Introduction to Perl for non-programming Mac folk

Andy Wardley abw at wardley.org
Mon Dec 22 13:32:20 GMT 2008


Before I go and write this myself, does anyone know of any online or
dead-tree resources that give a gentle introduction to using Perl on
Mac OSX?  I'm working with a couple of web designers who want to learn
a bit  of Perl, but need a bit of hand-holding when it comes to using
the command line and other "techy" things.

The goal is to get them to the point where they can start reading
"Learning Perl" and play along at home (well, work).

These are the kind of things that I think need to be covered.

   * Find the Terminal app and running Perl from the command line.
     "which perl", "perl -v", etc.

   * Using a text editor, writing programs, saving, chmod-ing and running.

   * Minimal introduction to Perl syntax, "Hello World" kinda stuff.

   * Setting up CPAN (o conf make_install_make_command "sudo make"
     so you don't need to run as root)

   * Installing CPAN modules (including knowing how to "force install"
     in case tests fails/dependency hell)

   * Using an OO module (my $x = XXXX->new; $x->some_method()), etc.

   * Knowing where to look for documentation and how to read it.

Anything I've missed?

Cheers
A


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