Advanced Perl
Suggestions for the Instructor
Presentation
- Have your students open and bookmark the course
in their browsers.
- As always, do your housekeeping first.
- Point out the resources page -- lots
of valuable hyperlinks. Pick a couple of favorites and have your students
bookmark them.
- If the classroom machines lack Perl interpreters, this is the right time
to download and install them. Follow the first link on the
resources page.
Have them accept all the defaults when they run the install program.
- After installation, have them start a new DOS window
and type perl -v in it to make sure their Perl
interpreter and registry settings are healthy.
- If they need other things (e.g. a text editor), point them to the
setup instructions.
- Next, have your students fetch the
tarball
of source files
and unpack it with
tar -xf (on Unix) or
winzip (on Win32).
- We suggest doing this in the
tmp
directory (on Unix)
or on the desktop (on Win32),
for ease of access and after-class cleanup.
- Here's a cool shortcut: to cd to the source code folder,
drag-and-drop it into the DOS window.
If you must cd by hand, its pathname is
C:\winnt\profiles\[userID]\desktop\perladv.
- Point out the data sub-directory
containing the data files they'll use for the labs.
- Also point out that the lines of code in the source
files that the students will need to edit are marked
with ##. Show them, for example,
refs.pl.
- Show them how to capture a copy of the source code,
though this shouldn't actually be necessary if they've
downloaded the tarball. To capture the source, they simply
choose File -> Save As in their browser, and then rename
the saved file from .txt to .pl.
- Next, proceed with Chapter 1, etc.
Chapter Timings
| Chapter | Start | End | Duration
|
|---|
| Houskeeping | 8:30 am | 9:00 am | 0.5 hr
|
| 1 | 9:00 am | 10:30 am | 1.5 hr
|
| Break | 10:30 am | 10:45 am | 0.25 hr
|
| 2 | 10:45 am | 11:00 am | 0.25 hr
|
| 3 | 11:00 am | 12:00 pm | 1.0 hr
|
| Lunch | 12:00 pm | 1:00 pm | 1.0 hr
|
| 4 | 1:00 pm | 2:30 pm | 1.5 hr
|
| Break | 2:30 pm | 2:45 pm | 0.25 hr
|
| 5 | 2:45 pm | 3:45 pm | 1.0 hr
|
| 6 | 3:45 pm | 4:30 pm | 0.75 hr
|
| Conclusion | 4:30 pm | 5:00 pm | 0.5 hr
|
Chapter Notes
- Chapter 2: Skip all but:
-
my
and
local
-
the Employee::PartTime
module -- you'll need it for the lab in
the next chapter
The rest of the chapter is for people
who plan to write modules -- rarely done.
Much more valuable (point this out) is knowing how
to use modules, which is covered in depth later.
- Chapter 3: Point out that though
require
and
use
are both shown,
require
is rarely used anymore.
require
is included in the course only because
your students are likely to ask about it.
- Chapter 4: Avoid the temptation to
discuss Tk in great detail. It's lots
of fun and a valuable module, but it's
in the course only as an example of how
to get started using a module from CPAN.
Focus carefully when you present this
chapter -- on the general procedures of
using modules, not the specifics of Tk.
You just don't have time to do justice
to Tk itself, nor is that the point of
the course.
If You're Running Ahead
Take advantage of the Extra-4-Experts labs sprinkled throughout
the text to give students additional challenges.
