Script Programming
with Perl
15-123
Systems Skills in C and Unix
Scripting Languages
• Many routine programming tasks require custom
designed solutions, environments and approaches
– Extracting data from a roster file
• Scripting languages are ideal for tasks that do not
require a “high level” compiled language solution
– Some argue that this is the real way to learn programming
– No need to worry about static typing
• Scripts are widely used as backend processing
languages for web based applications
– Authenticate passwords
– Extract data from a database
– Create dynamic web pages
Popular Scripting Languages
• JavaScript
– Client side processing based on a built in browser
interpreter
• PHP
– Server side processing
• Python
– Object oriented, interpreted, data structures, dynamic
typing, dynamic binding, rapid application development,
binding other programming components
• Perl
– Also you can call it an “interpreted” language (more later)
Perl
• An interpreted scripting language
– Practical extraction and Report Language
– Developed as a tool for easy text manipulation
and report generation
• Why Perl
– Easy scripting with strings and regex
– Files and Processes
• Standard on Unix
• Free download for other platforms
What’s good for Perl?
• Scripting common tasks
• Tasks that are too heavy for the shell
• Too complicated (or short lived) for C
First Perl Program
#! usr/bin/perl –w
print (“hello world \n”);
• How does this work?
– Load the interpreter and Execute the program
• perl hello.pl
An interpreted language
• Program instructions do not get converted to
machine instructions.
• Instead program instructions are executed by an
“interpreter” or program translator
• Some languages can have compiled and
interpreted versions
– LISP, BASIC, Python
• Other interpreters
– Java interpreter (byte code) and .net CIL
• Generates just in time machine code
Perl Data Types
• Naming Variables
– Names consists of numbers, letters and
underscores
– Names cannot start with a number
• Primitives
– Scalars
• Numeric : 10, 450.56
• Strings
– ‘hello there\n’
– “hello there\n”
Perl Data Types
• arrays of scalars
– ordered lists of scalars indexed by number,
starting with 0 or with negative subscripts
counting from the end.
• associative arrays of scalars, a.k.a``hashes''.
– unordered collections of scalar values indexed by
their associated string key.
Variables
• $a = 1; $b = 2;
• All C type operations can be applied
– $c = $a + $b; ++$c; $a +=1;
– $a ** $b - something new?
• For strings
– $s1 . $s2 - concatenation
– $s1 x $s2 - duplication
• $a = $b
– Makes a copy of $b and assigns to $a
Useful operations
• substr($s, start, length)
– substring of $s beginning from start position of length
• index string, substring, position
look for first index of the substring in string starting from
position
• index string, substring
look for first index of the substring in string starting from the
beginning
• rindex string, substring
position of substring in string starting from the end of the
string
• length(string) – returns the length of the string
More operations
• $_ = string; tr/a/z/; # tr is the transliteration operator
replaces all ‘a’ characters of string with a ‘z’ character and assign to $1.
• $_ = string; tr/ab/xz/;
replaces all ‘a’ characters of string with a ‘x’ character and b with z and
assign to $1.
• $_ = string; s/foo/me/;
replaces all strings of “foo” with string “me”
• chop
this removes the last character at the end of a scalar.
• chomp
removes a newline character from the end of a string
• split splits a string and places in an array
o @array = split(/:/,$name); # splits the string $name at each : and stores in
an array
o The ASCII value of a character $a is given by ord($a)
More at: http://www.perl.com/doc/manual/html/pod/perlop.html
Arrays
• @array = (10,12,45);
• @A = (‘guna’, ‘me’, ‘cmu’, ‘pgh’);
• Length of an array
– $len = $#A + 1
• Resizing an array
– $len = desired size
repetition
A While Loop
$x = 1;
while ($x < 10){
print “x is $x\n”;
$x++;
• }
Until loop
$x = 1;
until ($x >= 10){
print “x is $x\n”;
$x++;
}
Do-while loop
repetition
$x = 1;
do{
print "x is $x\n";
$x++;
} while ($x < 10);
for statement
for ($x=1; $x < 10; $x++){
print “x is $x\n”;
}
foreach statement
foreach $x (1..9) {
print "x is $x\n";
}
Parsing a roster entry
• S10,guna,Gunawardena,Ananda,SCS,CS,3,L,4,
15123 ,A ,,
Perl IO
$size = 10;
open(INFILE, “file.txt”);
$#arr = $size-1; # initialize the size of the array to 10
$i = 0;
foreach $line (<INFILE>) {
$arr[$i++] = $line;
if ($i >= $size) {
$#arr = 2*$#arr + 1; # double the size
$size = $#arr + 1;
}
}
Perl IO
• open(OUT, “>out.txt”);
• print OUT “hello there\n”;
• Better file open
– open (OUT, “>out.txt”) || die “sorry out.txt could
not be opened\n”
Perl and Regex
Perl and Regex
• Perl programs are perfect for regex matching
examples
– Processing html files
• Read any html file and create a new one that contains
only the outward links
• Do the previous exercise with links that contain
cnn.com only
Regex syntax summary
• ?, +, *
• ( ) - grouping
• ( exp (exp )) \1, \2 or $1 , $2
backreference matching
• ^startwith
• [^exclusion group]
• [a-z,A-Z] – alpha characters
Perl and regex
open(INFILE, "index.html");
foreach $line (<INFILE>) {
if ($line =~ /guna/ ){
print $line;
}
}
close(INFILE);
Lazy matching and backreference
open(IN, “guna.htm”);
while (<IN>){
if ($_ =~ /mailto:(.*?)"/){
print $1."\n";
}
}
Global Matching
• How to find all matches on the same line
open(IN, “guna.htm”);
while (<IN>){
if ($_ =~ /mailto:(.*?)"/g){
print $1."\n";
}
}
Global Matching and Replacing
The statement
$str =~ s/oo/u/;
would convert "Cookbook" into "Cukbook",
while the statement
$str =~ s/oo/u/g;
would convert "Cookbook" into "Cukbuk".
CGI Scripts and Perl
• CGI is an interface for connecting application
software with web servers
• CGI scripts can be written in Perl and resides
in CGI-bin
• Example: Passwd authentication
while (<passwdfile>) {
($user, $passwd)= split (/:/, $_);
…………
}
LWP
Library for www in Perl
• LWP contains a collection of Perl modules
– use LWP::Simple;
– $_ = get($url);
– print $_;
• Good reference at
– http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2002/08/20/perlandl
wp.html
Getopt
• The Getopt::Long module implements an extended getopt
function called GetOptions().
• Command line arguments are given as
– -n 20 or –num 20
– -n 20 -t test
• use Getopt::Long;
• $images_to_get = 20;
• $directory = ".";
• GetOptions("n=i" => \$images_to_get, "t=s" => \$directory);
References: http://perldoc.perl.org/Getopt/Long.html
