Online Perl refresher

January 3, 2005 12:33 PM

I've got an interview this week where I'll have to take "a perl test". I haven't used perl for a few years and feel quite rusty. What's a good online resource for a refresher? (besides the Camel Book)
posted by anonymous to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Can't figure out why this would be posted anonymously, but I'm fond of perlmonks. It's not going to teach you anything, but if you know perl and just need a refresher, you might as well make it interesting.
posted by icey at 1:01 PM on January 3, 2005

I'd assume it's anonymous because they use their real name on metafilter and don't want this to be the first thing their potential employer finds when they google.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:13 PM on January 3, 2005

I'm a learn-by-example type; you might try browsing some of the scripts at the cpan archive. Find a few that do interesting things, run them, then try to recreate what they do on your own. Crib from the original as needed.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:20 PM on January 3, 2005

The book Effective Perl Programming will remind you of alot of important perl factoids in a concise format, and may even give you some new perl kung-fu with which to impress the interviewer(s).
posted by jimfl at 2:37 PM on January 3, 2005

I think it would be wrong and bad for you to Google "Perl Cookbook" "Copyright © 2002 O'Reilly & Associates".
posted by nicwolff at 4:30 PM on January 3, 2005

Damian Conway's Object-Oriented Perl has an excellent short overview of things Perlish (before he gets into the OOP stuff.)

Writing Serious Perl

Some Perlmonks threads on interview questions: 1 2 3 4

Of course, you can really drive yourself nuts.

Perl Puzzles
How's Your Perl?
How's Your Perl (II)

Here are some questions I've asked in Perl interviews:

You're got a list, @l = qw(apple banana pear). How do you test that a variable, $v is equal to an element of @l? How would you go about it if you had to test a large number of variables, and @l were large?

What does (?:x) mean in a regexp?

What are some of your favorite CPAN modules?

What kinds of references have you blessed?
posted by Zed_Lopez at 5:34 PM on January 3, 2005

I think it would be wrong and bad for you to Google "Perl Cookbook" "Copyright © 2002 O'Reilly & Associates".

Hilarious how the copyright notice lends itself to theft.
posted by ori at 7:17 PM on January 3, 2005