| 1 | |
| 2 | Perl Kit, Version 5 |
| 3 | |
| 4 | Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, |
| 5 | 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 by Larry Wall and others |
| 6 | |
| 7 | All rights reserved. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify |
| 10 | it under the terms of either: |
| 11 | |
| 12 | a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free |
| 13 | Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any |
| 14 | later version, or |
| 15 | |
| 16 | b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
| 19 | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| 20 | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either |
| 21 | the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this |
| 24 | Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| 27 | along with this program in the file named "Copying". If not, write to the |
| 28 | Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA |
| 29 | 02111-1307, USA or visit their web page on the internet at |
| 30 | http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License, |
| 33 | my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl |
| 34 | script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put |
| 35 | said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any |
| 36 | object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the |
| 37 | terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions |
| 38 | of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the |
| 39 | resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I |
| 40 | consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral |
| 41 | equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You |
| 42 | may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide |
| 43 | or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General |
| 44 | Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input |
| 45 | to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of |
| 46 | a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or |
| 47 | offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The |
| 48 | fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file |
| 49 | is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation |
| 50 | of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding |
| 51 | my intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic License |
| 52 | spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 55 | |
| 56 | Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk |
| 57 | and shell. See the manual page for more hype. There are also many Perl |
| 58 | books available, covering a wide variety of topics, from various publishers. |
| 59 | See pod/perlbook.pod for more information. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and |
| 62 | then follow them carefully. |
| 63 | |
| 64 | Installation |
| 65 | |
| 66 | 1) Detailed instructions are in the file "INSTALL", which you should |
| 67 | read if you are either installing on a system resembling Unix |
| 68 | or porting perl to another platform. For non-Unix platforms, see the |
| 69 | corresponding README. |
| 70 | |
| 71 | 2) Read the manual entries before running perl. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | 3) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested |
| 74 | patches to perlbug@perl.org so we can keep the world in sync. |
| 75 | If you have a problem, there's someone else out there who either has had |
| 76 | or will have the same problem. See the section on "Reporting Problems" |
| 77 | in the INSTALL file. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | The latest versions of perl are always available on the various CPAN |
| 80 | (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) sites around the world. |
| 81 | See http://www.cpan.org/src/ . |
| 82 | |
| 83 | |
| 84 | Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this |
| 85 | because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your |
| 86 | notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-) |
| 87 | |
| 88 | The author. |