It's very common for web sites to generate web pages on the fly, accessing information in a server database to be used to create and display HTML pages on the fly - dynamic HTML. The pages are created by a program that runs on the server. Since VB does not work in UNIX, and since most servers run UNIX, VB programmers are out of luck. Fortunately, UNIX does support the very popular freeware language "Perl", which I call the "QBasic of UNIX". Perl is an interpreted language, like QBasic, with which you can write programs to run on UNIX servers and which you can call from your web pages. Perl is functionally similar to QBasic and the basics of Perl are fairly easy to learn. This part of the tutorial briefly covers UNIX and Perl.

This tutorial is an introductory look at the Perl language and its syntax.

People use Perl because it is quick, efficient, and easy to maintain when programming a wide range of tasks, in particular those involving the manipulation of text files. Also, there are many others also using Perl who are prepared to share their code.

Knowing which commands work with one another can help you come quickly up to speed on the Perl functions that are available to you. This page provdes a functional grouping of Perl commands. You'll notice that the Perl commands serve many of the same kinds of functions that you're used to having available for your VB programs. Just by inspection you will be able to surmise the capability offerred by many of the commands, even if you don't know the exact syntax.

This tutorial walks through using array variables in Perl.

Learn how to use simple comparisons and regular expressions in Perl.

Learn how to use date and times in Perl.