| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.3 $, $Date: 2001/11/09 08:06:04 $) |
| 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 this at http://www.cpan.org/src/latest.tar.gz , which |
| 16 | is in a standard Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format). |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually |
| 19 | all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native |
| 20 | platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, |
| 21 | QNX, BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including |
| 24 | Apple systems, can be found http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. |
| 25 | Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may |
| 26 | and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways. |
| 27 | You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just |
| 28 | what the differences are. These differences can be either positive |
| 29 | (e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that |
| 30 | are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g. |
| 31 | might be based upon a less current source release of perl). |
| 32 | |
| 33 | =head2 How can I get a binary version of Perl? |
| 34 | |
| 35 | If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever |
| 36 | reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is |
| 37 | grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl |
| 38 | with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to |
| 39 | get free compilers for, not for Unix systems. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | Some URLs that might help you are: |
| 42 | |
| 43 | http://www.cpan.org/ports/ |
| 44 | http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html |
| 45 | |
| 46 | Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp |
| 47 | port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with clear |
| 48 | installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS using |
| 49 | Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at |
| 50 | http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html |
| 51 | and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html . |
| 52 | |
| 53 | =head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl? |
| 54 | |
| 55 | Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor |
| 56 | should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system |
| 59 | first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for |
| 60 | information on where to get such a binary version. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | =head2 I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work. |
| 63 | |
| 64 | That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ. |
| 65 | You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will |
| 66 | eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other |
| 67 | approaches are doomed to failure. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out |
| 70 | the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries: |
| 71 | |
| 72 | % perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)' |
| 73 | |
| 74 | If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you |
| 75 | may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create |
| 76 | symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as |
| 77 | part of the output of |
| 78 | |
| 79 | % perl -V |
| 80 | |
| 81 | You might also want to check out |
| 82 | L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work? |
| 85 | |
| 86 | Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution. |
| 87 | It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the |
| 88 | Configure script can't work around for any given system or |
| 89 | architecture. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean? |
| 92 | |
| 93 | CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a ~700mb archive |
| 94 | replicated on nearly 200 machines all over the world. CPAN contains |
| 95 | source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many |
| 96 | third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from |
| 97 | commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web |
| 98 | walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is |
| 99 | http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at |
| 100 | http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you |
| 101 | via DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the |
| 102 | end) for how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ |
| 103 | has a nice interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY |
| 104 | mirror directory. |
| 105 | |
| 106 | See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for |
| 107 | answers to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN |
| 108 | including how to become a mirror. |
| 109 | |
| 110 | CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN |
| 111 | sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the |
| 112 | rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For |
| 113 | instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN |
| 114 | as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as |
| 115 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh . |
| 116 | |
| 117 | Considering that there are close to two thousand existing modules in |
| 118 | the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of. |
| 119 | Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core |
| 120 | modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking, |
| 121 | devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database |
| 122 | interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames, |
| 123 | file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world |
| 124 | wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and |
| 125 | compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow |
| 126 | utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and |
| 127 | miscellaneous modules. |
| 128 | |
| 129 | See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or |
| 130 | http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by category. |
| 131 | |
| 132 | |
| 133 | =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl? |
| 134 | |
