As for getting them to think in Perl, force them into text-manipulation.
While this is very good advice, I would also urge them to think in terms of list manipulation as well. NOT linked-lists, NOT list-like-arrays, but as mentioned above, the importance of the functions of map, grep, sort, for/foreach, and how one can effectively do loops without a counter, unlike C, C++, or Java. I remember when golf problems started to show up here that many were better solved thinking about using lists and taking advantage of map and friends, than to break it down in any other fashion. Absolutely positively make sure they understand the usefulness of the Schwatzian Transformation as well for sorting complex data items.
I would almost go as far as introducing elements of functional programming, but that might be too much for a
learning class, but it's very important to stress the list aspect of perl over anything else.
-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com
||
"You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important
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