perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision:
1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)
DESCRIPTION
This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to
find source and documentation for Perl, support, and
related matters.
What machines support Perl? Where do I get it?
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 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 sup
ported (Perl's native 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. 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 what the differences are. These differences
can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features
of the particular platform that are not supported in the
source release of perl) or negative (e.g. might be based
upon a less current source release of perl).
How can I get a binary version of Perl?
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.
Some URLs that might help you are:
http://language.perl.com/info/software.html
http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html#binary
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
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 .
I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile
perl?
Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your
vendor should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that
doesn't help you.
What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for
your system first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your oper
ating system for information on where to get such a binary
version.
I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but
scripts don't work.
That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library
paths differ. You really should build the whole distribu
tion on the machine it will eventually live on, and then
type `make install'. Most other approaches are doomed to
failure.
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)'
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 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 the How do I keep my own
module/library directory? entry in the perlfaq8 manpage.
I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but
gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I
make it work?
Read the INSTALL file, which is part of the source distri
bution. It describes in detail how to cope with most
idiosyncrasies that the Configure script can't work around
for any given system or architecture.
is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a huge
archive replicated on dozens of machines all over the
world. CPAN contains source code, non-native ports, docu
mentation, scripts, and many third-party modules and
extensions, designed for everything from commercial
database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
walking and CGI scripts. The master machine for CPAN is
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/, but you can
use the address http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html to
fetch a copy from a "site near you". See
http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the end) for
how this process works.
CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available
on CPAN sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a
CPAN mirror, and the rest of the path is the path from
that directory to the file. For instance, if you're using
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN as your CPAN
site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
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 modules; development support;
operating system interfaces; networking, devices, and
interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other lan
guages; filenames, file systems, and file locking; inter
nationalization and locale; world wide web support; server
and daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image
manipulation; mail and news; control flow utilities; file
handle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and miscella
neous modules.
Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified
before Perl is.
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 installed as well: type
`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 exam
ple, it might be only in HTML format. But all proper Perl
installations have fully-accessible documentation.
doesn't have a proper man command, or it's been misin
stalled. If that doesn't work, try looking in
/usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which
contains the complete documentation in various formats,
including native pod, troff, html, and plain text.
There's also a web page at
http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that
might help.
Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the
section below for more details.
Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming
Perl releases include the perltoot manpage for objects,
the perlopentut manpage for file opening semantics, the
perlreftut manpage for managing references, and the per
lxstut manpage 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
What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post
questions?
The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been super
seded by the following groups:
comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
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/ .
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
(http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
(http://www.altavista.com), Deja (http://www.deja.com),
and search CPAN. This is faster and more productive than
just posting a request.
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 Christiansen maintains a
list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at
http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.
The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, writ
ten by the creator of Perl, is now in its second edition:
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
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/
(French, German, Italian, and Hungarian translations also
available)
The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands of
real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs
(first premiering at the 1998 Perl Conference), is:
The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN: 1-56592-243-3
URL: http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the
Camel Book might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But
if you're not, check out:
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"):
by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
with Foreword by Larry Wall
ISBN: 1-56592-284-0
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
Despite the picture at the URL above, the second edition
of "Llama Book" really has a blue cover, and is updated
for the 5.004 release of Perl. Various foreign language
editions are available, including Learning Perl on Win32
Systems (the Gecko Book).
If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious
and possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't
need as much hand-holding as we try to provide in the
Llama or its defurred cousin the Gecko, please check out
written by Nigel Chapman.
You can order O'Reilly books directly from O'Reilly &
Associates, 1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is
1-707-829-0515. If you can locate an O'Reilly order form,
you can also fax to 1-707-829-0104. See
http://www.ora.com/ on the Web.
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 mostly on) Perl follow; those
marked with a star may be ordered from O'Reilly.
References
*Programming Perl
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
*Perl 5 Desktop Reference
by Johan Vromans
*Perl in a Nutshell
by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
Tutorials
*Learning Perl [2nd edition]
by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
with foreword by Larry Wall
*Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
with foreword by Larry Wall
Perl: The Programmer's Companion
by Nigel Chapman
Cross-Platform Perl
by Eric F. Johnson
MacPerl: Power and Ease
by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, foreword by Matthias Neeracher
Task-Oriented
*The Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
with foreword by Larry Wall
Perl5 Interactive Course [2nd edition]
by Jon Orwant
by Sriram Srinivasan
Effective Perl Programming
by Joseph Hall
Special Topics
*Mastering Regular Expressions
by Jeffrey Friedl
How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition]
by Lincoln Stein
*Learning Perl/Tk
by Nancy Walsh
Perl in Magazines
The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl,
The Perl Journal contains tutorials, demonstrations, case
studies, announcements, contests, and much more. TPJ has
columns on web development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphi
cal programming, regular 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 subscrip
tions@tpj.com .
Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry high-quality
articles on Perl are Web Techniques (see
http://www.webtechniques.com/), Performance Computing
(http://www.performance-computing.com/), and Usenix's
newsletter/magazine to its members, login:, at
http://www.usenix.org/. Randal's Web Technique's columns
are available on the web at http://www.stonehenge.com/mer
lyn/WebTechniques/.
Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick
a site from the list below and use it to grab the complete
list of mirror sites. From there you can find the quick
est site for you. Remember, the following list is not the
complete list of CPAN mirrors.
http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local
http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to an ftp mirror)
ftp://cpan.valueclick.com/pub/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/
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
Perl Mongers attempt to maintain a list of mailing lists
at:
http://www.perl.org/support/online_support.html#mail
Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
Have you tried Deja or AltaVista? Those are the best
archives. Just look up "*perl*" as a newsgroup.
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=
You'll probably want to trim that down a bit, though.
You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and
retrieval mechanism than a file listing, preferably one
that allows you to retrieve articles using a fast-access
indices, keyed on at least author, date, subject, thread
(as in "trn") and probably keywords. The best solution
the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is
very slow to select on 18000 articles.
If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sec
tions, please let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
In a real sense, Perl already 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 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 propri
etary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions also
Or you can purchase commercial incidence based support
through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial
from them:
"The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service
operated by ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group.
The operators have many years of in-depth experience with
Perl applications and Perl internals on a wide range of
platforms.
"Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained
support engineers, we will put our best effort into under
standing your problem, providing an explanation of the
situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
Contact The Perl Clinic at:
www.PerlClinic.com
North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
Fax: 1 604 606-4640
Europe (GMT)
Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
Fax: 00 44 1483 862801
See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training,
and support.
Where do I send bug reports?
If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the
modules shipped with Perl, use the 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 non-standard module (such as Tk,
CGI, etc), then please see the documentation that came
with it to determine the correct place to post bugs.
Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more
information.
What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
The perl.com domain is owned by Tom Christiansen, who cre
ated 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
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 lan
guage. For details, see the Perl Mongers web site at
http://www.perlmongers.org/.
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.
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 ser
vices. 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
http://history.perl.org/
http://bugs.perl.org/
http://www.news.perl.org/
AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Tork
ington. All rights reserved.
When included as an integrated part of the Standard Dis
tribution of Perl or of its documentation (printed or oth
erwise), this works is covered under Perl's Artistic
License. For separate distributions of all or part of
this FAQ outside of that, see the perlfaq manpage.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here
are in the public domain. You are permitted and encour
aged to use this code and any derivatives thereof in your
own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A sim
ple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would be
courteous but is not required.
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