| 135 | Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is. |
| 136 | |
| 137 | =head2 Where can I get information on Perl? |
| 138 | |
| 139 | The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution. |
| 140 | If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation |
| 141 | installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix. |
| 142 | This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your |
| 143 | $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation |
| 144 | will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All |
| 145 | proper Perl installations have fully-accessible documentation. |
| 146 | |
| 147 | You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't |
| 148 | have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't |
| 149 | work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation. |
| 150 | |
| 151 | If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.cpan.org/ or |
| 152 | http://www.perldoc.com/ both offer the complete documentation |
| 153 | in html format. |
| 154 | |
| 155 | Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below |
| 156 | for more details. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases |
| 159 | include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's |
| 160 | approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics, |
| 161 | L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular |
| 162 | expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging, |
| 163 | and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more |
| 164 | by the time you read this. The following URLs might also be of |
| 165 | assistance: |
| 166 | |
| 167 | http://perldoc.cpan.org/ |
| 168 | http://www.perldoc.com/ |
| 169 | http://reference.perl.com/query.cgi?tutorials |
| 170 | http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials |
| 171 | |
| 172 | =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions? |
| 173 | |
| 174 | The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the |
| 175 | following groups: |
| 176 | |
| 177 | comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group |
| 178 | comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general |
| 179 | comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group |
| 180 | comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules |
| 181 | comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl |
| 182 | |
| 183 | comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web. |
| 184 | |
| 185 | There is also Usenet gateway to the mailing list used by the crack |
| 186 | Perl development team (perl5-porters) at |
| 187 | news://news.perl.com/perl.porters-gw/ . |
| 188 | |
| 189 | =head2 Where should I post source code? |
| 190 | |
| 191 | You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but |
| 192 | feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post |
| 193 | to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards, |
| 194 | including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources; |
| 195 | see their FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details. |
| 196 | |
| 197 | If you're just looking for software, first use Google |
| 198 | (http://www.google.com), Deja (http://www.deja.com), and |
| 199 | CPAN Search (http://search.cpan.org). This is faster and more |
| 200 | productive than just posting a request. |
| 201 | |
| 202 | =head2 Perl Books |
| 203 | |
| 204 | A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of |
| 205 | these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom |
| 206 | Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive |
| 207 | reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html . |
| 208 | |
| 209 | The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by |
| 210 | the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition: |
| 211 | |
| 212 | Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"): |
| 213 | by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant |
| 214 | 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] |
| 215 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ |
| 216 | (English, translations to several languages are also available) |
| 217 | |
| 218 | The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands |
| 219 | of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is: |
| 220 | |
| 221 | The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"): |
| 222 | by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, |
| 223 | with Foreword by Larry Wall |
| 224 | ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998] |
| 225 | http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/ |
| 226 | |
| 227 | If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might |
| 228 | suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out the |
| 229 | Llama book: |
| 230 | |
| 231 | Learning Perl (the "Llama Book") |
| 232 | by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix |
| 233 | ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001] |
| 234 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/ |
| 235 | |
| 236 | If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and |
| 237 | possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much |
| 238 | hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the |
| 239 | delightful book |
| 240 | |
| 241 | Perl: The Programmer's Companion |
| 242 | by Nigel Chapman |
| 243 | ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998] |
| 244 | http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm |
| 245 | http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc) |
| 246 | |
| 247 | If you are more at home in Windows the following is available |
| 248 | (though unfortunately rather dated). |
| 249 | |
| 250 | Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book") |
| 251 | by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen, |
| 252 | with foreword by Larry Wall |
| 253 | ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997] |
| 254 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/ |
| 255 | |
| 256 | Addison-Wesley (http://www.awlonline.com/) and Manning |
| 257 | (http://www.manning.com/) are also publishers of some fine Perl books |
| 258 | such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and |
