Programming learning using Perl

DOI10.1007/978-3-642-56045-3MaRDI QIDQ2778925zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 25 March 2002

Published in Xpert.press (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56045-3

Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to computer science (68-01) Theory of programming languages (68N15) Other programming paradigms (object-oriented, sequential, concurrent, automatic, etc.) (68N19)

Review text

The book is an introduction into classic procedural programming. It addresses persons with little or no programming experience. The Perl programming language only is the vehicle to transport the concepts of procedural programming. Such a usage of this language did surprise me and has awakened my curiosity. Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) is a scripting language which originates in the Unix world. It is wide spread, especially in the context of Web applications, and available today on nearly all operating systems. Like almost every scripting language Perl is weakly typed (it only knows a few data types) and to each syntactic rule there are a lot of alternative ways to formulate the expressions. Therefore scripting languages are little suited to bring close to beginners the basics of programming. Many years ago Pascal has been developed to avoid exactly these difficulties. But sometimes there is no chance to decide which language is to be used. In such a situation the author found himself, when he got the order to give a Perl introduction into procedural programming for beginners. The book reflects his didactic concept. I think that he excellently has been successful in transforming the concepts of procedural programming into Perl. The first chapter begins with the presentation of the essential components of computer systems, describes the binary system for numbers and characters and deals with programming languages in general and with the basic tools which are used to develop programs. The second chapter introduces practical programming and describes the basic elements of the Perl language. Further chapters deepen the material in a variety of ways. The programming examples are instructive and partially pretentious. Exercises supplement the examples and deepen them. The book deals with the entire spectrum of procedural programming. There also are paragraphs on debugging, on working with program libraries, on the documentation of the Perl language and on the installation of a Perl system. The book is a systematic introduction into procedural programming, and it is a well done introduction into Perl, too. One chapter gives source code solutions to selected exercises, so the book also is suitable for private studies.

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