MacPerl: Power And Ease

400 Pages·1998·22.3 MB·English

by  Chris Nandor, Vicki Brown

MacPerl

Power and Ease

Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor

Edited by Rich Morin

Foreword by Matthias Neeracher

Published by Prime Time Freeware
MacPerl: Power and Ease
Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor
ISBN 1-881957-32-2
Copyright © 1997-1998 Prime Time Freeware. All rights reserved.
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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
v
Contents
Contents v
Dedications xiii
Acknowledgements xv
First And Foremost ... xv
Technical Assistance ... xvi
And Review … xvi
Ancillary Materials ... xvii
Publicity and Documentation … xviii
Last But Not Least ... xviii
Conventions xix
Typography xix
Terminology xx
Personal Pronouns (he, she, or it?) xxi
Style xxi
Footnotes xxiii
URLs xxiv
MacPerl Escapes From The Laboratory xxv
Part I - Preparation
0 Introduction 3
What Is Perl? 3
What About AppleScript? 5
What About Other Languages? 6
Scope 7
Audiences 8
Roadmap 11
Advice 12
Why Chapter 0? 12
1 A Peek Into Programming 13
Cooking Up A Program 14
Program Structure 15
vi
Error Checking 17
The Programming Process 18
Testing: 1, 2, 3, … 20
2 A Dip Into Data 21
Bits And Bytes 22
Quantifying Data Storage 23
Values, Variables, And Calculation 24
Data Structures 25
3 A Step Into Syntax 27
Syntax, Meaning, And Truth 28
Expressions, Statements, And Blocks 30
Data Structures 31
Control Flow 33
Functions And Methods 34
Parenthetical Remarks 36
Combinatorial Complexity 37
4 Installation And Overview 39
MacPerl Flavors 39
System Requirements 40
Installing The Standalone Application 41
Examine The Results 43
A Walk Through The Menus 45
On-line Help - Installing Internet Config 48
A New Menu 51
Running A Script 51
Check The Preferences 53
Part II - Learning The Language
5 Building Blocks 59
Literals – Numbers And Strings 61
Variables 61
Case – A Sensitive Issue 62
Quoting 63
Operators 64
Precedence 68
Contents vii
Expressions 69
Statements 70
Commands: Operators, Functions, And More 70
Control Flow 73
6 Stacking The Blocks 77
Input And Output (I/O) 77
More Commands? 79
Pattern Matching 82
Breaking Data Apart 88
An Array Of Possibilities 89
Multiple Dimensions 93
Context 93
7 Filing The Edges 95
Filehandles 95
Reading Input 98
Error Handling 99
Pathnames 100
Writing Output 103
Redirecting Standard I/O 107
Working With Folders (Directories) 109
Working With Aliases 110
8 Curious Constructions 111
Subroutines 111
The Standard Perl Library 117
Adding Libraries - The CPAN 119
Mac-specific Functions 120
Droplets, Runtime Versions, And CGI scripts 121
Program Arguments: @ARGV 123
References 124
Filename Globbing 126
Passing Filehandles 127
9 Odd Corners 129
$_ 130
use English 130
MacPerl Oddities – Portability Issues 131
To Parenthesize Or Not To Parenthesize 134
viii
Taking Shortcuts 135
Quoting 138
Extended Regular Expressions 140
A Word Of Warning 141
Grab Bag 143
10 Help! 145
Start With A Good Editor 145
Good Habits Cost No More 146
Debugging Techniques 148
RTFM 154
Recommended Reading 155
The Perl Community 155
Part III - Advanced Topics
11 Extensibility And Re-use 159
Packages, Modules, Extensions (Oh My!) 159
Understanding Modules 161
Getting Modules 163
Installing Modules 164
use-ing Modules 168
Object-Oriented Programming 169
12 The MacPerl Package 171
Volumes, Paths, And File Specifications 172
File Information 173
Answer, Ask, Pick 174
Quit 177
$Version 177
LoadExternals 177
DoAppleScript 178
Reply 178
13 The Toolbox Modules 179
Using The Toolbox Modules 181
Mac::AppleEvents, Mac::OSA 181
Mac::Files 182
Mac::StandardFile 184
Contents ix
Mac::MoreFiles 188
Mac::Processes 189
Mac::Gestalt 191
Mac::Types 192
Mac::Memory 193
Mac::Resources 194
Mac::InternetConfig 195
14 GUI Toolbox Modules 197
Windows 198
Window Definitions 200
Drawing And Text 204
Events 208
Controls 209
Menus 212
Dialogs 214
Roll Your Own 217
15 Data Storage 219
Database Basics 220
Delimited Text 222
DBM 224
Database Servers 226
Data Formats 227
16 CGI Scripting 229
Web Servers 229
The CGI Script Extension 231
CGI vs. ACGI 233
Taint Checking 234
Environment Variables 236
CGI.pm 236
17 Network Programming 239
Sockets 240
libnet 242
LWP 244
AppleTalk 244
Debugging 246
x
18 AppleScript, Etc. 247
AppleScript 248
Other OSA Languages 251
Apple Events 252
An Apple Event Example 253
Part IV - Reference
19 Operators 259
Precedence And Associativity 259
Arithmetic Operators 262
String Operators 262
Assignment Operators 263
Comparison Operators 263
Logical Operators 264
Bit-Shift Operators 265
Binding (Matching) Operators 265
Reference / Dereference Operators 265
Range Operators 266
Comma Operator 266
Conditional Operator 267
File Test Operators 267
Quoting 271
Escape Sequences 272
Regular Expressions 273
Switches 273
20 Reserved Words 277
Alphabetical List 279
Categories 280
Synopses 283
21 Special Variables 303
Data Structures 304
Format 304
Input/Output 305
Operating Environment 307
Package Management 308
Perl Interpreter 308