[pm-h] Introductory Perl Help

[rlharris at oplink.net]

> 1. Would you be willing to get together for another monthly meeting
> for mentoring and question answering?

Eagerly.



> 2. Would you be willing to do a monthly remote session through
> something like Google Hangouts, where you could get help?

If I can figure out how to do it, running Linux.

This is the first time I have heard about Google Hangouts.  I have not
used conferencing of any kind, aside from email and a few IRC
sessions.

I am helpless on a Window$ system, and, besides, all my files are on a
Linux machine, so that displaying them in a Window$ environment would
be difficult.




> 3. Would you be more inclined to talk to a single person, or one of
> a few experts?

To the student, it should not matter; he should be grateful to anyone
who is willing to teach me.

However, for the teacher, one-on-one is, in essence, a consulting
assignment, for which he normally would receive payment.  However, if
several experts gather, they have the benefit of camaraderie and
interaction one with the other, so the experience is less of a chore
than it is a discussion.



> 4. Would you use this session regularly?

Unless the techniques become so exotic that I cannot envision their
applicability to my needs.  I would be interested in mastering almost
any subject covered in, say, in the O'Reilly book "Learning Perl".

Regular attendance is necessary for a semi-formal course, such as
going chapter-by-chapter through "Learning Perl".

But a help session is another matter:

   => If a project is going well, it is difficult to justify spending
   an evening in a help session, rather than working on the project.

   => If things are not going well, it is likely that the next help
   session is a month away, while the need for help is immediate.

The best time for a help session is when you are actively working on
the project (so that the details are fresh in mind), encounter a
problem, and do not know how to proceed.  All things considered, it
may be difficult to do better than the Perl mail list, assuming that
one or two Perl experts monitor the list as a matter of routine.



> 5. Would you use this session only when you run into a specific
> problem?

This would be my tendency.

But in seeking a solution to a specific problem, I really should be
paying for the assistance -- and I would be happy to do so.  Perhaps
everyone who needs help should bring along a pizza as tuition for the
session.

Still, I think that the problems which I need to solve and for which I
would turn to Perl are common and that the solutions would be of
general applicability.

Rather than a solution to a specific problem, what I need is (1)
guidance as to the proper approach and the tools to use, and (2)
detailed tutorial instruction in the use of tools and techniques for
batch processing of multiple files located in multiple directories.

A primary goal of any Perl tutorial should be to provide perspective,
so that the student is made aware of the various techniques which
could be used to address the problem at hand, and (hopefully) develops
a feel for the most appropriate of the applicable techniques.

==============

A not-strictly-Perl problem which I encounter in my applications is
that of the logistics of Perl scripts and the processed files.

FOR EXAMPLE.  I am in the process of creating several large documents.
For each document, I need to process on the order of a thousand text
files, performing several categories of processing on each.  While the
categories of processing are similar, the details of the processing
vary from one document to the next.

As a Perl novice, my typical approach is to write and debug a Perl
script for each specific operation, so that I end needing to run a
dozen or so Perl scripts on each file to transform raw data into
finished product.  A number of associated files provide data to be
inserted, index values, file names, and so forth.

Of course, in the process of running each Perl script on the set of a
thousand files, it is easy to lose track of the stage of processing.
I am thinking that the Linux "make" utility might be the best way to
manage the logistics.



> Thanks for your time and help.
> G. Wade

Thanks for your offer.