| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find |
| 8 | source and documentation for Perl, support, and |
| 9 | related matters. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | =head2 What machines support perl? Where do I get it? |
| 12 | |
| 13 | The standard release of perl (the one maintained by the perl |
| 14 | development team) is distributed only in source code form. You |
| 15 | can find the latest releases at http://www.cpan.org/src/README.html . |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually |
| 18 | all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (perl's native |
| 19 | platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, |
| 20 | QNX, BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms can be found |
| 23 | http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. Because these are not part of |
| 24 | the standard distribution, they may and in fact do differ from the |
| 25 | base perl port in a variety of ways. You'll have to check their |
| 26 | respective release notes to see just what the differences are. These |
| 27 | differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features |
| 28 | of the particular platform that are not supported in the source |
| 29 | release of perl) or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current |
| 30 | source release of perl). |
| 31 | |
| 32 | =head2 How can I get a binary version of perl? |
| 33 | |
| 34 | (contributed by brian d foy) |
| 35 | |
| 36 | ActiveState: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX |
| 37 | |
| 38 | http://www.activestate.com/ |
| 39 | |
| 40 | Sunfreeware.com: Solaris 2.5 to Solaris 10 (SPARC and x86) |
| 41 | |
| 42 | http://www.sunfreeware.com/ |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Strawberry Perl: Windows, Perl 5.8.8 and 5.10.0 |
| 45 | |
| 46 | http://www.strawberryperl.com |
| 47 | |
| 48 | IndigoPerl: Windows |
| 49 | |
| 50 | http://indigostar.com/ |
| 51 | |
| 52 | =head2 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter? |
| 53 | |
| 54 | Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor |
| 55 | should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | What you need to do is get a binary version of C<gcc> for your system |
| 58 | first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for |
| 59 | information on where to get such a binary version. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | You might look around the net for a pre-built binary of Perl (or a |
| 62 | C compiler!) that meets your needs, though: |
| 63 | |
| 64 | For Windows, Vanilla Perl ( http://vanillaperl.com/ ) and Strawberry Perl |
| 65 | ( http://strawberryperl.com/ ) come with a |
| 66 | bundled C compiler. ActivePerl is a pre-compiled version of Perl |
| 67 | ready-to-use. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | For Sun systems, SunFreeware.com provides binaries of most popular |
| 70 | applications, including compilers and Perl. |
| 71 | |
| 72 | =head2 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ. |
| 75 | You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will |
| 76 | eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other |
| 77 | approaches are doomed to failure. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out |
| 80 | the hard-coded C<@INC> that perl looks through for libraries: |
| 81 | |
| 82 | % perl -le 'print for @INC' |
| 83 | |
| 84 | If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you |
| 85 | may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create |
| 86 | symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. C<@INC> is also printed as |
| 87 | part of the output of |
| 88 | |
| 89 | % perl -V |
| 90 | |
| 91 | You might also want to check out |
| 92 | L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">. |
| 93 | |
| 94 | =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work? |
| 95 | |
| 96 | Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution. |
| 97 | It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the |
| 98 | C<Configure> script can't work around for any given system or |
| 99 | architecture. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean? |
| 102 | |
| 103 | CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a multi-gigabyte |
| 104 | archive replicated on hundreds of machines all over the world. CPAN |
| 105 | contains source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and |
| 106 | many third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from |
| 107 | commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web |
| 108 | walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is |
| 109 | http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at |
| 110 | http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you via |
| 111 | DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the end) for |
| 112 | how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ has a nice |
| 113 | interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY mirror directory. |
| 114 | |
| 115 | See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for answers |
| 116 | to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN including how to |
| 117 | become a mirror. |
| 118 | |
| 119 | C<CPAN/path/...> is a naming convention for files available on CPAN |
| 120 | sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the |
| 121 | rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For |
| 122 | instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN |
| 123 | as your CPAN site, the file C<CPAN/misc/japh> is downloadable as |
| 124 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh . |
| 125 | |
| 126 | Considering that, as of 2006, there are over ten thousand existing |
| 127 | modules in the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you |
| 128 | can think of. Current categories under C<CPAN/modules/by-category/> |
| 129 | include Perl core modules; development support; operating system |
| 130 | interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communication; data |
| 131 | type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to |
| 132 | other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking; |
| 133 | internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and |
| 134 | daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail |
| 135 | and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft |
| 136 | Windows modules; and miscellaneous modules. |
| 137 | |
| 138 | See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or |
| 139 | http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by |
| 140 | category. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | CPAN is a free service and is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media. |
| 143 | |
| 144 | =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl? |
| 145 | |
| 146 | Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is. |
| 147 | |
| 148 | =head2 Where can I get information on Perl? |
| 149 | |
| 150 | The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution. |
| 151 | If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation |
| 152 | installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix. |
| 153 | This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your |
| 154 | C<$MANPATH>. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation |
| 155 | will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All |
| 156 | proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't |
| 159 | have a proper C<man> command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't |
| 160 | work, try looking in C</usr/local/lib/perl5/pod> for documentation. |
| 161 | |
| 162 | If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the |
| 163 | complete documentation in HTML and PDF format. |
| 164 | |
| 165 | Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section later in |
| 166 | L<perlfaq2> for more details. |
| 167 | |
| 168 | Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases |
| 169 | include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's |
| 170 | approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics, |
| 171 | L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular |
| 172 | expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging, |
| 173 | and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more |
| 174 | by the time you read this. These URLs might also be useful: |
| 175 | |
| 176 | http://perldoc.perl.org/ |
| 177 | http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials |
| 178 | |
| 179 | =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions? |
| 180 | |
| 181 | Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet: |
| 182 | |
| 183 | comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group |
| 184 | comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion |
| 185 | comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group |
| 186 | comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules |
| 187 | comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl |
| 188 | |
| 189 | Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and |
| 190 | comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still |
| 191 | be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because |
| 192 | postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the |
| 193 | official list of group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics |
| 194 | which do not have a more-appropriate specific group. |
| 195 | |
| 196 | There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by |
| 197 | perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists |
| 198 | at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available |
| 199 | under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other |
| 200 | groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as |
| 201 | http://lists.cpan.org/ ). |
| 202 | |
| 203 | A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site, |
| 204 | http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list |
| 205 | http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners . |
| 206 | |
| 207 | Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you: |
| 208 | asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine, |
| 209 | but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | =head2 Where should I post source code? |
| 212 | |
| 213 | You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but |
| 214 | feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post |
| 215 | to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards, |
| 216 | including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources; |
| 217 | see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details. |
| 218 | |
| 219 | If you're just looking for software, first use Google |
| 220 | ( http://www.google.com ), Google's Usenet search interface |
| 221 | ( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ). |
| 222 | This is faster and more productive than just posting a request. |
| 223 | |
| 224 | =head2 Perl Books |
| 225 | |
| 226 | A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few |
| 227 | of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. |
| 228 | There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at |
| 229 | http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you |
| 230 | can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org . |
| 231 | |
| 232 | The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by |
| 233 | the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl: |
| 234 | |
| 235 | Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"): |
| 236 | by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant |
| 237 | ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] |
| 238 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ |
| 239 | (English, translations to several languages are also available) |
| 240 | |
| 241 | The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands |
| 242 | of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is: |
| 243 | |
| 244 | The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"): |
| 245 | by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, |
| 246 | with Foreword by Larry Wall |
| 247 | ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003] |
| 248 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/ |
| 249 | |
| 250 | If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might |
| 251 | suffice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the |
| 252 | Llama book: |
| 253 | |
| 254 | Learning Perl |
| 255 | by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy |
| 256 | ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005] |
| 257 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/ |
| 258 | |
| 259 | And for more advanced information on writing larger programs, |
| 260 | presented in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education |
| 261 | with the Alpaca book: |
| 262 | |
| 263 | Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book") |
| 264 | by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway) |
| 265 | ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006] |
