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9baed986 1If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3specially designed to be readable as is.
4
5=head1 NAME
6
7perlwin32 - Perl under Windows
8
9=head1 SYNOPSIS
10
11These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP
12on the Intel x86 and Itanium architectures.
13
14=head1 DESCRIPTION
15
16Before you start, you should glance through the README file
17found in the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution
18was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under
19which this software is being distributed.
20
21Also make sure you read L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> below for the
22known limitations of this port.
23
24The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
25only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In
26particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
27"Configure".
28
29You may also want to look at two other options for building
30a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin and
31README.os2 files, each of which give a different set of rules to
32build a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods
33will probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but
34you will also need to download and use various other build-time and
35run-time support software described in those files.
36
37This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
38port of Perl to Win32 platforms. This includes both 32-bit and
3964-bit Windows operating systems. The resulting Perl requires no
40additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
41system). Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
42following compilers on the Intel x86 architecture:
43
44 Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
45 Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
46 Mingw32 with GCC version 2.95.2 or better
47
48The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler. Support
49for it is still experimental. (Older versions of GCC are known
50not to work.)
51
52This port can also be built on the Intel IA64 using:
53
54 Microsoft Platform SDK Nov 2001 (64-bit compiler and tools)
55
56The MS Platform SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/.
57
58This port fully supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that
59is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be
60able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.
61See L<Usage Hints for Perl on Win32> below for general hints about this.
62
63=head2 Setting Up Perl on Win32
64
65=over 4
66
67=item Make
68
69You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using
70Visual C++ or the Platform SDK tools under Windows NT/2000/XP, nmake
71will work. All other builds need dmake.
72
73dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
74and parallelability.
75
76A port of dmake for Windows is available from:
77
78 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/dmake-4.1pl1-win32.zip
79
80(This is a fixed version of the original dmake sources obtained from
81http://www.wticorp.com/ As of version 4.1PL1, the original
82sources did not build as shipped and had various other problems.
83A patch is included in the above fixed version.)
84
85Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
86in the README.NOW file).
87
88There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
89compilers. Namely, if a distribution has C files named with mixed
90case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files named
91with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked
92to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files again.
93For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such files, resulting in
94needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked. To avoid this, you
95may use the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful build. It is
96available in the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source distribution.
97
98=item Command Shell
99
100Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the
101popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
102If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
103shell.
104
105The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the
106"command.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x. You will need to
107use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.
108
109The surest way to build it is on Windows NT/2000/XP, using the cmd shell.
110
111Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces. The
112build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
113
114=item Borland C++
115
116If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
117(The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
118work for MakeMaker builds.)
119
120See L</"Make"> above.
121
122=item Microsoft Visual C++
123
124The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
125You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
126like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment.
127
128You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
129you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
130under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment
131and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The
132latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
133make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
134
135=item Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler
136
137The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suffice for building
138Perl. Make sure you are building within one of the "Build Environment"
139shells available after you install the Platform SDK from the Start Menu.
140
141=item Mingw32 with GCC
142
143GCC-2.95.2 binaries can be downloaded from:
144
145 ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/
146
147You also need dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
148
149The GCC-2.95.2 bundle comes with Mingw32 libraries and headers.
150
151Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated
152in the README for the GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment
153variables (usually ran from a batch file).
154
155There are a couple of problems with the version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe
156released 7 November 1999:
157
158=over
159
160=item *
161
162It left out a fix for certain command line quotes. To fix this, be sure
163to download and install the file fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe from the above
164ftp location.
165
166=item *
167
168The definition of the fpos_t type in stdio.h may be wrong. If your
169stdio.h has this problem, you will see an exception when running the
170test t/lib/io_xs.t. To fix this, change the typedef for fpos_t from
171"long" to "long long" in the file i386-mingw32msvc/include/stdio.h,
172and rebuild.
173
174=back
175
176A potentially simpler to install (but probably soon-to-be-outdated) bundle
177of the above package with the mentioned fixes already applied is available
178here:
179
180 http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
181 ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
182
183=back
184
185=head2 Building
186
187=over 4
188
189=item *
190
191Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel.
192This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
193versions of nmake that come with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK, and
194a dmake "makefile.mk" that will work for all supported compilers. The
195defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to build using Microsoft Visual
196C++ 6.0 or newer.
197
198=item *
199
200Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change
201the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various
202build flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
203
204You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
205CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
206
207The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
208may not be correct for some versions. Make sure the default exists
209and is valid.
