FreeLists / oracle-l / Re: ** books

["Jared Still" <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 8/1/06, Norman Dunbar <norman.dunbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Now, on the subject of books, your one on Perl for the Oracle DBA is
> quite good (!) too,


Thanks!

any plans to do one called 'How to read Perl Scripts
> You Wrote or Inherited, for the Oracle DBA' ?  I don't do much Perl, I
> admit, but I do find it easier to write (provided I have an idiot's
> guide handy) than to read afterwards.



One of the most important things you can learn with Perl is
understanding the variable types, and how complex examples
of them work.

Like C, Perl can have some rather complex data structures.

From the command line, the following offer some good intros to data
structures:

perldoc perldsc
perldoc perlreftut

perldoc perltoc - the doc TOC

Then when you see something like "my @custAddr @{$addrHash->{$custID}}"
you will know how it works.

Syntax, control structures, etc are all fairly simple, and a glance at the
docs
will refresh you memory when you forget.

I also find it helpful to construct short test scripts (1-10 lines usually )
to emulate
something I find in a script (sometimes my own :) that I don't quite
understand.

Regular expressions:  simple ones are easy.  Complex ones are hopefully
commented.


--
Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist