460 lines
19 KiB
Plaintext
460 lines
19 KiB
Plaintext
=head1 NAME
|
|
|
|
perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.30 $, $Date: 1998/12/29 19:43:32 $)
|
|
|
|
=head1 DESCRIPTION
|
|
|
|
This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find
|
|
source and documentation for Perl, support, and
|
|
related matters.
|
|
|
|
=head2 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 supported (Perl's native
|
|
platform), as are proprietary 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).
|
|
|
|
=head2 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/latest/
|
|
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/
|
|
|
|
If you want information on proprietary systems. 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 .
|
|
|
|
=head2 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 operating system for
|
|
information on where to get such a binary version.
|
|
|
|
=head2 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 distribution on the machine it will
|
|
eventually live on, and then type C<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
|
|
symlinks, 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 idiosyncrasies that the
|
|
Configure script can't work around for any given system or
|
|
architecture.
|
|
|
|
=head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What 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, documentation, 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 languages; filenames,
|
|
file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world
|
|
wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and
|
|
compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow
|
|
utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and
|
|
miscellaneous modules.
|
|
|
|
=head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
|
|
|
|
Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
|
|
|
|
=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
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
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
|
|
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 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.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/ .
|
|
|
|
=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 (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
|
|
|
|
If you're just looking for software, first use Alta Vista, Deja News, 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
|
|
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, written 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
|
|
I<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 the delightful book, I<Perl: The Programmer's Companion>,
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
=over
|
|
|
|
=item References
|
|
|
|
*Programming Perl
|
|
by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
|
|
|
|
*Perl 5 Desktop Reference
|
|
By Johan Vromans
|
|
|
|
=item 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
|
|
|
|
=item Task-Oriented
|
|
|
|
*The Perl Cookbook
|
|
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
|
|
with foreword by Larry Wall
|
|
|
|
Perl5 Interactive Course [2nd edition]
|
|
by Jon Orwant
|
|
|
|
*Advanced Perl Programming
|
|
by Sriram Srinivasan
|
|
|
|
Effective Perl Programming
|
|
by Joseph Hall
|
|
|
|
=item Special Topics
|
|
|
|
*Mastering Regular Expressions
|
|
by Jeffrey Friedl
|
|
|
|
How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition]
|
|
by Lincoln Stein
|
|
|
|
=back
|
|
|
|
=head2 Perl in Magazines
|
|
|
|
The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl, I<The
|
|
Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
|
|
announcements, contests, and much more. TPJ has columns on web
|
|
development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical 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
|
|
subscriptions@tpj.com .
|
|
|
|
Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry high-quality articles
|
|
on Perl are I<Web Techniques> (see http://www.webtechniques.com/),
|
|
I<Performance Computing> (http://www.performance-computing.com/), and Usenix's
|
|
newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>, at http://www.usenix.org/.
|
|
Randal's Web Technique's columns are available on the web at
|
|
http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/.
|
|
|
|
=head2 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 quickest site for you. Remember, the
|
|
following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
|
|
|
|
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?
|
|
|
|
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 Institute attempts to maintain a
|
|
list of mailing lists at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.perl.org/maillist.html
|
|
|
|
=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
|
|
|
|
Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista? Those are the
|
|
best archives. Just look up "*perl*" as a newsgroup.
|
|
|
|
http://www.dejanews.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.
|
|
|
|
ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost
|
|
complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through
|
|
12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
|
|
|
|
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 sections, please
|
|
let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
|
|
|
|
=head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
|
|
|
|
In a real 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, 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'Reily 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.
|
|
Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The
|
|
Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
|
|
|
|
"Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need
|
|
a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay
|
|
only for what you need?
|
|
|
|
"The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and
|
|
support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten
|
|
years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl
|
|
at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl
|
|
porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the
|
|
DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The
|
|
Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5
|
|
Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part
|
|
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 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 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 .
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
=head2 What is perl.com?
|
|
|
|
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
|
|
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/
|
|
|
|
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
|
|
|
|
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 work is
|
|
covered under Perl's Artistic Licence. 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
|
|
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
|
|
be courteous but is not required.
|
|
|