| 259 | I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein. |
| 260 | |
| 261 | An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at |
| 262 | http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual. |
| 263 | |
| 264 | What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally |
| 265 | useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary. |
| 266 | |
| 267 | Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow. |
| 268 | |
| 269 | =over 4 |
| 270 | |
| 271 | =item References |
| 272 | |
| 273 | Programming Perl |
| 274 | by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant |
| 275 | ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] |
| 276 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ |
| 277 | |
| 278 | Perl 5 Pocket Reference |
| 279 | by Johan Vromans |
| 280 | ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000] |
| 281 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/ |
| 282 | |
| 283 | Perl in a Nutshell |
| 284 | by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan |
| 285 | ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998] |
| 286 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/ |
| 287 | |
| 288 | =item Tutorials |
| 289 | |
| 290 | Elements of Programming with Perl |
| 291 | by Andrew L. Johnson |
| 292 | ISBN 1884777805 [1st edition October 1999] |
| 293 | http://www.manning.com/Johnson/ |
| 294 | |
| 295 | Learning Perl |
| 296 | by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix |
| 297 | ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001] |
| 298 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/ |
| 299 | |
| 300 | Learning Perl on Win32 Systems |
| 301 | by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen, |
| 302 | with foreword by Larry Wall |
| 303 | ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997] |
| 304 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/ |
| 305 | |
| 306 | Perl: The Programmer's Companion |
| 307 | by Nigel Chapman |
| 308 | ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998] |
| 309 | http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm |
| 310 | http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc) |
| 311 | |
| 312 | Cross-Platform Perl |
| 313 | by Eric Foster-Johnson |
| 314 | ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000] |
| 315 | http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm |
| 316 | |
| 317 | MacPerl: Power and Ease |
| 318 | by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, |
| 319 | with foreword by Matthias Neeracher |
| 320 | ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998] |
| 321 | http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/ |
| 322 | |
| 323 | =item Task-Oriented |
| 324 | |
| 325 | The Perl Cookbook |
| 326 | by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington |
| 327 | with foreword by Larry Wall |
| 328 | ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998] |
| 329 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/ |
| 330 | |
| 331 | Effective Perl Programming |
| 332 | by Joseph Hall |
| 333 | ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998] |
| 334 | http://www.awl.com/ |
| 335 | |
| 336 | |
| 337 | =item Special Topics |
| 338 | |
| 339 | Mastering Regular Expressions |
| 340 | by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl |
| 341 | ISBN 1-56592-257-3 [1st edition January 1997] |
| 342 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/ |
| 343 | |
| 344 | Network Programming with Perl |
| 345 | by Lincoln Stein |
| 346 | ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001] |
| 347 | http://www.awlonline.com/ |
| 348 | |
| 349 | Object Oriented Perl |
| 350 | Damian Conway |
| 351 | with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz |
| 352 | ISBN 1884777791 [1st edition August 1999] |
| 353 | http://www.manning.com/Conway/ |
| 354 | |
| 355 | Data Munging with Perl |
| 356 | Dave Cross |
| 357 | ISBN 1930110006 [1st edition 2001] |
| 358 | http://www.manning.com/cross |
| 359 | |
| 360 | Learning Perl/Tk |
| 361 | by Nancy Walsh |
| 362 | ISBN 1-56592-314-6 [1st edition January 1999] |
| 363 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperltk/ |
| 364 | |
| 365 | =back |
| 366 | |
| 367 | =head2 Perl in Magazines |
| 368 | |
| 369 | The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl, |
| 370 | I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies, |
| 371 | announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web |
| 372 | development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular |
| 373 | expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest |
| 374 | and the Perl Poetry Contests. As of mid-2001, the dead tree version |
| 375 | of TPJ will be published as a quarterly supplement of SysAdmin |
| 376 | magazine ( http://www.sysadmin.com/ ) For more details on TPJ, |
| 377 | see http://www.tpj.com/ |
| 378 | |
| 379 | Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on |
| 380 | Perl are I<Web Techniques> ( http://www.webtechniques.com/ ), |
| 381 | I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ), |
| 382 | I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), |
| 383 | and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:> |
| 384 | ( http://www.usenix.org/ ) |
| 385 | |
| 386 | The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at |
| 387 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ , |
| 388 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and |
| 389 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ . |
| 390 | |
| 391 | =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access |
| 392 | |
| 393 | To get the best performance, pick a site from |
| 394 | the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites |
| 395 | which is at /CPAN/MIRRORED.BY or at http://mirror.cpan.org/. |
| 396 | From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the |
| 397 | following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors |
| 398 | (the complete list contains 165 sites as of January 2001): |
| 399 | |
| 400 | http://www.cpan.org/ |
| 401 | http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ |
| 402 | http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/CPAN/ |
| 403 | ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/ |
