M4   Learning More Perl (Bring Your Own Laptop) 
Tom Christiansen, Consultant

Who should attend: This intensive course is designed for programmers who already have a basic working knowledge of Perl and want to learn more. Although the two classes "Learning Perl" (S4) and "Learning More Perl" (M4) were designed to be taken one after the other, this is not a requirement.The prerequisite for this class is understanding the topics taught in the "Learning Perl" (S4) course, which a few weeks playing around with Perl could also supply. See that course's description for details.

Topics in this second full-day class include:

	Working with files and directories
	Binary I/O, formatted data, records
	Nested and multidimensional data structures
	References
	Detailed work on Perl regular expressions for pattern matching and substitution
	Writing user-defined functions
	Scoping issues
	Signal handling
	A light overview of packages, libraries, modules, and object-oriented programming in Perl

Bring your own laptop: This course uses a new strategy: practical lab work is added to the traditional lecture format to reinforce the lectures. Students should bring their own laptop on which they can work through instructor-assisted lab exercises. Laptops should already have Perl installed, but no specific operating system is required. Detailed directions can be found on the web at: www.perl.com/perl/training/byo-setup.html