[9761] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 3355 Volume: 8
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Wed Aug 5 09:06:16 1998
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 98 06:01:59 -0700
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Wed, 5 Aug 1998 Volume: 8 Number: 3355
Today's topics:
perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl (part 2 of <perlfaq-suggestions@mox.perl.com>
Special: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 12 Mar 98 (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 5 Aug 1998 12:27:34 GMT
From: Tom Christiansen <perlfaq-suggestions@mox.perl.com>
Subject: perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl (part 2 of 9)
Message-Id: <6q9j3m$25r$1@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The following document was generated from its original pod using |
| the pod2text program included with the standard perl release, plus |
| small cosmetic mark-ups. The FAQ is also distributed with all Perl |
| releases as standard manpages; their latest versions can be retrieved |
| from http://language.perl.com/misc/faqs.tar.gz if you'd like. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
NAME
perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.25 $,
$Date: 1998/08/05 11:47:25 $)
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 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).
A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is
http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html
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 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 .
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.
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 `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.
You might also want to check out the section on "How do I keep my
own module/library directory?" 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 distribution. It
describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncracies that the
Configure script can't work around for any given system or
architecture.
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.
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 example,
it might be only in HTML format. But all proper perl installations
have fully-accessible documentation.
You might also try `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.
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.
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
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 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.
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"):
Authors: 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"):
Authors: 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"):
Authors: 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 the delightful book, *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 muchly 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
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
*Advanced Perl Programming
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
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, 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 *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/merlyn/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 quickest site for you. Remember,
the following list is *not* the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to another 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/
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 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.
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.
Perl5-Porters
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.
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.
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:
unsubscribe perl-packrats
Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista?
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.
Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
In a sense, Perl already *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.
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.
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 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.
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.org? The Perl Institute?
The perl.com domain is managed 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.
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.
How do I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?
the perltoot manpage (distributed with 5.004 or later) is a good
place to start. Also, the perlobj manpage, the perlref manpage, and
the perlmod manpage are useful references, while the perlbot
manpage has some excellent tips and tricks.
AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 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 all or part of this FAQ outside of that, see the perlfaq
manpage.
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.
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jul 98 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Special: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 12 Mar 98)
Message-Id: <null>
Administrivia:
Special notice: in a few days, the new group comp.lang.perl.moderated
should be formed. I would rather not support two different groups, and I
know of no other plans to create a digested moderated group. This leaves
me with two options: 1) keep on with this group 2) change to the
moderated one.
If you have opinions on this, send them to
perl-users-request@ruby.oce.orst.edu.
The Perl-Users Digest is a retransmission of the USENET newsgroup
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the single line:
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To submit articles to comp.lang.perl.misc (and this Digest), send your
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To request back copies (available for a week or so), send your request
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The Meta-FAQ, an article containing information about the FAQ, is
available by requesting "send perl-users meta-faq". The real FAQ, as it
appeared last in the newsgroup, can be retrieved with the request "send
perl-users FAQ". Due to their sizes, neither the Meta-FAQ nor the FAQ
are included in the digest.
The "mini-FAQ", which is an updated version of the Meta-FAQ, is
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For other requests pertaining to the digest, send mail to
perl-users-request@ruby.oce.orst.edu. Do not waste your time or mine
sending perl questions to the -request address, I don't have time to
answer them even if I did know the answer.
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End of Perl-Users Digest V8 Issue 3355
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