| 404 | ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ |
| 405 | ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/ |
| 406 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ |
| 407 | ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/lang/CPAN/ |
| 408 | ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/ |
| 409 | ftp://cpan.if.usp.br/pub/mirror/CPAN/ |
| 410 | |
| 411 | One may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code |
| 412 | for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org. |
| 413 | [Note: This only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.] |
| 414 | |
| 415 | =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl? |
| 416 | |
| 417 | Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own |
| 418 | mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for |
| 419 | subscription information. |
| 420 | |
| 421 | http://lists.cpan.org/ |
| 422 | |
| 423 | =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc |
| 424 | |
| 425 | The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup |
| 426 | content. |
| 427 | |
| 428 | http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=comp.lang.perl.misc |
| 429 | |
| 430 | If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the |
| 431 | same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience |
| 432 | to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you |
| 433 | seek. |
| 434 | |
| 435 | =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl? |
| 436 | |
| 437 | In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license |
| 438 | that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed |
| 439 | in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large |
| 440 | user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.* |
| 441 | newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your |
| 442 | questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by |
| 443 | Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad |
| 444 | programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life |
| 445 | better for everyone. |
| 446 | |
| 447 | However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a |
| 448 | purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry. |
| 449 | Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations. |
| 450 | Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if |
| 451 | that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of Perl, |
| 452 | as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor |
| 453 | and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions |
| 454 | also all come with Perl. |
| 455 | |
| 456 | Alternatively, you can purchase commercial incidence based support |
| 457 | through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them: |
| 458 | |
| 459 | "The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by |
| 460 | ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many |
| 461 | years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals |
| 462 | on a wide range of platforms. |
| 463 | |
| 464 | "Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers, |
| 465 | we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an |
| 466 | explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed." |
| 467 | |
| 468 | Contact The Perl Clinic at |
| 469 | |
| 470 | www.PerlClinic.com |
| 471 | |
| 472 | North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) |
| 473 | Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm |
| 474 | Fax: 1 604 606-4640 |
| 475 | |
| 476 | Europe (GMT) |
| 477 | Tel: 00 44 1483 862814 |
| 478 | Fax: 00 44 1483 862801 |
| 479 | |
| 480 | See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support. |
| 481 | |
| 482 | =head2 Where do I send bug reports? |
| 483 | |
| 484 | If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules |
| 485 | shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or |
| 486 | mail your report to perlbug@perl.org . |
| 487 | |
| 488 | If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to |
| 489 | "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a |
| 490 | non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the |
| 491 | documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post |
| 492 | bugs. |
| 493 | |
| 494 | Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information. |
| 495 | |
| 496 | =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? |
| 497 | |
| 498 | The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted by |
| 499 | The O'Reilly Network, a subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates. |
| 500 | |
| 501 | Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language which |
| 502 | maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy |
| 503 | site for the Perl language. |
| 504 | |
| 505 | Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user |
| 506 | groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the |
| 507 | Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about |
| 508 | joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group. |
| 509 | |
| 510 | Perl Mongers also maintain the perl.org domain to provide general |
| 511 | support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing |
| 512 | lists, web sites, and other services. The web site |
| 513 | http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language, |
| 514 | and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as |
| 515 | |
| 516 | http://bugs.perl.org/ |
| 517 | http://history.perl.org/ |
| 518 | http://lists.perl.org/ |
| 519 | http://news.perl.org/ |
| 520 | http://use.perl.org/ |
| 521 | |
| 522 | =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT |
| 523 | |
| 524 | Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington. |
| 525 | All rights reserved. |
| 526 | |
| 527 | This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it |
| 528 | under the same terms as Perl itself. |
| 529 | |
| 530 | Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public |
| 531 | domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any |
| 532 | derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you |
| 533 | see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would |
| 534 | be courteous but is not required. |