First computer language

[Stephen R Laniel]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 10:16:03AM -0400, Rajiv Vyas wrote:
> So, are you suggesting that I should go with a Perl book first or a
> book that is more general and focuses on syntax? From what you are
> saying and my discussion with few other people, getting the foundation
> (understanding the logic in this case) right is very  important.

Well, you really want both the general logic and
Perl-specific stuff. Without the former, the latter won't
really make any sense. But then Perl also has a lot of stuff
that's more specific to the Unix/shell tradition -- e.g.,
the following command will take whatever is in the variable
called $foo and replace every instance of 'hot dogs' with
'hamburgers':

$foo =~ s/hot dogs/hamburgers/g;

Few languages other than Perl offer such syntax. So you'll
need some Perl-specific learning. But you'll also need to
learn about while loops (loop until a condition is true),
for loops (loop a specified number of times), if/then/else
logic, functions, scoping, and a bunch of other stuff. I'm
not sure whether "Learning Perl" will do that for you. It
may.

So my advice is: go to a bookstore or a library, take a look
at "Learning Perl" and the other books that people have
recommended, and see whether it sinks in. Then come back to
us if you need more advice. We're glad to help.

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key
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