| 266 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/ |
| 267 | |
| 268 | Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning |
| 269 | ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books |
| 270 | such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and |
| 271 | I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein. |
| 272 | |
| 273 | An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at |
| 274 | http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual. |
| 275 | |
| 276 | What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally |
| 277 | useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary. |
| 278 | |
| 279 | Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow. |
| 280 | |
| 281 | =over 4 |
| 282 | |
| 283 | =item References |
| 284 | |
| 285 | Programming Perl |
| 286 | by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant |
| 287 | ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] |
| 288 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ |
| 289 | |
| 290 | Perl 5 Pocket Reference |
| 291 | by Johan Vromans |
| 292 | ISBN 0-596-00374-9 [4th edition July 2002] |
| 293 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr4/ |
| 294 | |
| 295 | =item Tutorials |
| 296 | |
| 297 | Beginning Perl |
| 298 | by James Lee |
| 299 | ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004] |
| 300 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344 |
| 301 | |
| 302 | Elements of Programming with Perl |
| 303 | by Andrew L. Johnson |
| 304 | ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999] |
| 305 | http://www.manning.com/johnson/ |
| 306 | |
| 307 | Learning Perl |
| 308 | by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy |
| 309 | ISBN 0-596-52010-7 [5th edition June 2008] |
| 310 | http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106/ |
| 311 | |
| 312 | Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book") |
| 313 | by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway) |
| 314 | ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006] |
| 315 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/intermediateperl/ |
| 316 | |
| 317 | Mastering Perl |
| 318 | by brian d foy |
| 319 | ISBN 0-596-52724-1 [1st edition July 2007] |
| 320 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242/ |
| 321 | |
| 322 | =item Task-Oriented |
| 323 | |
| 324 | Writing Perl Modules for CPAN |
| 325 | by Sam Tregar |
| 326 | ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition August 2002] |
| 327 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14 |
| 328 | |
| 329 | The Perl Cookbook |
| 330 | by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington |
| 331 | with foreword by Larry Wall |
| 332 | ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998] |
| 333 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/ |
| 334 | |
| 335 | Effective Perl Programming |
| 336 | by Joseph Hall |
| 337 | ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998] |
| 338 | http://www.awl.com/ |
| 339 | |
| 340 | Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl |
| 341 | by Linchi Shea |
| 342 | ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003] |
| 343 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171 |
| 344 | |
| 345 | =item Special Topics |
| 346 | |
| 347 | Perl Best Practices |
| 348 | by Damian Conway |
| 349 | ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005] |
| 350 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/ |
| 351 | |
| 352 | Higher Order Perl |
| 353 | by Mark-Jason Dominus |
| 354 | ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005] |
| 355 | http://hop.perl.plover.com/ |
| 356 | |
| 357 | Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5 |
| 358 | by Scott Walters |
| 359 | ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004] |
| 360 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355 |
| 361 | |
| 362 | Mastering Regular Expressions |
| 363 | by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl |
| 364 | ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002] |
| 365 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/ |
| 366 | |
| 367 | Network Programming with Perl |
| 368 | by Lincoln Stein |
| 369 | ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001] |
| 370 | http://www.awlonline.com/ |
| 371 | |
| 372 | Object Oriented Perl |
| 373 | by Damian Conway |
| 374 | with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz |
| 375 | ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999] |
| 376 | http://www.manning.com/conway/ |
| 377 | |
| 378 | Data Munging with Perl |
| 379 | by Dave Cross |
| 380 | ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001] |
| 381 | http://www.manning.com/cross |
| 382 | |
| 383 | Mastering Perl/Tk |
| 384 | by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh |
| 385 | ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002] |
| 386 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/ |
| 387 | |
| 388 | Extending and Embedding Perl |
| 389 | by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens |
| 390 | ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002] |
| 391 | http://www.manning.com/jenness |
| 392 | |
| 393 | Perl Debugger Pocket Reference |
| 394 | by Richard Foley |
| 395 | ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004] |
| 396 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/ |
| 397 | |
| 398 | Pro Perl Debugging |
| 399 | by Richard Foley with Andy Lester |
| 400 | ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005] |
| 401 | http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590594541 |
| 402 | |
| 403 | =back |
| 404 | |
| 405 | =head2 Which magazines have Perl content? |
| 406 | |
| 407 | I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ) focuses on Perl |
| 408 | almost completely (although it sometimes sneaks in an article about |
| 409 | another language). There's also I<$foo Magazin>, a german magazine |
| 410 | dedicated to Perl, at ( http://www.foo-magazin.de ). |
| 411 | |
| 412 | The I<Perl-Zeitung> is a German-speaking magazine for Perl beginners |
| 413 | (see http://perl-zeitung.at.tf ). |
| 414 | |
| 415 | Magazines that frequently carry quality articles on Perl include I<The |
| 416 | Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), I<Unix Review> ( |
| 417 | http://www.unixreview.com/ ), I<Linux Magazine> ( |
| 418 | http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to |
| 419 | its members, I<login:> ( http://www.usenix.org/ ). |
| 420 | |
| 421 | The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at |
| 422 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ , |
