Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes

By Sam Hughes
Perl is a dynamic, dynamically-typed, high-level, scripting (interpreted) language most comparable with PHP and Python. Perl's syntax owes a lot to ancient shell scripting tools, and it is famed for its overuse of confusing symbols, the majority of which are impossible to Google for. Perl's shell scripting heritage makes it great for writing glue code: scripts which link together other scripts and programs. Perl is ideally suited for processing text data and producing more text data. Perl is widespread, popular, highly portable and well-supported. Perl was designed with the philosophy "There's More Than One Way To Do It" (TMTOWTDI) (contrast with Python, where "there should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it"). Perl has horrors, but also some great redeeming features. In this respect it is like every other programming language ever created.

Preliminary notes
This document is aimed at people who - like me - learn new programming languages most quickly by "axiom and example", and who dislike the official Perl documentation at http://perl.org/ for being intensely technical and giving far too much space to very unusual edge cases. This document is intended to be as short as possible, but no shorter. The following can be said of almost every declarative statement in this document: "that's not, strictly speaking, true; the situation is actually a lot more complicated". I've deliberately omitted or neglected to bother to research the "full truth" of the matter for the same reason that there's no point in starting off a Year 7 physics student with the Einstein field equations. If you see a serious lie, point it out, but I reserve the right to preserve certain critical lies-to-children. Throughout this document I'm using example print statements to output data but not explicitly appending line breaks. This is done to prevent me from going crazy and to give greater attention to the actual string being printed in each case, which is invariably more important. In many examples, this results in alotofwordsallsmusheduptogetherononeline if the code is run in reality. Try to ignore this. Or, in your head or in practice, set $\ (also known as $OUTPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR) to "\n", which adds the line breaks automatically. Perl docs all have short, memorable names, such as perlsyn which explains Perl syntax, perlop (operators/precedence), perlfunc (built-in functions) et cetera. perlvar is the most important of these, because this is where you can look up un-Googlable variable names like $_, $" and $|.

Hello world
A Perl script is a text file with the extension .pl. Here's the text of helloworld.pl:
use strict; use warnings; print "Hello world";

Perl has no explicit compilation step (there is a "compilation" step, but it is performed automatically before execution and no compiled binary is generated). Perl scripts are interpreted by the Perl interpreter, perl or perl.exe:
perl helloworld.pl [arg0 [arg1 [arg2 ...]]]

A few immediate notes. Perl's syntax is highly permissive and it will allow you to do things which result in ambiguous-looking statements with unpredictable behaviour. There's no point in me explaining what these

1 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

behaviours are, because you want to avoid them. The way to avoid them is to put use strict; use warnings; at the very top of every Perl script or module that you create. Statements of the form use <whatever> are pragmas. A pragma is a signal to the Perl compiler, and changes the way in which the initial syntactic validation is performed. These lines take effect at compile time, and have no effect when the interpreter encounters them at run time. The hash symbol # begins a comment. A comment lasts until the end of the line. Perl has no block comment syntax.

Variables
Perl variables come in three types: scalars, arrays and hashes. Each type has its own sigil: $, @ and % respectively.

Scalar variables
A scalar variable can contain: (corresponds to None in Python, null in PHP) a number (Perl does not distinguish between an integer and a float) a string a reference to any other variable.
undef my $undef = undef; print $undef; # error # implicit undef: my $undef2; print $undef2; # exactly the same error my $num = 4040.5; print $num; # "4040.5" my $string = "world"; print $string; # "world"

String concatenation using the . operator (same as PHP):

print "Hello ".$string; # "Hello world"

String concatenation by passing multiple arguments to print:

print "Hello ", $string; # "Hello world"

It is impossible to determine whether a scalar contains a "number" or a "string". More precisely, it is irrelevant. Perl is weakly typed in this respect. Whether a scalar behaves like a number or a string depends on the operator with which it is used. When used as a number, a scalar will function as a number. When used as a string, a scalar will function as a string:
my $str1 = "4G"; my $str2 = "4H"; print print print print $str1 $str1 $str1 $str1 . + eq == $str2; $str2; $str2; $str2; # # # # "4G4H" "8" with two warnings "" (empty string, i.e. false) "1" with NO WARNING!

The lesson is to always using the correct operator in the correct situation. There are separate operators for comparing scalars as numbers and comparing scalars as strings:
# Numerical operators: <, >, <=, >=, ==, !=, <=> # String operators: lt, gt, le, ge, eq, ne, cmp

Perl has no boolean data type. A scalar in an if statement evaluates to boolean "false" if and only if it is one of the following:
undef

number 0 string "" string "0".

2 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

The Perl documentation repeatedly claims that functions return "true" or "false" values in certain situations. In practice, when a function is claimed to return "true" it usually returns 1, and when it is claimed to return false it usually returns the empty string, "".

Array variables
An array variable is a list of scalars indexed by integers beginning at 0. In Python this is known as a list, and in PHP this is known as an array.
my @list = ( "print", "these", "strings", "out", "for", "me", # trailing comma is okay );

You have to use a dollar sign to access a value from an array, because the value being retrieved is not an array but a scalar:
print print print print print print print $list[0]; $list[1]; $list[2]; $list[3]; $list[4]; $list[5]; $list[6]; # # # # # # # "print" "these" "strings" "out" "for" "me" error

You can use negative indices to retrieve entries starting from the end and working backwards:
print print print print print print print $list[-1]; $list[-2]; $list[-3]; $list[-4]; $list[-5]; $list[-6]; $list[-7]; # # # # # # # "me" "for" "out" "strings" "these" "print" error

