Re: Teaching Perl

[strat]

I started teaching Perl with the Llama-Book some years ago, and found it quite good. I added a couple of scripts for the people to play with. The only thing I don't like so much is that there is one chapter with one topic, then the next chapter with the next, and people sometimes have just to learn stuff because it's in the chapter before they need to use it. So I enchanced the scriptscollection by and by, and over the years it became my own introduction into perl which I use in combination with the Llama- and Cookbook as further references. My way jumps a little bit around like a frog, but it's easy for the pupils to understand why to learn something.

If you wan't to get it (only available in German), just goto my $homepage - talks and download the PDF in the line "Einführung in Perl". A lot of explanations is written there, but much more has still to be added.

(I'm always looking for ways to improve it, so if you don't like something, I'll be gratefull if you tell me)

Normally, the biggest problems are:

• Why to use hashes
• Why to use references
• How to recognize of which type a variable is (array,hash, hashreferences ...)
• List- vs. scalar context, and functions behaving differently (reverse, localtime, ...)
• Sometimes regular expressions