comment on

It sounds like the first thing you need to do is figure out just what the Perl idioms you're referring to are! For me, the following compose a partial list:

EVERYTHING HAS USE STRICT AND USE WARNINGS/-w ... Don't go any further unless this is in your curriculum. I know that's being an ass, but I feel that strongly about it.
$_ and @_ and how they're the defaults. (This is a big one!)
statement modifiers foo($_) while (1 .. 10);
grep and map - Spend a lot of time here!
range operator as a boolean short-circuit
regexes as pretty much anything (booleans, shortcircuits in ranges, etc)
Using regexes to parse
Using substr to parse
References. Use the pointer concept to start, but break away from it ASAP, as references are NOT pointers.

Basically, make sure they understand TMTOWDI and that their C-Perl is no better or worse than someone else's Java-Perl or my Perl-Perl. :-)

As for getting them to think in Perl, force them into text-manipulation. That's where Perl started and that's where it shines. Ask them to find all the occurrences of a regex-match in a file. Have them do it in their favorite language, then in Perl. Show them 3-4 different ways in Perl, starting with the most C-like, then moving slowly to Perlisms. Try and remember how you discovered things like:

LINE:
while (<INFILE>) {
    next LINE while /Foo/ .. /Bar/;
    chomp;

    # Do stuff here.
}
[download]

How you discovered the idioms is how you want them to discover them ... through iterative runs of the same solution, but written more and more Perlish.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

In reply to Re: Teaching Perl Idioms by dragonchild
in thread Teaching Perl Idioms by FoxtrotUniform

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