There is no collision between a scalar $list and an array @list containing an entry $list[0]. There may, however, be reader confusion, so avoid this. To get an array's length:
print "This list has ", (scalar @list), "elements"; # "This list has 6 elements" print "The last populated index is ", $#list; # "The last populated index is 5"

String concatenation using the . operator:

print $list[0].$list[1].$list[2]; # "printthesestrings"

String concatenation by passing multiple arguments to print:

print @list; # "printthesestringsoutforme"

The arguments with which the original Perl script was invoked are stored in the built-in array variable @ARGV. Variables can be interpolated into strings:
print "Hello $string"; # "Hello world" print "@list"; # "print these strings out for me"

Caution. One day you will put somebody's email address inside a string, "jeff@gmail.com". This will cause Perl to look for an array variable called @gmail to interpolate into the string, and not find it, resulting in a runtime error. Interpolation can be prevented in two ways: by backslash-escaping the sigil, or by using single quotes instead of double quotes.
print "Hello \$string"; # "Hello $string" print 'Hello $string'; # "Hello $string" print "\@list"; # "@list"

3 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

print '@list';

# "@list"

Hash variables
A hash variable is a list of scalars indexed by strings. In Python this is known as a dictionary, and in PHP it is known as an array.
my %scientists = ( "Newton" => "Isaac", "Einstein" => "Albert", "Darwin" => "Charles", );

Notice how similar this declaration is to an array declaration. In fact, the double arrow symbol => is called a "fat comma", because it is just a synonym for the comma separator. A hash is merely a list with an even number of elements, where the even-numbered elements (0, 2, ...) are all considered as strings. Once again, you have to use a dollar sign to access a value from a hash, because the value being retrieved is not a hash but a scalar:
print print print print $scientists{"Newton"}; $scientists{"Einstein"}; $scientists{"Darwin"}; $scientists{"Dyson"}; # # # # "Isaac" "Albert" "Charles" runtime error - key not set

You can convert a hash straight to an array with twice as many entries, alternating between key and value (and the reverse is equally easy):
my @scientists = %scientists;

However, unlike an array, the keys of a hash have no underlying order. They will be returned in whatever order is more efficient. So, notice the rearranged order but preserved pairs in the resulting array:
print @scientists; # something like "EinsteinAlbertDarwinCharlesNewtonIsaac"

To recap, you have to use square brackets to retrieve a value from an array, but you have to use braces to retrieve a value from a hash. The square bracket is effectively a numerical operator and the brace is effectively a string operator. The fact that the index supplied is a number or a string is of absolutely no significance:
my $data = "orange"; my @data = ("purple"); my %data = ( "0" => "blue"); print print print print print $data; $data[0]; $data["0"]; $data{0}; $data{"0"}; # # # # # "orange" "purple" "purple" "blue" "blue"

Arrays and hashes are collectively known as lists.

References and nested data structures

Arrays and hashes CANNOT contain other arrays or hashes as elements. They can only contain scalars. Nested lists resolve into a single long list:
print ("We", ("All" => "Live") => "In" => "A", ("Yellow", ("Submarine"))); # "WeAllLiveInAYellowSubmarine"

However, a scalar variable may contain a reference to any variable, including an array variable or a hash variable. This is how more complicated data structures are created in Perl. A reference is created using a backslash.
my $colour = "Indigo"; my $scalarRef = \$colour;

Any time you would use the name of a variable, you can instead just put some braces in, and, within the braces, put a reference to a variable instead.

4 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

print $colour; # "Indigo" print $scalarRef; # e.g. "SCALAR(0x182c180)" print ${ $scalarRef }; # "Indigo"

As long as the result is not ambiguous, you can omit the braces too (I prefer to avoid this as it can lead to ambiguity):
print $$scalarRef; # "Indigo"

Hence:
my %owner1 = ( "name" => "Santa Claus", "DOB" => "1882-12-25", ); my %owner2 = ( "name" => "Mickey Mouse", "DOB" => "1928-11-18", ); my @owners = ( \%owner1, \%owner2 ); my %account = ( "number" => "12345678", "opened" => "2000-01-01", "owners" => \@owners, ); print print print print print "Account #", $account{"number"}, "\n"; "Opened on ", $account{"opened"}, "\n"; "Joint owners:\n"; "\t", $account{"owners"}[0]{"name"}, " (born ", $account{"owners"}[0]{"DOB"}, ")\n"; "\t", $account{"owners"}[1]{"name"}, " (born ", $account{"owners"}[1]{"DOB"}, ")\n";

That first construction is quite laborious. It is also possible to declare anonymous arrays and hashes using different symbols. Use square brackets for an anonymous array and braces for an anonymous hash. (Yes, the fact that you have to use different symbols is irritating.)
my %account2 = ( "number" => "31415926", "opened" => "3000-01-01", # Square brackets denote an anonymous array "owners" => [ # Braces denote an anonymous hash { "name" => "Philip Fry", "DOB" => "1974-08-06", }, { "name" => "Hubert Farnsworth", "DOB" => "2841-04-09", }, ], );

And here's another way to print that data out.

print "Account #", $account2{"number"}, "\n"; print "Opened on ", $account2{"opened"}, "\n"; print "Joint owners:\n"; # $account2{"owners"} is a reference to an array, which means we can wrap it in # braces and use it as an array: foreach my $owner ( @{ $account2{"owners"} } ) { # Likewise, $owner is a reference to a hash, which means we can wrap it in # braces and use it like a hash: print "\t", ${ $owner }{"name"}, " (born ", ${ $owner }{"DOB"}, ")\n"; }

5 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

How to shoot yourself in the foot with references to arrays and hashes
This array has five elements:
my @array1 = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); print @array1; # "12345"

This array has one element (which happens to be a reference to an anonymous, five-element array):
my @array2 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; print @array2; # e.g. "ARRAY(0x182c180)"

