3.5. What's Next?

If you can't print what your program is supposed to do, it's like trying to read the mind of a person who can't speak. In the next chapter, we discuss Perl functions to print output to the screen (stdout) and how to format the output. You will learn how Perl views words, whitespace, literals, backslash sequences, numbers, and strings. You will learn how to use single, double, and backquotes and their alternative form. We will discuss here documents and how to use them in CGI scripts. You will also learn how to use warnings and diagnostics to help debug your scripts.

Exercise 3: Getting with It Syntactically 1. At the command-line prompt, write a Perl statement that will print Hello world!! Welcome to Perl programming. 2. Execute another Perl command that will print the contents of the datebook file. (The file is found on the accompanying CD.) 3. Execute a Perl command that will display the version of the Perl distribution you are currently using. 4. Copy the program sample in Example 3.1 into your editor, save it, check the syntax, and execute it.