Shell Programming and Scripting

hi..
I am new to perl and have just downloaded the whole perl man directory in html (so I am a little serious about learining how to use it.. ) the only problem is I am hardly getting anything edge wise so far.. except for some basic file scripting.. what I would like to know is how would you use perl on the command line without the use of a script file..
here's an example of something that I was trying to function on the command line to no avail.:
my @var = ("abc","efg",hij");
print $var[1];
i am not even sure if this is actually correct syntax..
having a real hard time.. any help would be appreciated
moxxx68

Your syntax is fine: You're creating an array called @var, indexed from 0 to 2, and printing the middle element. To do this from the command line:

Code:

perl -e 'my @var = ("abc","efg","hij"); print $var[1]'

Since you got the manpages, read "perlrun" for details on the "-e" switch and other nifty stuff you can do. There are more comments to make, but since you're just getting started, do what it says in the main perl manpage and read the first 5 or 6 in the order given.

thanks ... for your quick reply. will take a look and try it out immediately..
(thanks alot..)
moxxx68