate how to use Perl to perform various data processing and system administration tasks. AUDIENCE:   Technical Users, Applications Programmers, and Systems Programmers. PREREQUISITES:   Basic user level knowledge of an operating system such as UNIX or Windows 95. Either Shell Programming, Awk, or C language courses or equivalant experience. DURATION:   3 days including classroom lecture and lab sessions. 4 days without Shell Programming, Awk, or C language experience. OBJECTIVES:   Specify the features of and uses of Perl Describe and use literals and variables Use Perl arrays and associative memory Describe and use programming control structures List and use operators Format and print program output Perform basic file manipulation Access and manipulate directory information Create and use functions Describe and use special regular expression characters Use Perl to perform UNIX like operations COURSE CONTENT:   INTRODUCTION What is Perl Structure of Perl Scripts LITERAL AND VARIABLES Scalar Values Numeric Values String Values Arrays Lists Associative Arrays Common Array Operations CONTROL STRUCTURES & RELATED OPERATORS Program Control Statements if unless while until for foreach last next redo Labeled Blocks Expression Modifiers if unless while until FORMATTING AND PRINTING print Statement printf Statement FILE PROCESSING Opening/Closing Files Reading/Writing to Files Testing Files Processing Command Line Arguments DIRECTORY PROCESSING Opening/Closing Directories Globbing Linking FUNCTIONS Creating Functions Local Variables REGULAR EXPRESSIONS Special Metacharacters Matching Operators Substitute Operators UNIX RELATED OPERATORS Time Related Operations System Backquotes Environment File Handlers