In standalone application and MPW-tool incarnations.
Complete source code is available from the ftp sites listed below.
For the uninitiated, Perl is the be-all end-all of UNIX scripting languages, encompassing the functionality of the standard shell scripting languages, plus awk, sed, grep, dbm, and a few extra goodies for the Mac. Do not attempt to use this without first becoming familiar with the Perl language, i.e. read the "camel book" from O'Reilly Associates, aka The Perl Programming Language by Larry Wall and Randall Schwartz. For current information about Perl, see the Usenet group comp.lang.perl.
Excerpts from the documentation follow:
COMMENTS ON THE STANDALONE APPLICATION
The user interface has been completely redone:
- The application is AppleScriptable
- Publishers and Subscribers are supported
- Balloon help is supported (try pointing the mouse at some text like "print")
- Online help supported by selecting text and pressing Command-H.
- The perl debugger runs in a separate window, as does the debug log.
System Requirements
Perl might run on any Mac with at least 4 Megabytes of RAM. If you experience anything different, tell us.
WELCOME TO MPW PERL
This is Perl for the Mac, ported to MPW C by Matthias Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch> and Tim Endres <time@ice.com>. It runs every program in the test suite that you could it reasonably expect to, and some you probably didn't expect. Feel free to give this program away according to the terms stated in the README file.
System Requirements
Perl really likes MPW. The standalone version is not much use yet. Some of the really cool features require ToolServer, System 7, and enough RAM (Notably stuff like `CFront MacApp.cp`, while (<≈.c>) or open(XXX, "Catenate ≈.c |")) Some of the files barely compile with 5 megabytes of RAM. MPW C 3.2.4 is the latest version of MPW C that has been used for rebuilding this release of Perl.
Bugs, Suggestions, Damnations
Please send your bug reports and/or fixes to <neeri@iis.ethz.ch> (It is rather unlikely that any of the bugs are relevant to the UNIX version). Note that MPW Perl is neither developed nor supported by Apple Computer, Inc.
Mailing list
There is now a mailing list for announcing new releases, sharing scripts, and discussions about how to make MPW Perl change your life. To subscribe, send a mail to <mpw-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch>
Ftp sites
If you have internet access, you can obtain the newest versions of Perl by anonymous ftp from one of the following addresses:
nic.switch.ch [130.59.1.40] software/mac/perl
ftp.eunet.ch [146.228.10.15] software/mac/perl
Revision History
23Oct93 4.1.0
- Unifed version for E.T.O. and non-E.T.O. release.
- The standalone application has been completely rewritten and now supports:
- A separate window for the debugger
- Built-in support for creating Droplet applications and Runtimes for both
System 6 and System 7.
- Online Help, including balloons for all Perl commands.
- Recordability and scriptability from AppleScript.
- A cool new suite of icons (don't forget to rebuild the desktop file after
installing if you had an old version of MacPerl installed).
I have tried to credit all people who contributed to the development of Perl in the About box. If you feel left out, feel free to drop me a note :-)
- Disk based associative arrays are supported again.
- All Mac specific commands are renamed again (maybe this time for good).
- AppleScript is supported through the &MacPerl'DoAppleScript command.