This scalar is a reference to an anonymous, five-element array:

my $array3 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; print @{ $array3 }; # "12345" print @$array3; # "12345"

Some syntactic sugar

The arrow shortcut operator -> is much quicker and more readable than using tedious braces all the time to reference things. You will see people accessing hashes through references very frequently, so try to get used to it.
my @colours = ("Red", "Orange", "Yellow", "Green", "Blue"); my $arrayref = \@colours; print $colours[0]; # direct array access print ${ $arrayref }[0]; # use the reference to get to the array print $arrayref->[0]; # exactly the same thing my %atomicWeights = ("Hydrogen" => 1.008, "Helium" => 4.003, "Manganese" => 54.94); my $hashref = \%atomicWeights; print $atomicWeights{"Helium"}; # direct hash access print ${ $hashref }{"Helium"}; # use a reference to get to the hash print $hashref->{"Helium"}; # exactly the same thing - this is very common

Flow control
if

... elsif ... else ...

No surprises here, other than the spelling of elsif:

my $word = "antidisestablishmentarianism"; my $strlen = length $word; if($strlen >= print } elsif(10 <= print } else { print } 15) { "'", $word, "' is a very long word"; $strlen && $strlen < 15) { "'", $word, "' is a medium-length word"; "'", $word, "' is a a short word";

Perl provides a shorter "statement if condition" syntax which is highly recommended:

print "'", $word, "' is actually enormous" if $strlen >= 20;

unless

... else ...

my $temperature = 20; unless($temperature > 30) { print $temperature, " degrees Celsius is not very hot"; } else { print $temperature, " degrees Celsius is actually pretty hot"; } unless

blocks are generally best avoided like the plague because they are very confusing. An "unless [... else]"

6 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

block can be trivially refactored into an "if [... else]" block by negating the condition [or by keeping the condition and swapping the blocks]. Mercifully, there is no elsunless keyword. This, by comparison, is highly recommended because it is so easy to read:
die "Oh no it's too cold" unless $temperature > 15;

Ternary operator
The ternary operator ?: allows simple if statements to be embedded in a statement. The canonical use for this is singular/plural forms:
my $gain = 48; print "You gained ", $gain, " ", ($gain == 1 ? "experience point" : "experience points"), "!";

Aside: singulars and plurals are best spelled out in full in both cases. Don't do something clever like the following, because anybody searching the codebase to replace the words "tooth" or "teeth" will never find this line:
my $lost = 1; print "You lost ", $lost, " t", ($lost == 1 ? "oo" : "ee"), "th!";

Ternary operators can be nested. This is not recommended.

Array iteration
There's More Than One Way To Do It. Basic C-style for loops are available, but these are obtuse and old-fashioned and should be avoided. Notice how we have to put a my in front of our iterator $i, in order to declare it:
for(my $i = 0; $i < scalar @array; $i++) { print $i, ": ", $array[$i]; }

Native iteration over an array is much nicer. Note: unlike PHP, the for and foreach keywords are synonyms. Just use whatever looks most readable:
foreach my $string ( @array ) { print $string; }

If you do need the indices, the range operator .. creates an anonymous array of integers:
foreach my $i ( 0 .. $#array ) { print $i, ": ", $array[$i]; }

If you don't provide an explicit iterator, Perl uses a default iterator, $_. $_ is the first and friendliest of the built-in variables, and is usually pronounced "it":
foreach ( @array ) { print $_; }

If you only wish to put a single statement inside your loop, you can use the super-short loop syntax:
print $_ foreach @array;

Perl also provides while loops but those are coming up in a second.

Hash iteration
You can't iterate over a hash. However, you can iterate over its keys. Use the keys built-in function to retrieve an array containing all the keys of a hash. Then use the foreach approach that we used for arrays:
foreach my $key (keys %scientists) { print $key, ": ", $scientists{$key}; }

7 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

Since a hash has no underlying order, the keys may be returned in any order. Use the sort built-in function to sort the array of keys alphabetically beforehand:
foreach my $key (sort keys %scientists) { print $key, ": ", $scientists{$key}; }

There is also a special each built-in function which retrieves key/value pairs one at a time. Every time each is called, it returns an array containing two values, until the end of the array is reached, when a false value is returned. We assign the values of two scalars to the values of the array, simultaneously:
while( my ($key, $value) = each %scientists ) { print $key, ": ", $value; }

Quick aside on built-in variables

The complete list of built-in variables is perlvar. Perl has several dozen built-in variables. Some have useful names, such as @ARGV which contains the list of arguments with which the current Perl script was invoked, and %ENV which contains environment variables. Others are common enough that they can be referenced freely: the only two that I'd pick are the default iterator $_ and the subroutine argument list @_, the latter of which you will encounter very shortly. The remainder are mostly unmemorable punctuation names such as $", $, and $!. Using such variables without explanation is discouraged. You have some options: Comments.
use English.

This call creates human-readable aliases for all built-in variables. For example, $", $, and $! can be used as $LIST_SEPARATOR, $OUTPUT_FIELD_SEPARATOR and $OS_ERROR respectively.

