Programming in Perl

Announcements

Saturday, December 14

• All homeworks, exams, and extra credits have now been corrected and graded. Please check your grades online. I will be submitting Final Grades to SIS over this weekend, so if there are any discrepancies, please let me know immediately.

Wednesday, December 4

• The Final exam has been posted to the handouts page. Answers will be posted within a few days.
• Don't forget, today's exam is being held in Troy 2012 and Troy 2018, NOT DCC 330. If your last name starts with A-J, or if you do not have a laptop, please report to Troy 2012. Otherwise, please report to Troy 2018.

Tuesday, November 26

• My solution to HW5 is posted on the homeworks page. Note that if I were to grade this solution, I'd probably give myself 0/5 for "Output Style" Hopefully, yours looks better than mine.

Sunday, November 24

• Now posted on the handouts page are the review questions and Final Exam Information from Wednesday's class, along with solutions to the review questions.

Wednesday, November 20

• Now posted on the handouts page are the final exam question and answers from the previous two semesters. Keep in mind that this semester's exam will be a different format, and the questions therefore will not be quite the same difficulty level.

Friday, November 15

• Wednesday's class will be a review for the Final Exam. Please come prepared with questions to ask. Also, I will be asking CS Majors to fill out a survey on Academic Advising, as well as handing out course evaluations for the entire class.
• It was announced in class Wednesday that as a result of a 30-11 vote, the final exam will be given under the new, online format. If you have any questions regarding this format, let me know. Preferably, come to the Final Exam Review session during this week's class.

Wednesday, November 13

• I have posted an extra-credit assignment, homework 6, to the homeworks page. We will discuss it in class today.

Tuesday, November 12

• I have to cancel my Tuesday office hours for next week, 11/19. Since it would be in horrendous taste to not hold office hours on the day a homework is due, I am extending the HW5 deadline to 11:59:59pm EST on Wednesday, 11/20.
• I implore everyone to visit http://www.lib.rpi.edu/resources/databases/trials/safari.html. The RPI Library system has a trial subscription to Safari, and online technical library. This library includes virtually every O'Reilly programming book, including our three texts. Whether the subscription continues past the end of the month or not depends on user feedback. Please visit the page, try out the system, and encourage Matt Benzing to purchase a full subscription to the Safari System.

Sunday, November 10

• Grading of HW4 will begin shortly. If you have any questions or concerns about your grade, contact Dave first, then take the issue to me if Dave can't resolve it.
• My solution to HW4 is available on the Homeworks page

Thursday, November 7

• Available on the handouts page are all of the example scripts from yesterday's class, as well as a text file describing how to get started using CGI on the CS system.

Wednesday, November 6

• Homework 5 is now available. We will discuss it after class today.

Course Policies

This 2-credit course will run the entire semester, from 4:00pm to 5:50pm on Wednesdays.

There will be one homework assigned aproximately every two weeks, for a total of Aproximately six (6) assignments throughout the course of the semester. Submission instructions will be included with each assignment. All homeworks will be due at 11:59:59pm Eastern Time on the due date. Homework will be accepted up to 24 hours past the deadline at a penalty of 20% off the homework's grade. Homeworks turned in more than 24 hours past the deadline will be graded a 0.

There will be two (2) exams: a mid-term exam halfway through the course, and a final exam on the last day of class. You will have the full 1 hour, 50 minutes to work on each exam. While the final exam will not be cumulative, the nature of programming will require you to apply knowledge gained during the first half of the course on the final exam

Your course grade will be derived by taking either
70% of the Homework average and 30% of the Exam average
or
60% of the Homework average and 40% of the Exam average,
whichever results in a higher course average for each student.

Your letter grade will be computed based on the following scale: (numeric grades will be rounded to the nearest tenth of a point)

A

>= 90.0%

B

80.0%-89.9%

C

70.0%-79.9%

D

60.0%-69.9%

F

< 60.0%

Do NOT expect a curve or scale. If there are extreme circumstances (ex, everyone in the class is getting an F), I may consider scaling the final grades, but don't plan for it. Along the same lines, under no circumstances will there be any opportunity to salvage a grade by redoing an assignment or by doing an 'extra credit' asignment.

Academic Integrity

All homeworks are to be done individually, unless specifically noted otherwise. You may discuss programming style, concepts, and error debugging with your classmates, but you may not work together on an assignment. Do not look at anyone else's code, and do not show your code to anyone else.

