Perl 5 InternalsSimon Cozens

Copyright © 2001 by NetThink

Open Publications License 1.0
Copyright (c) 2001 by NetThink.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
This series contains material adopted from the Netizen Perl Training Fork, by kind permission of Kirrily Robert.

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Table of Contents1. Preliminaries

• 1.1. Course Outline
• 1.2. Assumed Knowledge
• 1.3. Objectives
• 1.4. The course notes
  

2. Perl Development Structure

• 2.1. Perl Versioning
• 2.2. The Development Tracks
• 2.3. Perl 5 Porters
• 2.4. Pumpkins and Pumpkings
• 2.5. The Perl Repository
• 2.6. Summary
• 2.7. Exercises
  

3. Parts of the Interpreter

• 3.1. Top Level Overview
• 3.2. The Perl Library
• 3.3. The XS Library
• 3.4. The IO Subsystem
• 3.5. The Regexp Engine
• 3.6. The Parser and Tokeniser
• 3.7. Variable Handling
• 3.8. Run-time Execution
• 3.9. Support Functions
• 3.10. Testing
• 3.11. Other Utilities
• 3.12. Documentation
• 3.13. Summary
• 3.14. Exercises
  

4. Internal Variables4.1. Basic SVs4.1.1. Basics of an SV4.1.2. References4.1.3. Integers4.1.4. Strings4.1.5. Floating point numbers4.2. Arrays and Hashes4.2.1. Arrays4.2.2. Hashes4.3. More Complex Types4.3.1. Objects4.3.2. Magic4.3.3. Tied Variables4.3.4. Globs and Stashes4.3.5. Code Values4.3.6. Lexical Variables4.4. Inheritance4.5. Summary4.6. Exercises
5. The Lexer and the Parser5.1. The Parser5.1.1. BNF and Parsing5.1.2. Parse actions and token values5.1.3. Parsing some Perl5.2. The Tokeniser5.2.1. Basic tokenising5.2.2. Sublexing5.3. Summary5.4. Exercises
6. Fundamental Operations6.1. The basic op6.1.1. The different operations6.1.2. Different "flavours" of op6.1.3. Tying it all together6.2. PP Code6.2.1. The argument stack6.2.2. Stack manipulation6.3. The opcode table and opcodes.pl6.4. Scatchpads and Targets6.5. The Optimizer6.6. Summary6.7. Exercises
7. The Perl Compiler7.1. What is the Perl Compiler?7.2. B:: Modules7.2.1. B::Concise7.2.2. B::Debug7.2.3. B::Deparse7.3. What B and O Provide7.3.1. O7.3.2. B7.4. Using B for Simple Things7.5. Summary7.6. Exercises
A. Unix cheat sheet
B. Editor cheat sheetB.1. viB.1.1. RunningB.1.2. UsingB.1.3. ExitingB.1.4. GotchasB.1.5. HelpB.2. picoB.2.1. RunningB.2.2. UsingB.2.3. ExitingB.2.4. GotchasB.2.5. HelpB.3. joeB.3.1. RunningB.3.2. UsingB.3.3. ExitingB.3.4. GotchasB.3.5. HelpB.4. jedB.4.1. RunningB.4.2. UsingB.4.3. ExitingB.4.4. GotchasB.4.5. Help
C. ASCII Pronunciation Guide
List of Tables
A-1. Simple Unix commands
B-1. Layout of editor cheat sheets
C-1. ASCII Pronunciation Guide