Loop control
next

continue

and last can be used to control the progress of a loop. In most programming languages these are known as and break respectively. We can also optionally provide a label for any loop. By convention, labels are listed in ALLCAPITALS. Having labelled the loop, next and last may target that label. This example strips all the fictional animals out of a listing:
my @input = ( "dragon", "camel", "cow", "pangolin", "unicorn", "pig", "sheep", "donkey", "pig", "basilisk", "monkey", "jellyfish", "squid", "crab", "dragon", ); my @fictional = ("basilisk", "dragon", "unicorn"); INPUT: foreach my $input ( @input ) { # See if this input animal is fictional foreach my $fictional ( @fictional ) { # It is? if($input eq $fictional) { # Then jump to the next input animal next INPUT; } } # Animal is not fictional, put it in the output print $input; }

Array functions
In-place array modification

8 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

We'll use @stack to demonstrate these:

my @stack = ("Fred", "Eileen", "Denise", "Charlie"); print @stack; # "FredEileenDeniseCharlie" pop

extracts and returns the final element of the array. This can be thought of as the top of the stack:
print pop @stack; # "Charlie" print @stack; # "FredEileenDenise"

push

appends extra elements to the end of the array:

push @stack, "Bob", "Alice"; print @stack; # "FredEileenDeniseBobAlice" shift

extracts and returns the first element of the array:

print shift @stack; # "Fred" print @stack; # "EileenDeniseBobAlice" unshift

inserts new elements at the beginning of the array:

unshift @stack, "Hank", "Grace"; print @stack; # "HankGraceEileenDeniseBobAlice" pop, push, shift

and unshift are special cases of splice. splice removes and returns an array slice, replacing it with a different array slice:
print splice(@stack, 1, 4, "<<<", ">>>"); # "GraceEileenDeniseBob" print @stack; # "Hank<<<>>>Alice"

Creating new arrays from old

Perl provides the following functions which act on arrays to create other arrays. grep and map in particular can be combined to form list comprehensions, an exceptionally powerful feature conspicuously absent from many other programming languages. The join function concatenates many strings into one:
my @elements = ("Antimony", "Arsenic", "Aluminum", "Selenium"); print @elements; # "AntimonyArsenicAluminumSelenium" print "@elements"; # "Antimony Arsenic Aluminum Selenium" print join(", ", @elements); # "Antimony, Arsenic, Aluminum, Selenium"

The reverse function returns an array in reverse order:

my @numbers = ("one", "two", "three"); print reverse(@numbers); # "threetwoone"

By default, the sort function returns the input array, sorted into alphabetical order:
my @elevations = (19, 1, 2, 100, 3, 98, 100, 1056); print join ", ", sort @elevations; # "1, 100, 100, 1056, 19, 2, 3, 98"

However, it is also possible to supply a block of code. Sorting is always performed using a series of comparisons between elements. So, this block of code receives $a and $b as inputs and should return -1 if $a is "less than" $b, 0 if they are "equal" or 1 if $a is "greater than" $b. The cmp built-in function does exactly this:
print join ", ", sort { return $a cmp $b; } @elevations; # "1, 100, 100, 1056, 19, 2, 3, 98"

and $b are always scalars, but they can be references to quite complex objects which are difficult to compare. If you need more space for the comparison, you can create a separate subroutine and provide its name instead. (The <=> built-in function is like cmp for numbers, returning -1, 0 or 1 depending on the numerical order of its arguments.)
$a sub comparator { # ...lots of calculations...

9 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

return $a <=> $b; } print join ", ", sort comparator @elevations; # "1, 2, 3, 19, 98, 100, 100, 1056"

Notice how the subroutine and block are never explicitly provided with $a and $b. $a and $b are, in fact, global variables which are populated with a pair of values to be compared each time. The grep function takes an array as input and returns a filtered array as output. The second argument, a regular expression or a block of code, is evaluated for each scalar in the input array. If a successful match is found or a boolean true value is returned, the scalar is put into the output array, otherwise not.
my @capitals = ("Baton Rouge", "Indianapolis", "Columbus", "Montgomery", "Helena", "Denver", "Boise"); print join ", ", grep m/^[B-H]/, @capitals; # "Baton Rouge, Columbus, Helena, Denver, Boise" print join ", ", grep { length $_ == 6 } @capitals; # "Helena, Denver"

NOTE: unlike sort, a block for grep is NOT a miniature anonymous subroutine and you do NOT call return inside it! Obviously, the length of the resulting array is the number of successful matches, which means you can use grep to check whether an array contains an element:
print scalar grep { $_ eq "Columbus" } @capitals; # "1"

The map function takes an array as input and applies an operation to every element in this array. It then constructs a new array out of the results. Again, unlike sort, and like grep, this block is NOT a small anonymous subroutine and you do NOT call return inside it:
print join ", ", map { uc $_ } @capitals; # "BATON ROUGE, INDIANAPOLIS, COLUMBUS, " etc.

File tests
The function -e is a built-in function which tests whether the named file exists.
print "what" unless -e "/usr/bin/perl";

The function -d is a built-in function which tests whether the named file is a directory. The function -f is a built-in function which tests whether the named file is a plain file. These are just three of a large class of functions of the form -X where X is some lower- or upper-case letter. These functions are called file tests. Note the leading minus sign. In a Google query, the minus sign indicates to exclude results containing this search term. This makes file tests hard to Google for! Just search for "perl file test" instead.

Built-in functions
By now you have seen at least a dozen built-in functions. Built-in functions are one of Perl's greatest strengths. They are numerous are very useful are extensively documented (in "perlfunc") vary greatly in syntax, so check the documentation sometimes accept entire blocks of code as arguments sometimes don't require commas between arguments sometimes will consume an arbitrary number of comma-separated arguments and sometimes will not generally don't require brackets around their arguments except in ambiguous circumstances The best advice regarding built-in functions is to use them. If you are carrying out a task which feels like it's low-level and common enough that it's been done many times before, the chances are that it has.

10 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

Warning! Many built-in functions can be called with no arguments, causing them to operate on $_ instead. Hopefully this will help you understand formations like:
print foreach @array; next unless -e;

I dislike this formation because it can lead to problems when refactoring.