210
211If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
212enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
213bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
214on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
215is part of the "libdes" library (written by Eric Young) which is widely
216available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay ( for example,
217ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/dsi/libdes/ ). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
218name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
219you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
220CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name. The location above contains
221many versions of the "libdes" library, all with slightly different
222implementations of des_fcrypt(). Older versions have a single,
223self-contained file (fcrypt.c) that implements crypt(), so they may be
224easier to use. A patch against the fcrypt.c found in libdes-3.06 is
225in des_fcrypt.patch.
226
227An easier alternative may be to get the pre-patched and ready-to-use
228fcrypt.c that can be found here:
229
230 http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/fcrypt.c
231 ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/fcrypt.c
232
233Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
234fail at run time.
235
236Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.
237
238=item *
239
240Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
241
242This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
78a7c709 243perl59.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's
9baed986 244under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for any reason, make
245sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
246
247=back
248
249=head2 Testing Perl on Win32
250
251Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
252the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).
253
254There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT/2000/XP.
255Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior command shell.
256
257Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
258native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains
259spaces. So don't do that.
260
261If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
262failures in op/stat.t. Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.
263
264If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
265arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
266default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
267from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
268(usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
269
270If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run into
271problems finding the correct header files when building extensions. For
272example, building the "Tk" extension may fail because both perl and Tk
273contain a header file called "patchlevel.h". The latest Borland compiler
274(v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even supports an
275option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility for using the old Borland
276search algorithm to locate header files.
277
a6a21311 278If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for
279C<link()> related tests (I<op/write.t>, I<op/stat.t> ...). Testing on
280NTFS avoids these errors.
281
282Furthermore, you should make sure that during C<make test> you do not
283have any GNU tool packages in your path: some toolkits like Unixutils
284include some tools (C<type> for instance) which override the Windows
285ones and makes tests fail. Remove them from your path while testing to
286avoid these errors.
287
9baed986 288Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
289
290=head2 Installation of Perl on Win32
291
292Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
293built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
294Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
295C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
296C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
297you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
298C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin> and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
299For example:
300
301 set PATH c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
302
303If you opt to comment out INST_VER and INST_ARCH in the makefiles, the
304installation structure is much simpler. In that case, it will be
305sufficient to add a single entry to the path, for instance:
306
307 set PATH c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
308
309=head2 Usage Hints for Perl on Win32
310
311=over 4
312
313=item Environment Variables
314
315The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
316into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
317using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
318
319If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
320to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
321to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
322variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
323
324You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
325backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
326
327Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default
328values if you choose to put them there. Perl attempts to read entries from
329C<HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl> and C<HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl>.
330Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One or more of the
331following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
332
333 lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
334 lib standard library path to add to @INC
335 sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
336 sitelib site library path to add to @INC
337 vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
338 vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
339 PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
340
341Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
342of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
343separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
344
345=item File Globbing
346
347By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
348which provides portable globbing.
349
350If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
351filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
352to override the internal glob() implementation. See L<File::DosGlob> for
353details.
354
355=item Using perl from the command line
356
357If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
358shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
359with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
360
361The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
362the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
363First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
364COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
365redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
366executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
367command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
368upon which Perl was built.
369
370It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
371runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
372wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behaviours of the
373shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
374using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote
375character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces
376and other special characters in arguments.
377
378The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
379quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
380based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spaces and
381passes them to programs in argc/argv. Double quotes can be used to
382prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up. You can
383put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a backslash and
384enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. The backslash and
385the pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by
386the C runtime.
387
388The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
389double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
390be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or
391the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just to make
392this type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
393been observed to behave as a quoting character, but this appears
394to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command
395line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat
396the caret as a quote character).
397
398Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
399
400This prints two doublequotes:
401
402 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
403
404This does the same:
405
406 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
407
408This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
409
410 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
411
412This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
413
414 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
415
416This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
417
418 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
419
420This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
421
422 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
423
424This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
425
426 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
427
428This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
429
430 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
431
432
433Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
434is left as an exercise to the reader :)
435
436One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
437Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indicating
438that environment variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
439therefore important to always double any % characters which you want
440Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are
441quoted.
442
443=item Building Extensions
444
445The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
446of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
447Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
448
449Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work
450in the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
451http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
452porting modules that don't readily build.
453
454Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
455be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
456
457 perl Makefile.PL
458 $MAKE
459 $MAKE test
460 $MAKE install
461
462where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
463use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is. Some extensions
464may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or
465fail), but most serious ones do.
466
467It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and
468ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you don't have nmake, you can
469either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an
470old version of nmake reportedly available from:
471
472 ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe
473
474Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
475CPAN.
476
477 http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/
478
479You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
480
481Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
482depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using. Therefore, it is
483important that one of the following values appears in Config.pm:
484
485 make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
486 make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
487 any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
488 (e.g GNU make, or Perl make)
489
490If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use,
491edit Config.pm to fix it.
