+Perl is Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000,
+2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 by Larry Wall
+and others. All rights reserved.
- Perl Kit, Version 3.0
- Copyright (c) 1989, Larry Wall
- This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
- it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
- any later version.
+ABOUT PERL
+==========
- This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
- GNU General Public License for more details.
+Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for
+text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including
+system administration, web development, network programming, GUI
+development, and more.
- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
+The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient,
+complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). Its major
+features are that it's easy to use, supports both procedural and
+object-oriented (OO) programming, has powerful built-in support for text
+processing, and has one of the world's most impressive collections of
+third-party modules.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+For an introduction to the language's features, see pod/perlintro.pod.
-Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk and shell.
-See the manual page for more hype.
+For a discussion of the important changes in this release, see
+pod/perldelta.pod.
-Perl will probably not run on machines with a small address space.
+There are also many Perl books available, covering a wide variety of topics,
+from various publishers. See pod/perlbook.pod for more information.
-Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
-then follow them carefully.
-After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed
-in MANIFEST.
+INSTALLATION
+============
-Installation
+If you're using a relatively modern operating system and want to
+install this version of Perl locally, run the following commands:
-1) Run Configure. This will figure out various things about your system.
- Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will
- ask you about. It will then proceed to make config.h, config.sh, and
- Makefile.
+ ./Configure -des -Dprefix=$HOME/localperl
+ make test
+ make install
- You might possibly have to trim # comments from the front of Configure
- if your sh doesn't handle them, but all other # comments will be taken
- care of.
+This will configure and compile perl for your platform, run the regression
+tests, and install perl in a subdirectory "localperl" of your home directory.
- (If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config.H to
- config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.)
+If you run into any trouble whatsoever or you need to install a customized
+version of Perl, you should read the detailed instructions in the "INSTALL"
+file that came with this distribution. Additionally, there are a number of
+"README" files with hints and tips about building and using Perl on a wide
+variety of platforms, some more common than others.
-2) Glance through config.h to make sure system dependencies are correct.
- Most of them should have been taken care of by running the Configure script.
+Once you have Perl installed, a wealth of documentation is available to you
+through the 'perldoc' tool. To get started, run this command:
- If you have any additional changes to make to the C definitions, they
- can be done in the Makefile, or in config.h. Bear in mind that they will
- get undone next time you run Configure.
+ perldoc perl
-3) make depend
- This will look for all the includes and modify Makefile accordingly.
- Configure will offer to do this for you.
+IF YOU RUN INTO TROUBLE
+=======================
-4) make
+Perl is a large and complex system that's used for everything from
+knitting to rocket science. If you run into trouble, it's quite
+likely that someone else has already solved the problem you're
+facing. Once you've exhausted the documentation, please report bugs to us
+using the 'perlbug' tool. For more information about perlbug, either type
+'perldoc perlbug' or just 'perlbug' on a line by itself.
- This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
+While it was current when we made it available, Perl is constantly evolving
+and there may be a more recent version that fixes bugs you've run into or
+adds new features that you might find useful.
- If you can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC flag.
- (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
- This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
- get indigestion easily. If that has no effect, try turning off
- optimization. If you have missing routines, you probably need to
- add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that
- Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete.
-
- Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
- some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
- internal tables. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
- Makefile.SH, since a default rule only take effect in the
- absence of a specific rule.
-
- The 3b2 needs to turn off -O.
- AIX/RT may need a -a switch and -DCRIPPLED_CC.
- SGI machines may need -Ddouble="long float".
- Ultrix (2.3) may need to hand assemble teval.s with a -J switch.
- Ultrix on MIPS machines may need -DLANGUAGE_C.
- SCO Xenix may need -m25000 for yacc.
- Xenix 386 needs -Sm10000 for yacc.
- Genix needs to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
- NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
- Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef ODBM & NDBM.
- C's that don't try to restore registers on longjmp() may need -DJMPCLOBBER.
- (Try this if you get random glitches.)
-
-5) make test
-
- This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made.
- If it doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong.
- See the README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
- in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty. If "make test"
- bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run TEST by hand to see if
- it makes any difference.
-
-6) make install
-
- This will put perl into a public directory (such as /usr/local/bin).
- It will also try to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not
- nroff the man page, however. You may need to be root to do this. If
- you are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
- ignore any messages about chown not working.
-
-7) Read the manual entry before running perl.
-
-8) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested
- patches to me, lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Wall), so we can
- keep the world in sync. If you have a problem, there's someone else
- out there who either has had or will have the same problem.
-
- If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
- Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs. Don't send ed scripts--
- I've probably changed my copy since the version you have.
-
- Watch for perl patches in comp.lang.perl. Patches will generally be
- in a form usable by the patch program. If you are just now bringing up
- perl and aren't sure how many patches there are, write to me and I'll
- send any you don't have. Your current patch level is shown in patchlevel.h.
+You can always find the latest version of perl on a CPAN (Comprehensive Perl
+Archive Network) site near you at http://www.cpan.org/src/
Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this
notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)
The author.
+
+
+LICENSING
+=========
+
+This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the terms of either:
+
+ a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
+ Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
+ later version, or
+
+ b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.
+
+This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
+the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.
+
+You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this
+Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one.
+
+You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+along with this program in the file named "Copying". If not, write to the
+Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
+Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA or visit their web page on the internet at
+http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
+
+For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License,
+my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl
+script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put
+said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any
+object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the
+terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions
+of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the
+resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I
+consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral
+equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You
+may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide
+or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General
+Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input
+to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of
+a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or
+offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The
+fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file
+is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation
+of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding
+my intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic License
+spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that.
+
+
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff