The first place to turn for help is perl itself. Running perl with the -
w switch and 'use strict' enabled will help you catch many little bugs,
typos, and questionable practices.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
If you know your program will be used only with Perl-5.6 and later
version, then you can use the 'warnings' pragma to turn on warnings
instead of the -w switch (this pragma allows more control over
warnings, see the 'perllexwarn' manpage for further information):
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
The perl distribution also comes with copious amounts of documentation
that you can read via a browser (if the docs are installed in .html
format), the unix 'man' utility, or the supplied 'perldoc' utility. The
3 major pages (documents) you should be familiar with are:
perldoc perl --> the intro perl documentation
perldoc perlfaq --> many frequently asked questions (and answers)
perldoc perlfunc --> documentation on built-in functions
There are quite a few mailing lists you can participate in at various
levels (including lists for beginners, module authors, specific modules
or distributions, and even a 'fun with perl' list). Information can be
found at http://lists.perl.org.
The 'use Perl' site (http://use.perl.org) publishes news and
informative tidbits (along with other features). Perl.com
(http://www.perl.com) publishes articles on various themes and at
various levels. The Perl Journal (now part of SysAdmin magazine) is a
very good print publication (http://www.tpj.com).
Join or start your own local chapter of a 'Perl Mongers' group by
checking out this site http://www.pm.org.
The Perl Monks site is a Web forum for questions, answers, tutorials,
and discussions on Perl related topics (there are quite a few very
knowledgeable individuals there). Perl Monks can be found at
http://www.perlmonks.org.
And, last but certainly not least, do not forget about CPAN
(comprehensive perl archive network). There are loads and loads of free
modules there that you should not ignore. Everything from dealing with
CSV files to networking to graphics manipulation (and a whole lot more)
can be found therein. A few CPAN entry points:
http://www.cpan.org/
http://search.cpan.org/
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/cpan-search.html
I have very much enjoyed writing these (80+) weekly articles, and I
appreciate the numerous comments and suggestions I have received from
many of you (even if I didn't get around to writing on all of the
suggested topics). Thank you and I wish you all the best of luck with
your Perl programming and perhaps I'll run into some of you in the
future.
Best regards,
andrew
__END__