User-defined subroutines
Subroutines are declared using the sub keyword. In contrast with built-in functions, user-defined subroutines always accept the same input: an array of scalars. That array may of course have a single element, or be empty. A single scalar is taken as an array with a single element. A hash with N elements is taken as an array with 2N elements. Although the brackets are optional, subroutines should always be invoked using brackets, even when called with no arguments. This makes it clear that a subroutine call is happening. Once you're inside a subroutine, the arguments are available using the built-in array variable @_.

Unpacking arguments
There is more than one way to unpack these arguments, but some are superior to others. The example subroutine leftPad below pads a string out to the required length using the supplied pad character. (The x function concatenates multiple copies of the same string in a row.) (Note: for brevity, these subroutines all lack some elementary error checking, e.g. ensuring the pad character is only 1 character, checking that the width is greater than or equal to length of existing string, checking that all needed arguments were passed at all.)
leftPad

is typically invoked as follows:

print leftPad("hello", 10, "+"); # "+++++hello"

1. Some people don't unpack the arguments at all and use @_ "live". This is unreadable and discouraged:
sub leftPad { my $newString = ($_[2] x ($_[1] - length $_[0])) . $_[0]; return $newString; }

2. Unpacking @_ is only slightly less strongly discouraged:

sub leftPad { my $oldString = $_[0]; my $width = $_[1]; my $padChar = $_[2]; my $newString = ($padChar x ($width - length $oldString)) . $oldString; return $newString; }

3. Unpacking @_ by removing data from it using shift is highly recommended for up to 4 arguments:
sub leftPad { my $oldString = shift @_; my $width = shift @_; my $padChar = shift @_; my $newString = ($padChar x ($width - length $oldString)) . $oldString; return $newString; }

If no array is provided to the shift function, then it operates on @_ implicitly. This approach is seen very commonly:
sub leftPad { my $oldString = shift; my $width = shift; my $padChar = shift; my $newString = ($padChar x ($width - length $oldString)) . $oldString; return $newString;

11 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

Beyond 4 arguments it becomes hard to keep track of what is being assigned where. 4. You can unpack @_ all in one go using multiple simultaneous scalar assignment. Again, this is okay for up to 4 arguments:
sub leftPad { my ($oldString, $width, $padChar) = @_; my $newString = ($padChar x ($width - length $oldString)) . $oldString; return $newString; }

5. For subroutines with large numbers of arguments or where some arguments are optional or cannot be used in combination with others, best practice is to require the user to provide a hash of arguments when calling the subroutine, and then unpack @_ back into that hash of arguments. For this approach, our subroutine call would look a little different:
print leftPad("oldString" => "pod", "width" => 10, "padChar" => "+");

And the subroutine itself looks like this:

sub leftPad { my %args = @_; my $newString = ($args{"padChar"} x ($args{"width"} - length $args{"oldString"})) . $args{"oldString"}; return $newString; }

Context
Perl's most distinctive feature is that its code is context-sensitive. Every expression in Perl is evaluated either in scalar context or list context, depending on whether it is expected to produce a scalar or a list (array/hash). Many Perl expressions and built-in functions display radically different behaviour depending on the context in which they are evaluated. A scalar expression evaluated in scalar context returns the scalar:
my $scalar = "Mendeleev";

An array expression evaluated in list context returns the array:

my @array = ("Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma", "Pie");

And a hash expression evaluated in list context returns the hash:

my %hash = ("Alpha" => "Beta", "Gamma" => "Pie");

No surprises so far. A scalar expression evaluated in list context returns a single-element array:
my @list = "Mendeleev"; print $list[0]; # "Mendeleev" print scalar @list; # "1"

An array expression evaluated in scalar context returns the length of the array:
my $scalar = ("Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma", "Pie"); print $scalar; # "4"

You can force an expression to be evaluated in scalar context using the scalar built-in function. This, in fact, is why we use scalar to retrieve the length of an array. As a more complicated example, let's examine what happens when we perform a regular expression match. A regex match expression evaluated in scalar context returns "" (the empty string) if the match fails, 1 on success:
my $bill = "The amount was \$123.45. You must pay immediately."; my $scalar = ($bill =~ m/^The amount was \$(\d+\.\d\d)\. You must (\w+) ([\w\s]+)\.$/); print $scalar; # "1"

12 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

The same expression evaluated in list context returns an array of matches:

my $bill = "The amount was \$123.45. You must pay immediately."; my @list = ($bill =~ m/^The amount was \$(\d+\.\d\d)\. You must (\w+) ([\w\s]+)\.$/); print @list; # "123.45payimmediately"

Subroutines may also display contextual behaviour. You can use the wantarray function (which should be called wantlist but never mind) to detect what context the subroutine is being evaluated in, and return a result appropriate to that context:
sub contextualSubroutine { # Caller wants a list. Return an array return ("Everest", "K2", "Etna") if wantarray; # Caller wants a scalar. Return a scalar return "Everest ::: K2 ::: Etna"; }

The print function expects to be supplied with a list of things to print, so everything in its list of arguments is evaluated in list context:
print contextualSubroutine(); # "EverestK2Etna"

If we force scalar context:

print scalar contextualSubroutine(); # "Everest ::: K2 ::: Etna"

You are not bound by law or syntax to return a scalar value when a subroutine is evaluated in scalar context or a list value in list context. As mentioned above, Perl is perfectly capable of fudging the result for you.
if

and unless statements evaluate their conditions in scalar context. For example, if(@array) returns true if and only if @array has 1 or more elements. It doesn't matter what those elements are - they may contain undef or other false values for all we care.

One final aside: Exactly in which context an expression will be evaluated is usually clear, but sometimes it is not obvious, and it can occasionally be runtime-dependent. As a corollary of this and the Halting Problem, accurate syntax highlighting in Perl is, in a few extreme edge cases, impossible!

