=head1 NAME
-perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.25 $, $Date: 1998/08/05 11:47:25 $)
+perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
The standard release of Perl (the one maintained by the perl
development team) is distributed only in source code form. You
-can find this at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz, which
+can find this at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz , which
in standard Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format).
Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually
all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native
-platform), as are proprietary systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
+platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
QNX, BeOS, and the Amiga. There are also the beginnings of support
for MPE/iX.
Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including
-Apple systems can be found http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory.
+Apple systems, can be found http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory.
Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may
and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways.
You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just
are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g.
might be based upon a less current source release of perl).
-A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is
-http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html
-
=head2 How can I get a binary version of Perl?
-If you don't have a C compiler because for whatever reasons your
-vendor did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
+If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever
+reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl
with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to
get free compilers for, not for Unix systems.
-Your first stop should be http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports to see what
-information is already available. A simple installation guide for
-MS-DOS is available at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perl5dos.html , and
-similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perlwin3.html
-.
+Some URLs that might help you are:
+
+ http://language.perl.com/info/software.html
+ http://www.perl.com/latest/
+ http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/
+
+Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp
+port in http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/msdos/ , which comes with clear
+installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS using
+Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at
+http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html
+and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html .
=head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl?
One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for.
- perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'
+ % perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'
If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you
may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
-symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately.
+symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
+part of the output of
+
+ % perl -V
You might also want to check out L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own
module/library directory?">.
=head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution.
-It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncracies that the
+It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
Configure script can't work around for any given system or
architecture.
Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the
archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of.
-Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include perl core
+Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core
modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking,
devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames,
=head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
-The complete Perl documentation is available with the perl distribution.
-If you have perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
+The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
+If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
$MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
will be different; for example, it might be only in HTML format. But all
-proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
+proper Perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the section below
for more details.
-=head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on USENET? Where do I post questions?
+Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
+include L<perltoot> for objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening
+semantics, L<perlreftut> for managing references, and L<perlxstut>
+for linking C and Perl together. There may be more by the
+time you read this. The following URLs might also be of
+assistance:
+
+ http://language.perl.com/info/documentation.html
+ http://reference.perl.com/query.cgi?tutorials
+
+=head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
following groups:
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
-Actually, the moderated group hasn't passed yet, but we're
-keeping our fingers crossed.
-
-There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
+There is also Usenet gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
news://news.perl.com/perl.porters-gw/ .
=head2 Where should I post source code?
-You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate,
-but feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to
-cross-post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting
-standards, including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT
-include alt.sources; see their FAQ for details.
+You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
+feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
+to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
+including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
+see their FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
-If you're just looking for software, first use Alta Vista, Deja News, and
+If you're just looking for software, first use AltaVista
+(http://www.altavista.com), Deja (http://www.deja.com), and
search CPAN. This is faster and more productive than just posting
a request.
=head2 Perl Books
A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
-these are good, some are ok, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
+these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.
the creator of Perl, is now in its second edition:
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
- Authors: Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
+ by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English)
ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl2/
(first premiering at the 1998 Perl Conference), is:
The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
- Authors: Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
+ by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN: 1-56592-243-3
URL: http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
out:
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"):
- Authors: Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
+ by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN: 1-56592-284-0
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
-Recommended books on (or muchly on) Perl follow; those marked with
+Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow; those marked with
a star may be ordered from O'Reilly.
=over
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
*Perl 5 Desktop Reference
- By Johan Vromans
+ by Johan Vromans
+
+ *Perl in a Nutshell
+ by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
=item Tutorials
MacPerl: Power and Ease
by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, foreword by Matthias Neeracher
-=item Task-Oriented
+=item Task-Oriented
*The Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition]
by Lincoln Stein
+ *Learning Perl/Tk
+ by Nancy Walsh
+
=back
=head2 Perl in Magazines
expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl
Contest. It is published quarterly under the gentle hand of its
editor, Jon Orwant. See http://www.tpj.com/ or send mail to
-subscriptions@tpj.com.
+subscriptions@tpj.com .
Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry high-quality articles
on Perl are I<Web Techniques> (see http://www.webtechniques.com/),
From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to another mirror)
+ http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local
+ http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to an ftp mirror)
http://www.perl.org/CPAN
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
-=head2 What mailing lists are there for perl?
+=head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
-Most of the major modules (tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
+Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
-subscription information. The following are a list of mailing lists
-related to perl itself.
-
-If you subscribe to a mailing list, it behooves you to know how to
-unsubscribe from it. Strident pleas to the list itself to get you off
-will not be favorably received.
-
-=over 4
-
-=item MacPerl
-
-There is a mailing list for discussing Macintosh Perl. Contact
-"mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch".