All of the following are considered violations of Academic Integrity, and will be penalizied equally:

• Copying (manually or mechanically) the homework assignment of another student (past or current)
• Giving (directly or indirectly) your code to another student
• Working on an assignment in cooperation with another person
• Placing your code in any publicly accessable location (ex: public-access computer, public drive of a networked computer)
• Lending your computer, which contains your code, to another student, even if there is no intention of Academic Dishonesty

In addition, YOU are responsible for ensuring that no other student is able to access your code. Take any and all necessary precautions to prevent this.
In all cases of academic dishonesty, no attempt will be made to determine which submission is "Authentic" or "Original". Both students will be penalized equally, as follows:

• First violation: Failure of the assignment, and a one letter grade reduction off the final grade
• Second violation: Failure of the course

When taking the exams, you may use only the resources specifically noted as acceptable. These may or may not include lecture notes, your own notes, the course textbooks, or other books. Under no circumstances will these include any other students. Acceptable resources will be noted at least two (2) weeks prior to each exam.

RPI-Speak:

"The definitions and examples presented (in the Rensselaer Handbook) are samples of the various types of academic dishonesty and are not to be construed as an exhaustive or exclusive list. The academic dishonesty policy also applies to scholarly pursuits and research. Additionally, attempts to commit academic dishonesty or to assist in the commission or attempt of such an act, are also violations of this policy. If found in violation of academic dishonestly policies, students may be subject to two types of penalties. The Instructor administers an academic penalty (i.e., failure of the course), and the student may also be subject to the procedures and penalties of the student judicial system outlined in this handbook." -- The Rensselaer Handbook of Student Rights and Responsibilities

English:

You cheat, you fail -- Paul Lalli

Syllabus

NOTE: This schedule is Tentative. The topics we cover each week will depend almost entirely on how much we were able to cover in the previous lecture.

Perl Quotes

A great many things have been said about Perl. Many of them quite funny. If you happen to come across a passage about Perl that makes you grin or laugh, please share your good fortune with the rest of the class.

Links

The following hyperlinks may be useful to your learning of Perl and your success in this course:

• RPInfo
• RPI's Computer Science department
• Programming in Perl - Spring 1999 - The semester *Paul* took the course...
• Programming in Perl - Fall 2001
• Programming in Perl - Spring 2002
• perl.com - The official home of Perl on the web
• perl.com's documentation - kind of an online, lighter version of the Camel
• ActiveState's ActivePerl - download perl for your Windows machine
• ActiveState's Visual Perl - download a Perl plug-in for Visual Studio .NET
• CPAN - Comprehensive Perl Archive Network: Download Perl modules not included with the core
• Amazon.com's Camel listing
• Amazon.com's Llama listing
• Amazon.com's Mouse listing
• WinSCP - Secure Copy client for Windows
• Tera Term SSH - SSH client for Windows. (You must first download and install Tera Term Pro (linked from that page) and then extract the ttssh package into the TTPro directory)

Please feel free to suggest another link

Definitions & Acronyms

C

Probably the industry-standard programming language. Paul likes to live in denial that it exists, but perl is actually written in C.

Camel

Nickname for Programming Perl, the book on Perl

camel

"Kind of a horse designed by committe." The pseudo-official mascot of Perl. The association of camels with Perl is trademarked by O'Reilly - so don't tell them Paul uses a camel for PerlRPI's buddy icon.

CPAN

Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. Repository for all Perl modules not included in the core distribution

Java

Ewwwwwwwww!

Labstaff

The RPI Computer Science department's group of staff responsible for maintaining the Computer Science network - which is completely distinct from RCS. They can be reached at labstaff@cs.rpi.edu

Lalli

Your instructor. Not to be confused with Lally

Lally

Your instructor's office building. Not to be confused with Lalli

Llama

Nickname for Learning Perl, an extremely good tutorial for Perl

Mouse

Nickname for CGI Programming with Perl, an excellent reference for learning to create CGI scripts using Perl

Perl

Pratical Extraction and Report Language. The language we study in this course. Note this is *not* an acronym (it's a retronym), so don't make it all-caps.

perl

the implementation of Perl. ie, program that runs your Perl script.

RCS

Rensselaer Computer Systems. The network of computer systems and terminals all over campus. In reality, the network includes machines which run Windows, Unix, and Macintosh. As far as this class is concerned, "RCS" refers soley to the Unix machines on which perl is installed.

RCS Id

Rensselaer Computer Systems Identification. Your login Id. The first part of your email address. Not to be confused with your RIN.

RegExps

Regular Expressions. The power-house of Perl

RIN (aka RPI Id #)

Rensselaer Id Number. The way the registrar identifies you. The nine-digit number that replaced your social security number a few years ago. Not to be confused with your RCS Id

RPI

You should know this one

TLA

Three Letter Acronym

TMTOWTDI

There's More Than One Way To Do It. The motto of Perl.

Wall, Larry

The creator and primary maintainer of Perl. To say he has issues is something of an understatement. See what I mean?