A quick note on variables

All the variables you have seen so far are lexical variables, which are declared using the my keyword and last until the end of the enclosing block or file.

Package variables, which we are about to meet, are declared using the scope.

our

keyword and are effectively global in

Packages and modules

In Perl, packages and modules are different things.

Packages
A package is a namespace in which subroutines and package variables can be declared. Any subroutine or package variable you declare is implicitly declared within the current package. At the beginning of execution, you are in the main package, but you can switch package using the package built-in function:
sub subroutine { print "universe"; } our $variable = "empty"; package Food::Potatoes; # no collision:

13 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

sub subroutine { print "kingedward"; } our $variable = "mashed";

Any time you call a subroutine, you implicitly call a subroutine which is inside the current package. The same is true of package variables. Alternatively, you can explicitly provide a package. See what happens if we continue the above script:
subroutine(); # "kingedward" print $variable; # "mashed" main::subroutine(); print $main::variable; Food::Potatoes::subroutine(); print $Food::Potatoes::variable; # # # # "universe" "empty" "kingedward" "mashed"

Modules
A module is a .pm file that you can include in another Perl file (script or module). An example module might be located at C:\foo\bar\baz\Mathematics\Powers.pm or /foo/bar/baz/Mathematics/Powers.pm, and read as follows:
use strict; use warnings; package Mathematics::Powers; our $e = 2.71828; sub exp { return $e ** shift; } 1;

Because a module is executed from top to bottom when it is loaded, you need to return a true value at the end to show that it was loaded successfully. return 1 would suffice. If you don't use return, the value returned is the value returned when the most recent statement was evaluated. So, you will often see 1 at the bottom of a Perl module, as shown above. So that the Perl interpreter can find them, directories containing Perl modules should be listed in your environment variable PERL5LIB beforehand. List the root directory containing the modules, don't list the module directories or the modules themselves:
set PERL5LIB=C:\foo\bar\baz;%PERL5LIB%

or
export PERL5LIB=/foo/bar/baz:$PERL5LIB

Once the Perl module is created and perl knows where to look for it, you can use the require built-in function to search for and execute it during a Perl script. For example, calling require Mathematics::Powers causes the Perl interpreter to search each directory listed in PERL5LIB in turn, looking for a file called Mathematics/Powers.pm. After the module has been loaded, the subroutines and variables that were defined there suddenly become available in the main script. Our example script might be called powers.pl and read as follows:
require Mathematics::Powers; print Mathematics::Powers::exp(2); # "7.3890461584"

Now read this next bit carefully. Packages and modules are two completely separate and distinct features of the Perl programming language. The fact that they both use the same double colon delimiter is a monumental red herring. It is possible to switch packages multiple times over the course of a script or module, and it is possible to use the same package declaration in multiple locations in multiple files. Calling require Foo::Bar does not look for and load a file with a package Foo::Bar declaration somewhere inside it. Calling require Foo::Bar does not necessarily load subroutines or package variables in the Foo::Bar namespace. Calling require Foo::Bar merely loads a file called Foo/Bar.pm,

14 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

which need not have any kind of package declaration inside it at all, and in fact might declare package Baz::Qux and other nonsense inside it for all you know. Likewise, a subroutine call Baz::Qux::processThis() need not necessarily have been declared inside a file named It could have been declared literally anywhere. Separating these two concepts is one of the stupidest features of Perl, and treating them as separate concepts invariably results in chaotic, maddening code. Fortunately for us, the majority of Perl programmers obey the following two laws: 1. A Perl script must always contain exactly zero package declarations. 2. A Perl module must always contain exactly one package declaration, corresponding exactly to its name and location. E.g. module Mathematics/Powers.pm must begin with package Mathematics::Powers. Because of this, in practice you will find that most "packages" and "modules" produced by reliable third parties can be regarded and referred to interchangeably. However, it is important that you do not take this for granted, because one day you will meet code produced by a madman.

Baz/Qux.pm.

Object-oriented Perl
Perl is not a great language for OO programming. Perl's OO capabilities were grafted on after the fact, and this shows. An object is simply a reference (i.e. a scalar variable) which happens to know which class its referent belongs to. To tell a reference that its referent belongs to a class, use bless. To find out what class a reference's referent belongs to, use ref. A method is simply a subroutine that expects an object (or, in the case of class methods, a package name) as its first argument. Object methods are invoked using $obj->method(); class methods are invoked using Package::Name->method(). A class is simply a package that happens to contain methods. A quick example. An example module Animals/Animals.pm containing a class Animals::Animal reads like this:
use strict; use warnings; package Animals::Animal; sub eat { # First argument is always the object to act upon. my $self = shift; foreach my $food ( @_ ) { if($self->canEat($food)) { print "Eating ", $food; } else { print "Can't eat ", $food; } } } sub canEat { return 1; } 1;

And a Perl script making use of this class might read, in part:
require Animals::Animal; my $animal = bless {}, "Animals::Animal"; print ref $animal; # "Animals::Animal" $animal->eat("insects", "curry", "salmon");

15 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

This final call is equivalent to Animals::Animal::eat($animal, "insects", "curry", "salmon"). Note: literally any reference can be blessed into any class. It's up to you to ensure that (1) the referent can actually be used as an instance of this class and (2) that the class in question exists and has been loaded.