-
-Also see Matthias Neeracher's (the creator and maintainer of MacPerl)
-webpage at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri/macintosh/perl.html for
-many links to interesting MacPerl sites, and the applications/MPW
-tools, precompiled.
-
-=item Perl5-Porters
+subscription information. The Perl Mongers attempt to maintain a
+list of mailing lists at:
-The core development team have a mailing list for discussing fixes and
-changes to the language. Send mail to
-"perl5-porters-request@perl.org" with help in the body of the message
-for information on subscribing.
+ http://www.perl.org/support/online_support.html#mail
-=item NTPerl
-
-This list is used to discuss issues involving Win32 Perl 5 (Windows NT
-and Win95). Subscribe by mailing ListManager@ActiveWare.com with the
-message body:
-
- subscribe Perl-Win32-Users
-
-The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine
-your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, mail
-the following in the message body to the same address like so:
-
- unsubscribe Perl-Win32-Users
-
-You can also check http://www.activeware.com/ and select "Mailing Lists"
-to join or leave this list.
-
-=item Perl-Packrats
-
-Discussion related to archiving of perl materials, particularly the
-Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Subscribe by emailing
-majordomo@cis.ufl.edu:
-
- subscribe perl-packrats
-
-The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine
-your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, simple
-prepend the same command with an "un", and mail to the same address
-like so:
+=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
- unsubscribe perl-packrats
+Have you tried Deja or AltaVista? Those are the
+best archives. Just look up "*perl*" as a newsgroup.
-=back
+ http://www.deja.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=terse&showsort=date&maxhits=25&subjects=&groups=*perl*&authors=&fromdate=&todate=
-=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
-
-Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista?
+You'll probably want to trim that down a bit, though.
ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost
complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through
=head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
-In a sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: It has a licence
-that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is
-distributed in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a
-very large user community and an extensive literature. The
-comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide
-free answers to your questions in near real-time. Perl has
-traditionally been supported by Larry, dozens of software designers
-and developers, and thousands of programmers, all working for free
-to create a useful thing to make life better for everyone.
+In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: It has a license
+that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
+in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
+user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
+newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
+questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
+Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriads of
+programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
+better for everyone.
However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
-purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go
-wrong. Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual
-obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from
-several sources if that will help.
+purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
+Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
+Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if
+that will help. For example, many Perl books carry a Perl distribution
+on them, as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
+and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
+also all come with Perl.
Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically
provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl.
of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work
will be donated to The Perl Institute."
-For more information, contact the The Perl Clinic:
+For more information, contact The Perl Clinic:
Tel: +44 1483 424424
Fax: +44 1483 419419
Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/
Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk
-See also www.perl.com for updates on training and support.
+See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
=head2 Where do I send bug reports?
If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
-shipped with perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the perl distribution or
-mail your report to perlbug@perl.com.
+shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
+mail your report to perlbug@perl.com .
If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
"What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
-=head2 What is perl.com? perl.org? The Perl Institute?
+=head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
-The perl.com domain is managed by Tom Christiansen, who created it as a
+The perl.com domain is owned by Tom Christiansen, who created it as a
public service long before perl.org came about. Despite the name, it's a
pretty non-commercial site meant to be a clearinghouse for information
about all things Perlian, accepting no paid advertisements, bouncy
-happy gifs, or silly java applets on its pages. The Perl Home Page at
+happy GIFs, or silly Java applets on its pages. The Perl Home Page at
http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted on a T3 line courtesy of Songline
Systems, a software-oriented subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
+Other starting points include
+
+ http://language.perl.com/
+ http://conference.perl.com/
+ http://reference.perl.com/
+
+Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language. For
+details, see the Perl Mongers web site at http://www.perlmongers.org/.
-perl.org is the official vehicle for The Perl Institute. The motto of
-TPI is "helping people help Perl help people" (or something like
-that). It's a non-profit organization supporting development,
-documentation, and dissemination of perl.
+Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
+groups. See the Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more
+information about joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl
+user group.
-=head2 How do I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?
+Perl Mongers also maintains the perl.org domain to provide general
+support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
+lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
+http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
+and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
-L<perltoot> (distributed with 5.004 or later) is a good place to start.
-Also, L<perlobj>, L<perlref>, and L<perlmod> are useful references,
-while L<perlbot> has some excellent tips and tricks.
+ http://history.perl.org/
+ http://bugs.perl.org/
+ http://www.news.perl.org/
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
+Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
All rights reserved.
When included as an integrated part of the Standard Distribution
of Perl or of its documentation (printed or otherwise), this works is
-covered under Perl's Artistic Licence. For separate distributions of
+covered under Perl's Artistic License. For separate distributions of
all or part of this FAQ outside of that, see L<perlfaq>.
-Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are public
+Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff