- 01Setting up (what you'll need)
- 02Your first output (print)
- 03Variables (scalar variables, $)
- 04Branching (the if statement)
- 05Repeating (the for loop)
- 06Writing a subroutine (a function)
- 07Repeating (the while loop)
- 08Working with arrays (@)
- 09Working with hashes (%)
- 10Regular expression matching
- 11Substitution with regular expressions (s///)
- 12Working with strings
- 13References
- 14Anonymous subroutines
- 15File input and output, the basics
- 16Modules and use strict / warnings
- 17The ternary operator
- 18Sorting (sort)
- 19Packages and the basics of object orientation
- 20[Project] Build a small inventory system
Working with strings
This lesson covers basic string handling in Perl.
Strings come with handy built-in functions such as length (find the length), uc (convert to upper case), and substr (take a piece out).
The sample code checks the character count with length($message) and takes the first five characters with substr($message, 0, 5).
A common early stumble is that these are standalone functions rather than method calls. If you have come from an object-oriented language you will want to try $message.length(), but in Perl you write length($message).
In professional work, string handling — tidying logs, validating user input — is essential in practically every program.
๐งช This site can't compile or run Perl directly, so it checks on the spot whether what you typed matches the reference code (scoring happens entirely in your browser โ nothing is sent anywhere).