Inheritance
To create a class inheriting from a base class, populate the @ISA package variable. Let's suppose we subclassed with Animals::Bear, located at Animals/Bear.pm:
package Animals::Bear; # Inherit from Animals::Animal our @ISA = ("Animals::Animal"); # Override one method sub canEat { shift; return 1 if shift eq "salmon"; return 0; } 1;

Animals::Animal

And some sample code:

require Animals::Animal; require Animals::Bear; my $bear = bless {}, "Animals::Bear"; $bear->eat("insects", "curry", "salmon"); # eat only the salmon

This final method call tries to invoke Animals::Bear::eat($bear, "insects", "curry", "salmon"), but a subroutine isn't defined in the Animals::Bear package. However, because @ISA has been populated with a parent package Animals::Animal, the Perl interpreter tries calling Animals::Animal::eat($bear, "insects", "curry", "salmon") instead, which works.
eat()

Since @ISA is an array, Perl supports multiple inheritance, with all the benefits and horrors this entails.

BEGIN

blocks

A BEGIN block is executed as soon as the compiler has finished parsing it, even before the compiler parses the rest of the file. It is ignored at execution time.
use strict; use warnings; # a package declaration might go here BEGIN { # do something extremely important } # actual code

A BEGIN block is always executed first. If you create multiple BEGIN blocks (don't), they are executed in order from top to bottom as the compiler encounters them. A BEGIN block always executes first even if it is placed halfway through a script (don't do this) or even at the end (or this). Because they are executed at compilation time, a BEGIN block placed inside a conditional block will still be executed first, even if the conditional evaluates to false and despite the fact that the conditional has not been evaluated at all yet and in fact may never be evaluated. Do not put BEGIN blocks in conditionals! If you want to do something conditionally at compile time, you need to put the conditional inside the BEGIN block:
BEGIN { if($condition) { # etc.

16 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

} }

use
Okay. Now that you understand the obtuse behaviour and semantics of packages, modules, class methods and BEGIN blocks, I can explain the exceedingly commonly-seen use function. The following three statements:
use Bugs::Caterpillar ("crawl", "pupate"); use Bugs::Caterpillar (); use Bugs::Caterpillar;

are respectively equivalent to:

BEGIN { require Bugs::Caterpillar; Bugs::Caterpillar->import("crawl", "pupate"); } BEGIN { require Bugs::Caterpillar; } BEGIN { require Bugs::Caterpillar; Bugs::Caterpillar->import(); }

No, the three examples are not in the wrong order. It is just that Perl is dumb. A use call is a disguised BEGIN block. The same caveats apply. use statements must always be placed at the top of the file, and never inside conditionals. import() is not a built-in Perl function. It is a user-defined class method. The burden is on the programmer of the Bugs::Caterpillar package to define or inherit import(), and the method could theoretically accept anything as arguments and do anything with those arguments. Notice how require Bugs::Caterpillar loads a module named Bugs/Caterpillar.pm, whereas Bugs::Caterpillar->import() calls the import() subroutine that was defined inside the Bugs::Caterpillar package. Let's hope the module and the package coincide!

Exporter
The most common way to define an import() method is to inherit it from Exporter module. Exporter is a de facto core feature of the Perl programming language. In Exporter's implementation of import(), the list of arguments that you pass in is interpreted as a list of subroutine names. When a subroutine is import()ed, it becomes available in the current namespace as well as in its own original namespace. This concept is easiest to grasp using an example. Here's what Bugs/Caterpillar.pm looks like:
use strict; use warnings; package Bugs::Caterpillar; require Exporter; our @ISA = ("Exporter"); our @EXPORT_OK = ("crawl", "eat"); our @EXPORT = ("crawl"); sub crawl { print "inch inch"; } sub eat { print "chomp chomp"; } sub pupate { print "bloop bloop"; } 1;

And here's part of a script which makes use of the Bugs/Caterpillar.pm module:
use Bugs::Caterpillar;

17 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

Bugs::Caterpillar::crawl(); # "inch inch" Bugs::Caterpillar::eat(); # "chomp chomp" Bugs::Caterpillar::pupate(); # "bloop bloop" crawl(); # "inch inch"

The package variable @EXPORT_OK can be populated with a list of all subroutines which the user can import explicitly by passing subroutine names to import(). If import() is called with the name of a subroutine not on this list, a runtime error will occur. For example, try use Bugs::Caterpillar ("pupate"). The package variable @EXPORT can be populated with a list of subroutines to be exported by default. These are exported if import() is called with no arguments at all, which is what happens in this example. As a result of being import()ed, a method such as Bugs::Caterpillar::crawl() become available without qualification as crawl(). This saves typing. (Note: regardless of the content of @EXPORT_OK, every method can always be called "longhand", as shown above. There are no private methods in Perl. Customarily, a method intended for private use is named with a leading underscore or two.) A caution. Notice how crawl() was neither defined in the script, nor explicitly import()ed from another file with e.g. use Bugs::Caterpillar ("crawl"). Suppose the middle three lines weren't there to provide clues, and suppose there were a dozen use calls alongside use Bugs::Caterpillar. And remember that any module is free to have more use calls of its own. In such a situation, it is extremely difficult to locate the place where crawl() was originally defined. The moral of this story is twofold: 1. When creating a module which makes use of Exporter, never use @EXPORT to export subroutines by default. Always make the user call subroutines "longhand" or import() them explicitly (using e.g. use Bugs::Caterpillar ("crawl"), which is a strong clue to look in Bugs/Caterpillar.pm for the definition of crawl()). 2. When useing a module, always explicitly name the subroutines you want to import(). If you don't want to import() any subroutines and wish to refer to them longhand, you must supply an explicit empty list: use Bugs::Caterpillar ().

