=for story
Sally was walking along a path when she came to a very large
hole. She filled the hole with sand
=cut
$hole = 'sand';
=for story
As she walked across the hole, she realized she might get lost if
she didn't put down some stones to find her way back.
She put down a red stone, a blue stone and a white stone:
=cut
@stone = qw(red blue white);
=for story
No sooner had she put down the stones than she arrived at a 3-way
intersection.
Here is the Perl, you tell the story:
=cut
%directions = (
left => 'Yorkshire',
right => 'Birmingham',
straight => 'Nottamun'
);
%distance = (
Yorkshire => '5 miles',
Birmingham => '1.5 miles',
Nattamun => '2.2 miles'
);
=for story
Did you tell the story? I'm sure you figured it out. However, let's
have Perl
tell it for us:
=cut
while (my ($direction, $location) = each %directions) {
print "if she takes the $direction path, she will walk for
$distance{$location} before arriving at $location.\n";
}
=for story
Ok, now we have ended the first lesson in our Perl storybook. We
have learned many things in just one lesson:
HOLES:
We learned how to fill in holes. Whenever we want to fill in a
hole, we just put something in it. The hole is anything that you
want to hold a value.
Here is one more example:
Today is Saturday
$today = 'Saturday';
BEADS:
When Sally put down the stones on the path, she was storing a
series of things to help her later. Whenever you have a list of
things you want to keep together, you put them down together, just
like putting beads on a necklace.
Let's create a list of grocery items:
my @shopping_list = qw(oranges apples bananas);
DICTIONARIES:
You know what a dictionary is right, you look up a key and you get
a value. Let's create a dictionary of magic terms:
%magic = (
spell => 'something you cast on someone',
rabbit => 'something you pull out of a hat',
wand => 'the thing you wave to cast a spell'
)
Now let's get something out of our dictionary:
=cut
print $magic{wand}
