3 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
4 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
5 designed to be readable as is.
9 perlplan9 - Plan 9-specific documentation for Perl
13 These are a few notes describing features peculiar to
14 Plan 9 Perl. As such, it is not intended to be a replacement
15 for the rest of the Perl 5 documentation (which is both
16 copious and excellent). If you have any questions to
17 which you can't find answers in these man pages, contact
18 Luther Huffman at lutherh@stratcom.com and we'll try to
23 Perl is invoked from the command line as described in
24 L<perl>. Most perl scripts, however, do have a first line
25 such as "#!/usr/local/bin/perl". This is known as a shebang
26 (shell-bang) statement and tells the OS shell where to find
27 the perl interpreter. In Plan 9 Perl this statement should be
28 "#!/bin/perl" if you wish to be able to directly invoke the
30 Alternatively, you may invoke perl with the command "Perl"
31 instead of "perl". This will produce Acme-friendly error
32 messages of the form "filename:18".
34 Some scripts, usually identified with a *.PL extension, are
35 self-configuring and are able to correctly create their own
36 shebang path from config information located in Plan 9
37 Perl. These you won't need to be worried about.
39 =head2 What's in Plan 9 Perl
41 Although Plan 9 Perl currently only provides static
42 loading, it is built with a number of useful extensions.
43 These include Opcode, FileHandle, Fcntl, and POSIX. Expect
44 to see others (and DynaLoading!) in the future.
46 =head2 What's not in Plan 9 Perl
48 As mentioned previously, dynamic loading isn't currently
49 available nor is MakeMaker. Both are high-priority items.
51 =head2 Perl5 Functions not currently supported in Plan 9 Perl
53 Some, such as C<chown> and C<umask> aren't provided
54 because the concept does not exist within Plan 9. Others,
55 such as some of the socket-related functions, simply
56 haven't been written yet. Many in the latter category
57 may be supported in the future.
59 The functions not currently implemented include:
61 chown, chroot, dbmclose, dbmopen, getsockopt,
62 setsockopt, recvmsg, sendmsg, getnetbyname,
63 getnetbyaddr, getnetent, getprotoent, getservent,
64 sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent,
65 endservent, endnetent, endprotoent, umask
67 There may be several other functions that have undefined
68 behavior so this list shouldn't be considered complete.
70 =head2 Signals in Plan 9 Perl
72 For compatibility with perl scripts written for the Unix
73 environment, Plan 9 Perl uses the POSIX signal emulation
74 provided in Plan 9's ANSI POSIX Environment (APE). Signal stacking
75 isn't supported. The signals provided are:
77 SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGILL, SIGABRT,
78 SIGFPE, SIGKILL, SIGSEGV, SIGPIPE, SIGPIPE, SIGALRM,
79 SIGTERM, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2, SIGCHLD, SIGCONT,
80 SIGSTOP, SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU
82 =head1 COMPILING AND INSTALLING PERL ON PLAN 9
84 WELCOME to Plan 9 Perl, brave soul!
86 This is a preliminary alpha version of Plan 9 Perl. Still to be
87 implemented are MakeMaker and DynaLoader. Many perl commands are
88 missing or currently behave in an inscrutable manner. These gaps will,
89 with perseverance and a modicum of luck, be remedied in the near
90 future.To install this software:
92 1. Create the source directories and libraries for perl by running the
93 plan9/setup.rc command (i.e., located in the plan9 subdirectory).
94 Note: the setup routine assumes that you haven't dearchived these
95 files into /sys/src/cmd/perl. After running setup.rc you may delete
96 the copy of the source you originally detarred, as source code has now
97 been installed in /sys/src/cmd/perl. If you plan on installing perl
98 binaries for all architectures, run "setup.rc -a".
100 2. After making sure that you have adequate privileges to build system
101 software, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust version
106 If you wish to install perl versions for all architectures (68020,
107 mips, sparc and 386) run:
111 3. Wait. The build process will take a *long* time because perl
112 bootstraps itself. A 75MHz Pentium, 16MB RAM machine takes roughly 30
113 minutes to build the distribution from scratch.
115 =head2 Installing Perl Documentation on Plan 9
117 This perl distribution comes with a tremendous amount of
118 documentation. To add these to the built-in manuals that come with
119 Plan 9, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust version appropriately)
124 To begin your reading, start with:
128 This is a good introduction and will direct you towards other man
129 pages that may interest you.
131 (Note: "mk man" may produce some extraneous noise. Fear not.)
135 "As many as there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the
136 world . . ." - Carl Sagan
140 This document was revised 09-October-1996 for Perl 5.003_7.
144 Direct questions, comments, and the unlikely bug report (ahem) direct
147 Luther Huffman, lutherh@stratcom.com,
148 Strategic Computer Solutions, Inc.