| 423 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and |
| 424 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ . |
| 425 | |
| 426 | The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things |
| 427 | Perl, I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case |
| 428 | studies, announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns |
| 429 | on web development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, |
| 430 | regular expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl |
| 431 | Contest and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, I<TPJ> |
| 432 | moved to a reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers |
| 433 | can download issues as PDF documents. In 2006, I<TPJ> merged with Dr. |
| 434 | Dobbs Journal (online edition). To read old I<TPJ> articles, see |
| 435 | http://www.ddj.com/ . |
| 436 | |
| 437 | =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl? |
| 438 | |
| 439 | Most of the major modules (C<Tk>, C<CGI>, C<libwww-perl>) have their own |
| 440 | mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for |
| 441 | subscription information. |
| 442 | |
| 443 | A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at: |
| 444 | |
| 445 | http://lists.perl.org/ |
| 446 | |
| 447 | =head2 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc? |
| 448 | |
| 449 | The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup |
| 450 | content. |
| 451 | |
| 452 | http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.perl.misc/topics |
| 453 | |
| 454 | If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the |
| 455 | same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience |
| 456 | to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you |
| 457 | seek. |
| 458 | |
| 459 | =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl? |
| 460 | |
| 461 | In a real sense, perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license |
| 462 | that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed |
| 463 | in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large |
| 464 | user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.* |
| 465 | newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your |
| 466 | questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by |
| 467 | Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad |
| 468 | programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life |
| 469 | better for everyone. |
| 470 | |
| 471 | However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a |
| 472 | purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry. |
| 473 | Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations. |
| 474 | Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if |
| 475 | that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of perl, |
| 476 | as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor |
| 477 | and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions |
| 478 | also all come with perl. |
| 479 | |
| 480 | =head2 Where do I send bug reports? |
| 481 | |
| 482 | (contributed by brian d foy) |
| 483 | |
| 484 | First, ensure that you've found an actual bug. Second, ensure you've |
| 485 | found an actual bug. |
| 486 | |
| 487 | If you've found a bug with the perl interpreter or one of the modules |
| 488 | in the standard library (those that come with Perl), you can use the |
| 489 | C<perlbug> utility that comes with Perl (>= 5.004). It collects |
| 490 | information about your installation to include with your message, then |
| 491 | sends the message to the right place. |
| 492 | |
| 493 | To determine if a module came with your version of Perl, you can |
| 494 | use the C<Module::CoreList> module. It has the information about |
| 495 | the modules (with their versions) included with each release of Perl. |
| 496 | |
| 497 | If C<Module::CoreList> is not installed on your system, check out |
| 498 | http://perlpunks.de/corelist . |
| 499 | |
| 500 | Every CPAN module has a bug tracker set up in RT, http://rt.cpan.org . |
| 501 | You can submit bugs to RT either through its web interface or by |
| 502 | email. To email a bug report, send it to |
| 503 | bug-E<lt>distribution-nameE<gt>@rt.cpan.org . For example, if you |
| 504 | wanted to report a bug in C<Business::ISBN>, you could send a message to |
| 505 | bug-Business-ISBN@rt.cpan.org . |
| 506 | |
| 507 | Some modules might have special reporting requirements, such as a |
| 508 | Sourceforge or Google Code tracking system, so you should check the |
| 509 | module documentation too. |
| 510 | |
| 511 | =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org? |
| 512 | |
| 513 | Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a |
| 514 | subsidiary of O'Reilly Media. |
| 515 | |
| 516 | The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language |
| 517 | which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general |
| 518 | advocacy site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide |
| 519 | general support services to the Perl community, including the hosting |
| 520 | of mailing lists, web sites, and other services. There are also many |
| 521 | other sub-domains for special topics like learning Perl, Perl news, jobs |
| 522 | in Perl, such as: |
| 523 | |
| 524 | http://learn.perl.org/ |
| 525 | http://use.perl.org/ |
| 526 | http://jobs.perl.org/ |
| 527 | http://lists.perl.org/ |
| 528 | |
| 529 | Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user |
| 530 | groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the |
| 531 | Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about |
| 532 | joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group. |
| 533 | |
| 534 | http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, |
| 535 | a replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see |
| 536 | the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document. |
| 537 | |
| 538 | =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT |
| 539 | |
| 540 | Copyright (c) 1997-2010 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and |
| 541 | other authors as noted. All rights reserved. |
| 542 | |
| 543 | This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it |
| 544 | under the same terms as Perl itself. |
| 545 | |
| 546 | Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public |
| 547 | domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any |
| 548 | derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you |
| 549 | see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would |
| 550 | be courteous but is not required. |