"Try to learn by doing something that you need."
That is great advice. Write a program to open your directories
given a key word. I use that program dozens of times every day.
Mike
On 8/7/23 00:29, Olivier wrote:
William,
I started testing some extensions of CPAN but I don't understand anything. I
only execute and then proceed with a book. The name of the book is
Beginning Perl of Curtis Ovid Poe.
I started with a lot of passion but then lost interest, the monotony conquered
me. Actually I am learning references and Complex Data Structures in Perl.
I never learned that in Perl and I have been using Perl for 25 years at
least.
I never learned Perl from a book either, I used it for some small
tasks/projects and learned new bits when I needed them.
I have a lot of doubts in my mind:
What is my purpose with this language?
For me, Perl is an unvaluable tool for automatisation of system tasks,
manage users, create accounts, etc. My last scripts are used to
synchronize print quota between two very dissimliar systems.
In my country don't exist use of this language
I am boring and tired
SpamAssassin is a large project in Perl, but even that is not using very
complicated data structures. Perl was designed to manipulate reports,
extract data and create new reports. It is not a general usage language.
I am not sure it is the right way to try to learn Perl without any
project. Try to learn by doing something that you need.
Most of the CPAN extensions (modules), you don't need them, you will
never need them unless you have a direct use for them. Also, depending
on the operating system you are using, some of the Perl modules may be
part of the packages distriubuted for your OS.
Also, for me the real strength of Perl is the strong system of regular
expressions, I have an extensive use for them in each of my scripts (a
software produces some logs, I have to extract some significant lines
from the logs, etc.)
Best regards,
Olivier
