It's a little difficult to guess what kind of things might be necessary to read Perl, but I think the most useful skill would be the ability to read variables and understand what kind of data structure is bring manipulated. Thus, I'd start with these three groups:

All this so that they can differentiate between $foo, $foo[0], and $foo{'zero'}, as well as $foo[0] and $foo->[0]. (The latter expression can be written as $$foo[0], but to me, that's much harder for the eye to pick up.)

Picking the correct data structure is a pretty critical piece in solving a programming challenge. I used three parallel arrays in a recent solution, and the code worked incorrectly -- so I had to take a step back and re-think, and finally realized I needed a HoA. The final code was really quite elegant, and was a breeze to write.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

In reply to Re: Advice for Perl teaching by talexb
in thread Advice for Perl teaching by Zenzizenzizenzic

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