Files
A file handle is a completely different object from a scalar, array or hash variable. File handles are customarily represented in ALLCAPS; three familiar built-in filehandles are STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR. Filehandles don't need declaring explicitly using my or our. They pop into existence automatically. A file handle can be opened using open. open must be supplied with a method. The method < indicates that we wish to open the file to read from it:
my $f = "text.txt"; my $result = open INPUT, "<", $f; if(!defined $result || !$result) { die "Couldn't open ", $f, " for reading"; }

As seen above, you should always check that the open operation completed successfully. If successful, open returns a true value. Otherwise, it returns undef. This checking procedure being rather tedious, a frequently-seen idiom is this:
open(INPUT, "<", $f) || die "Couldn't open ", $f, " for reading";

Notice how without the brackets, this would be:

open INPUT, "<", $f || die "Couldn't open ", $f, " for reading";

Which is the same as the nonsensical:

open INPUT, "<", ($f || die "Couldn't open ", $f, " for reading");

For this reason (and, as far as I can tell, solely this reason), Perl provides a completely separate operator, or, which works exactly like || except that it has extremely low precedence, making this possible:

18 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

open INPUT, "<", $f or die "Couldn't open ", $f, " for reading";

To read a line of text from a filehandle, use the readline built-in function. readline returns a full line of text, with a line break intact at the end of it (except possibly for the final line of the file), or undef if you've reached the end of the file.
while(1) { my $line = readline INPUT; last unless defined $line; # process the line... }

You can also use eof to detect the end of the file:
while(!eof INPUT) { my $line = readline INPUT; # process the line... }

But beware of just using while(my $line = readline INPUT), because if $line turns out to be "0" or "", the loop will terminate early. If you want to write something like that, Perl provides the <> operator which wraps up readline in a fractionally safer way. This is very commonly-seen and perfectly safe:
while(my $line = <INPUT>) { # processing... }

And even:
while(<INPUT>) { # process $_... }

To truncate that possible trailing line break, use chomp:

chomp $line;

Note that chomp acts on $line in place. $line = chomp $line is probably not what you want. To read a single line of user input:
my $line = <STDIN>;

To just wait for the user to hit Enter:

<STDIN>;

Calling <> with no filehandle reads data from standard input, or from any files named in arguments when the Perl script was called. Writing to a file involves first opening it in a different mode. The method > indicates that we wish to open the file to write to it. (> will clobber the content of the target file if it already exists and has content. To merely append to an existing file, use mode >>). Then, simply provide the filehandle as a zeroth argument for the print function.
open OUTPUT, ">", $f or die "Couldn't open ", $f, " for writing"; print OUTPUT "The eagles have left the nest";

Notice the absence of a comma between the filehandle and the first argument in print. As you've gathered, if the filehandle is omitted, STDOUT is used by default. File handles are actually closed automatically at script exit time, but otherwise:
close INPUT; close OUTPUT;

A scalar variable may hold a reference to a file handle instead of a variable:

my $fh; open $fh, "<", "text.txt" or die; while(<$fh>) {

19 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

# etc... } close $fh;

System calls
Apologies if you already know the following non-Perl-related facts. Every time a process finishes on a Windows or Linux system (and, I assume, on most other systems), it concludes with a 16-bit status word. The highest 8 bits constitute a return code between 0 and 255 inclusive, with 0 conventionally representing unqualified success, and other values representing various degrees of failure. The other 8 bits are less frequently examined - they "reflect mode of failure, like signal death and core dump information". You can exit from a Perl script with the return code of your choice (from 0 to 255) using exit. Perl provides More Than One Way to - in a single call - spawn a child process, pause the current script until the child process has finished, and then resume interpretation of the current script. Whichever method is used, you will find that immediately afterwards, the built-in variable $? ($CHILD_ERROR) has been populated with the status word that was returned from that child process's termination. You can get the return code by taking just the highest 8 of those 16 bits: $? >> 8. The system function can be used to invoke another program with the arguments listed. The value returned by system is the same value with which $? is populated:
my $rc = system "perl", "anotherscript.pl", "foo", "bar", "baz"; $rc >>= 8; print $rc; # "37";

Alternatively, you can use backticks `` to run an actual command at the command line and capture the standard output from that command. In scalar context the entire output is returned as a single string. In list context, the entire output is returned as an array of strings, each one representing a line of output.
my $text = `perl anotherscript.pl foo bar baz`; print $text; # "foobarbaz"

This is the behaviour which would be seen if anotherscript.pl contained, for example:
print @ARGV; exit(37);

Miscellaneous notes
Perl provides a wide array of quote-like operators in addition to what you've seen in these documents: There's an alternate syntax, qw{ }, for declaring arrays. This often seen in use statements:
use Account qw{create open close suspend delete}; qr//

can be used to put a regex into a scalar variable. This is especially useful because recompiling a regular expression multiple times actually takes substantial time:
my @capitals = ("Baton Rouge", "Indianapolis", "Columbus", "Montgomery", "Helena", "Denver", "Boise"); my $regex = qr/^[B-H]/; print join ", ", grep $regex, @capitals;

qx{ }

can be used instead of `backticks` to invoke a program and capture its output:

my $text = qx{perl anotherscript.pl foo bar baz};

And many more! Instead of braces, you can use any character you like as the delimiter in these alternate quote-like operators, as well as in m// regex matches and s/// regex replacements. This is actually quite useful if your regex contains a lot of slashes or backslashes. For example, m!///! matches three literal forward slashes. Perl does have CONSTANTS. These are discouraged now, but weren't always. Constants are actually just subroutine

20 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM

Perl

http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html

calls with omitted brackets. Sometimes people omit quotes around hash keys. They can get away with it because in this situation a bareword (a string with no sigil) occurs as a string, as opposed to a subroutine call or a filehandle or a package name. If you see a block of unformatted code wrapped in a delimiter with double chevrons, like <<EOF, the magic word to Google for is "heredoc". The Data::Dumper module can be used to output an arbitrary scalar variable to the screen. This is an essential debug tool.

21 of 21

8/2/2011 2:19 PM