173 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
173 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
=head1 NAME
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perlfaq - frequently asked questions about Perl ($Date: 1998/08/05 12:09:32 $)
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=head1 DESCRIPTION
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This document is structured into the following sections:
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=over
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=item perlfaq: Structural overview of the FAQ.
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This document.
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=item L<perlfaq1>: General Questions About Perl
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Very general, high-level information about Perl.
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=item L<perlfaq2>: Obtaining and Learning about Perl
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Where to find source and documentation to Perl, support,
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and related matters.
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=item L<perlfaq3>: Programming Tools
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Programmer tools and programming support.
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=item L<perlfaq4>: Data Manipulation
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Manipulating numbers, dates, strings, arrays, hashes, and
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miscellaneous data issues.
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=item L<perlfaq5>: Files and Formats
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I/O and the "f" issues: filehandles, flushing, formats and footers.
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=item L<perlfaq6>: Regexps
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Pattern matching and regular expressions.
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=item L<perlfaq7>: General Perl Language Issues
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General Perl language issues that don't clearly fit into any of the
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other sections.
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=item L<perlfaq8>: System Interaction
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Interprocess communication (IPC), control over the user-interface
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(keyboard, screen and pointing devices).
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=item L<perlfaq9>: Networking
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Networking, the Internet, and a few on the web.
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=back
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=head2 Where to get this document
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This document is posted regularly to comp.lang.perl.announce and
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several other related newsgroups. It is available in a variety of
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formats from CPAN in the /CPAN/doc/FAQs/FAQ/ directory, or on the web
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at http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/ .
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=head2 How to contribute to this document
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You may mail corrections, additions, and suggestions to
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perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com . This alias should not be
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used to I<ask> FAQs. It's for fixing the current FAQ.
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=head2 What will happen if you mail your Perl programming problems to the authors
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Your questions will probably go unread, unless they're suggestions of
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new questions to add to the FAQ, in which case they should have gone
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to the perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com instead.
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You should have read section 2 of this faq. There you would have
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learned that comp.lang.perl.misc is the appropriate place to go for
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free advice. If your question is really important and you require a
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prompt and correct answer, you should hire a consultant.
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=head1 Credits
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When I first began the Perl FAQ in the late 80s, I never realized it
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would have grown to over a hundred pages, nor that Perl would ever become
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so popular and widespread. This document could not have been written
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without the tremendous help provided by Larry Wall and the rest of the
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Perl Porters.
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=head1 Author and Copyright Information
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Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
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All rights reserved.
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=head2 Bundled Distributions
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When included as part of the Standard Version of Perl, or as part of
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its complete documentation whether printed or otherwise, this work
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may be distributed only under the terms of Perl's Artistic License.
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Any distribution of this file or derivatives thereof I<outside>
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of that package require that special arrangements be made with
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copyright holder.
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Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in these files
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are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and
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encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun
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or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving
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credit would be courteous but is not required.
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=head2 Disclaimer
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This information is offered in good faith and in the hope that it may
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be of use, but is not guaranteed to be correct, up to date, or suitable
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for any particular purpose whatsoever. The authors accept no liability
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in respect of this information or its use.
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=head1 Changes
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=over 4
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=item 22/June/98
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Significant changes throughout in preparation for the 5.005
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release.
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=item 24/April/97
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Style and whitespace changes from Chip, new question on reading one
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character at a time from a terminal using POSIX from Tom.
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=item 23/April/97
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Added http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/ to L<perlfaq2>. Style fix to
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L<perlfaq3>. Added floating point precision, fixed complex number
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arithmetic, cross-references, caveat for Text::Wrap, alternative
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answer for initial capitalizing, fixed incorrect regexp, added example
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of Tie::IxHash to L<perlfaq4>. Added example of passing and storing
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filehandles, added commify to L<perlfaq5>. Restored variable suicide,
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and added mass commenting to L<perlfaq7>. Added Net::Telnet, fixed
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backticks, added reader/writer pair to telnet question, added FindBin,
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grouped module questions together in L<perlfaq8>. Expanded caveats
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for the simple URL extractor, gave LWP example, added CGI security
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question, expanded on the mail address answer in L<perlfaq9>.
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=item 25/March/97
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Added more info to the binary distribution section of L<perlfaq2>.
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Added Net::Telnet to L<perlfaq6>. Fixed typos in L<perlfaq8>. Added
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mail sending example to L<perlfaq9>. Added Merlyn's columns to
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L<perlfaq2>.
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=item 18/March/97
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Added the DATE to the NAME section, indicating which sections have
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changed.
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Mentioned SIGPIPE and L<perlipc> in the forking open answer in
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L<perlfaq8>.
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Fixed description of a regular expression in L<perlfaq4>.
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=item 17/March/97 Version
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Various typos fixed throughout.
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Added new question on Perl BNF on L<perlfaq7>.
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=item Initial Release: 11/March/97
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This is the initial release of version 3 of the FAQ; consequently there
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have been no changes since its initial release.
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=back
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