492
493If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
494C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
495the compiler for command-line compilation.
496
497If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
498why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
499it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
500that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
501utility.
502
503=item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
504
505The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
506as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
507programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
508This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
509perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
510However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
511behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
512compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
513be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
514alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
515
516Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
517about it are 1) you can start using it right away; 2) it is more
518powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern like
519*/*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and
5204) you can extend the method to add any customizations (or even
521entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).
522
523 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
524 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
525 use File::DosGlob;
526 @ARGV = map {
527 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
528 @g ? @g : $_;
529 } @ARGV;
530 1;
531 ^Z
532 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
533 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
534 p4view/perl/perl.c
535 p4view/perl/perlio.c
536 p4view/perl/perly.c
537 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
538 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
539 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
540 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
541 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
542 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
543
544Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
545Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
546set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
547to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
548environment.
549
550If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
551command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
552binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
553what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
554done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
555
556=item Win32 Specific Extensions
557
558A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
559from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
560be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
561native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
562have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
563extensions typically do not support those tools either and, therefore,
564cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
565
566To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
567ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
568all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
569CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
570support. This bundle is available at:
571
572 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.18.zip
573
574See the README in that distribution for building and installation
575instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
576same location.
577
578=item Notes on 64-bit Windows
579
580Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on the Intel Itanium
581architecture.
582
583The LLP64 data model is different from the LP64 data model that is the
584norm on 64-bit Unix platforms. In the former, C<int> and C<long> are
585both 32-bit data types, while pointers are 64 bits wide. In addition,
586there is a separate 64-bit wide integral type, C<__int64>. In contrast,
587the LP64 data model that is pervasive on Unix platforms provides C<int>
588as the 32-bit type, while both the C<long> type and pointers are of
58964-bit precision. Note that both models provide for 64-bits of
590addressability.
591
59264-bit Windows running on Itanium is capable of running 32-bit x86
593binaries transparently. This means that you could use a 32-bit build
594of Perl on a 64-bit system. Given this, why would one want to build
595a 64-bit build of Perl? Here are some reasons why you would bother:
596
597=item *
598
599A 64-bit native application will run much more efficiently on
600Itanium hardware.
601
602=item *
603
604There is no 2GB limit on process size.
605
606=item *
607
608Perl automatically provides large file support when built under
60964-bit Windows.
610
611=item *
612
613Embedding Perl inside a 64-bit application.
614
615=back
616
617=head2 Running Perl Scripts
618
619Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
620indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
621Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
622executables.
623
624Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
625Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
626to use this to execute perl scripts:
627
628=over 8
629
630=item 1
631
632There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
633work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
634commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
6354.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
636up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
637perl-ready? :).
638
639=item 2
640
641Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
642reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
643old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
644regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
645makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
646perl scripts into batch files. For example:
647
648 pl2bat foo.pl
649
650will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
651.pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
652
653If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
654"pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
655refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
656sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
6574DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
6584NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
659startup file to enable this to work.
660
661=item 3
662
663Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
664so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
665run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
666original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
667if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
668avoids both problems is possible.
669
670A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
671to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
672if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
673executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
674by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
675runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
676With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
677than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
678the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
679links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
680
681Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
682"runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
683Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
684
685=item Miscellaneous Things
686
687A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
688able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
689system.
690
691C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
692in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
693like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
694have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
695"perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
696"foo".
697
698If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
699bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
700find a mailer on your system).
701
702=back
703
704=head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
705
706Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if
707set to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened". Unlike large applications
708the perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files. Having the
709the AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process significantly.
710Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar messages
711as the virus checker interacts badly with miniperl.exe writing configure
712files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat it as suspicious,
713or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which inhibits miniperl
714updating it). The build does complete with
715
716 set PERLIO=perlio
717
718but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
719
720Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
721L<perlfunc>, and a few are not implemented at all. To avoid
722surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl
723in other operating environments or if you intend to write code
724that will be portable to other environments. See L<perlport>
725for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
726
727Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
728in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
729
730Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
731behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
732
733Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
734doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
735or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
736implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
737Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
738variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
739currently be considered unsupported.
740
741Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
742you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
743by C<perl -V>.
744
745=head1 AUTHORS
746
747=over 4
748
749=item Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
750
751=item Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
752
753=item Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ing-simmons.netE<gt>
754
755=back
756
757This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
758
759=head1 SEE ALSO
760
761L<perl>
762
763=head1 HISTORY
764
765This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
766and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
767at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
768since then.
769
770Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
771
772GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
773
774Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
775
776Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
777
778Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
779
780Support for 64-bit Windows added in 5.8 (ActiveState Corp).
781
782Last updated: 20 April 2002
783
784=cut