Old Announcements

October 13th

MidTerm grades have been recorded. You may use the check grades function above to find yours. A word of caution: I urge you not to make any rash descions (ie, dropping the class) based on your midterm grade, until we discuss the midterms in class Wednesday.

October 12th

Here's a Sample HTML file for you to use. Copy it into your public_html directory and try your program on your own directory...

October 10th

Solutions (PDF) to today's midterm exam. I hope to have the exams corrected by next week, but that's not a guarantee.

October 5th

I've updated the Review Questions (PDF) and Answers (PDF) with the correction from Wednesday's class, and with the alternative answer to the last problem.

October 4th

When emailing Justin, please be sure to use his CS account, mcguij2@cs.rpi.edu and include the word Perl in the subject.
Please note the updated submission guidelines for HW2 as well as a brief description of HTML links in the HW2 FAQ

October 3rd

A sample working HW1, provided by "BB"
Review Questions (PDF) and Answers (PDF) for the midterm exam next week.
Homework 2 is now available. Also, please see the HW2 FAQ for further clarifications.

October 2nd

I have finished grading and returning all the homeworks. If you have not yet heard from me, I did not recieve a submission from you.
Tomorrow's class will contain a (very short) lecture, covering one last topic on regular expressions, that you may find useful in the next homework

September 26th

Today's Handout
For those not in class today, I announced that the Midterm exam will be closed notes, closed books, and closed computers. Next week will be a Question and Answer session for the Midterm.
There is now a Check Grades function on this webpage. Enter your RIN and view your grades. This is written in Perl, of course, and is relatively similar to your HW1. NOTE: I have *not* yet finished grading all the homeworks. I am emailing students' grades as they are corrected. Please DO NOT email me if the check grades program gives you no grades, and you've not received an email from me yet. However, if the program tells you your RIN is unknown, let me know so I can add you to the grade sheet ASAP.

September 20th

Handouts 1 and 2 from yesterday's class. Some basic programs illustrating regular expressions.

September 14th

As a result of Dr. Jackson's closing of the institute from 11-2pm today, my office hours have been movied to 4pm - 5pm in Lally 004 today.

September 13th

Please remember to email both myself and Justin when asking questions about homework 1. The chances of one of us answering you in a timely manner increase if we are both emailed, rather than just one of us.
I've started a HW1 FAQ. Here I'll post common questions and their answers.

September 12th

A couple people have asked me about getting Secure CRT. I don't know much about this program, as I don't use it. If you have an RPI laptop, you should have it installed, or at least be able get it from the VCC. The SSH client I use is TeraTerm SSH. To use it, you must first download Tera Term Pro and install this. Then download and install the SSH extention. That website has all the necessary links and information to do both.
Today's handout and worksheet
I neglected to mention in class today a nice feature of Perl that makes it much more readable than C/C++. A simple statement may be followed by any one of 5 control structures we went over in class today - if, unless, while, until, and foreach. In this case, brackets are not needed, since the controls are considered modidfiers, rather than blocks.
For example:
```
if ($a > 0) {
  print "a is greater than 0\n";
}
```
can become
```
print "a is greater than 0\n" if $a > 0; 
```
Remember, this works only for simple statements (ie, not blocks).

September 11th

In light of today's tragic events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, I am cancelling my office hours today.

September 10th

By request, the Syllabus now contains aproximate readings in Programming Perl. Note that these are merely suggestions for following along with what we're covering in class. I do not intend to "teach from the book". In my opinion, the text is best used as a reference, not as a learning guide.
A sample input file is now available for homework 1. I encourage you to use this file, and also to modify it yourself to test various test cases of your program, to ensure full functionality.

September 7th

Lecture notes are now available both in MS PowerPoint format and as PDF
I've set up a mailing list for this course. Please subscribe. Send a message from your primary email address to listproc@lists.rpi.edu with the body of the message containing the line
```
subscribe perlf01-l <firstname> <lastname>
```
This list will be moderated by Justin and myself. We will use it for class announcements as well as to answer any Frequently Asked Questions.

September 5th

Homework 1 Now Available
Handout from today's lecture. A few random programs to help illustrate some points about interpolation and context.
Minor correction from today's lecture: I earlier indicated that in
```
$a = $x || $y || $z;
```
$a would take on the value of the first false value. This was in error. In this case, $a will take the value of the first true value in $x, $y, or $z. This is due to the fact that the || operator uses shortcircuit logic. So as soon as one of the elements in that statement is true, the entire statement is true, and Perl stops evaluating them. It returns the value of the last element it evaluated.
For similar reasons, in
```
$a = $x && $y && $z;
```
$a would indeed take on the first false value it finds.