Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native platform), as are proprietary systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, QNX, BeOS, and the Amiga. There are also the beginnings of support for MPE/iX.
Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including Apple systems can be found http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory. Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways. You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just what the differences are. These differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current source release of perl).
A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html
Your first stop should be http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports to see what information is already available. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS is available at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perl5dos.html , and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perlwin3.html .
What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for information on where to get such a binary version.
One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for.
perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately.
You might also want to check out the section on How do I keep my own module/library directory? in the perlfaq8 manpage.
CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of. Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include perl core modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and miscellaneous modules.
You might also try perldoc perl in case your system doesn't have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which contains the complete documentation in various formats, including native pod, troff, html, and plain text. There's also a web page at http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that might help.
Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the section below for more details.
comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.Actually, the moderated group hasn't passed yet, but we're keeping our fingers crossed.
There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack Perl development team (perl5-porters) at news://news.perl.com/perl.porters-gw/ .
If you're just looking for software, first use Alta Vista, Deja News, and search CPAN. This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl, is now in its second edition:
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"): Authors: Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English) ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese) URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl2/ (French, German, Italian, and Hungarian translations also available)The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs (first premiering at the 1998 Perl Conference), is:
The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"): Authors: Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, with Foreword by Larry Wall ISBN: 1-56592-243-3 URL: http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But if you're not, check out:
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"): Authors: Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen with Foreword by Larry Wall ISBN: 1-56592-284-0 URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/Despite the picture at the URL above, the second edition of ``Llama Book'' really has a blue cover, and is updated for the 5.004 release of Perl. Various foreign language editions are available, including Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the Gecko Book).
If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama or its defurred cousin the Gecko, please check out the delightful book, Perl: The Programmer's Companion, written by Nigel Chapman.
You can order O'Reilly books directly from O'Reilly & Associates, 1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is 1-707-829-0515. If you can locate an O'Reilly order form, you can also fax to 1-707-829-0104. See http://www.ora.com/ on the Web.
What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
Recommended books on (or muchly on) Perl follow; those marked with
a star may be ordered from O'Reilly.
*Programming Perl by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
*Perl 5 Desktop Reference By Johan Vromans
*Learning Perl on Win32 Systems by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen, with foreword by Larry Wall
Perl: The Programmer's Companion by Nigel Chapman
Cross-Platform Perl by Eric F. Johnson
MacPerl: Power and Ease by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, foreword by Matthias Neeracher
*The Perl Cookbook by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington with foreword by Larry Wall
Perl5 Interactive Course [2nd edition] by Jon Orwant
*Advanced Perl Programming by Sriram Srinivasan
Effective Perl Programming by Joseph Hall
*Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl
How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition] by Lincoln Stein
Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry high-quality articles on Perl are Web Techniques (see http://www.webtechniques.com/), Performance Computing (http://www.performance-computing.com/), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, login:, at http://www.usenix.org/. Randal's Web Technique's columns are available on the web at http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/.
http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to another mirror) http://www.perl.org/CPAN ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/ ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
If you subscribe to a mailing list, it behooves you to know how to
unsubscribe from it. Strident pleas to the list itself to get you off
will not be favorably received.
Also see Matthias Neeracher's (the creator and maintainer of MacPerl)
webpage at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri/macintosh/perl.html for
many links to interesting MacPerl sites, and the applications/MPW
tools, precompiled.
subscribe Perl-Win32-UsersThe list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, mail the following in the message body to the same address like so:
unsubscribe Perl-Win32-UsersYou can also check http://www.activeware.com/ and select ``Mailing Lists'' to join or leave this list.
subscribe perl-packratsThe list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, simple prepend the same command with an ``un'', and mail to the same address like so:
unsubscribe perl-packrats
ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through 12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism than a file listing, preferably one that allows you to retrieve articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at least author, date, subject, thread (as in ``trn") and probably keywords. The best solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is very slow to select on 18000 articles.
If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections, please let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go wrong. Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if that will help.
Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl. Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
``Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay only for what you need?
``The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5 Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work will be donated to The Perl Institute.''
For more information, contact the The Perl Clinic:
Tel: +44 1483 424424 Fax: +44 1483 419419 Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/ Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.ukSee also www.perl.com for updates on training and support.
If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to ``What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post bugs.
Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
perl.org is the official vehicle for The Perl Institute. The motto of TPI is ``helping people help Perl help people'' (or something like that). It's a non-profit organization supporting development, documentation, and dissemination of perl.
When included as an integrated part of the Standard Distribution of Perl or of its documentation (printed or otherwise), this works is covered under Perl's Artistic Licence. For separate distributions of all or part of this FAQ outside of that, see the perlfaq manpage.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would be courteous but is not required.