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1 | =head1 NAME |
2 | |
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3 | perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.16 $, $Date: 1997/04/23 18:04:09 $) |
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4 | |
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
6 | |
7 | This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find |
8 | source and documentation for Perl, support and training, and |
9 | related matters. |
10 | |
11 | =head2 What machines support Perl? Where do I get it? |
12 | |
13 | The standard release of Perl (the one maintained by the perl |
14 | development team) is distributed only in source code form. You can |
15 | find this at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz, which is a |
16 | gzipped archive in POSIX tar format. This source builds with no |
17 | porting whatsoever on most Unix systems (Perl's native environment), |
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18 | as well as Windows NT, Plan 9, VMS, QNX, OS/2, and the Amiga. |
19 | |
20 | Binary distributions for various platforms can be found |
21 | http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory. Some of these ports (especially |
22 | the ones that are not part of the standard sources) may behave differently |
23 | than what is documented in the standard source documentation. These |
24 | differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features of the |
25 | particular platform that are not supported in the source release of perl) |
26 | or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current source release of perl). |
27 | |
28 | A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is: |
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29 | http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html |
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30 | [This FAQ is seriously outdated as of Jan 1998--it is only relevant to |
31 | the perl that ActiveState distributes, especially where it describes |
32 | various inadequacies and differences with the standard perl extension |
33 | build support.] |
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34 | |
35 | =head2 How can I get a binary version of Perl? |
36 | |
37 | If you don't have a C compiler because for whatever reasons your |
38 | vendor did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is |
39 | grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl |
40 | with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to |
41 | get free compilers for, not for Unix systems. |
42 | |
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43 | Your first stop should be http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports to see what |
44 | information is already available. A simple installation guide for |
45 | MS-DOS is available at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perl5dos.html , and |
46 | similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perlwin3.html |
47 | . |
48 | |
49 | =head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl? |
50 | |
51 | Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor |
52 | should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you. |
53 | |
54 | What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system |
55 | first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for |
56 | information on where to get such a binary version. |
57 | |
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58 | =head2 I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work. |
59 | |
60 | That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ. |
61 | You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will |
62 | eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other |
63 | approaches are doomed to failure. |
64 | |
65 | One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out |
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66 | the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for. |
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67 | |
68 | perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)' |
69 | |
70 | If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you |
71 | may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create |
72 | symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. |
73 | |
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74 | You might also want to check out L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own |
75 | module/library directory?">. |
76 | |
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77 | =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work? |
78 | |
79 | Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution. |
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80 | It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncracies that the |
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81 | Configure script can't work around for any given system or |
82 | architecture. |
83 | |
84 | =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean? |
85 | |
86 | CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a huge archive |
87 | replicated on dozens of machines all over the world. CPAN contains |
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88 | source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many |
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89 | third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from |
90 | commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web |
91 | walking and CGI scripts. The master machine for CPAN is |
92 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/, but you can use the |
93 | address http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html to fetch a copy from a |
94 | "site near you". See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the |
95 | end) for how this process works. |
96 | |
97 | CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN |
98 | sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the |
99 | rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For |
100 | instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN |
101 | as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as |
102 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh . |
103 | |
104 | Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the |
105 | archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of. |
106 | Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include perl core |
107 | modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking, |
108 | devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database |
109 | interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames, |
110 | file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world |
111 | wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and |
112 | compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow |
113 | utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and |
114 | miscellaneous modules. |
115 | |
116 | =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl? |
117 | |
118 | Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is. |
119 | |
120 | =head2 Where can I get information on Perl? |
121 | |
122 | The complete Perl documentation is available with the perl |
123 | distribution. If you have perl installed locally, you probably have |
124 | the documentation installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a |
125 | system resembling Unix. This will lead you to other important man |
126 | pages. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation |
127 | will be different; for example, it might be only in HTML format. But |
128 | all proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation. |
129 | |
130 | You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't |
131 | have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't |
132 | work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation. |
133 | |
134 | If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which contains the |
135 | complete documentation in various formats, including native pod, |
136 | troff, html, and plain text. There's also a web page at |
137 | http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that might help. |
138 | |
139 | It's also worth noting that there's a PDF version of the complete |
140 | documentation for perl available in the CPAN/authors/id/BMIDD |
141 | directory. |
142 | |
143 | Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the section below |
144 | for more details. |
145 | |
146 | =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on USENET? Where do I post questions? |
147 | |
148 | The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the |
149 | following groups: |
150 | |
151 | comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group |
152 | comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general |
153 | comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules |
154 | comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl |
155 | |
156 | comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web. |
157 | |
158 | There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack |
159 | Perl development team (perl5-porters) at |
160 | news://genetics.upenn.edu/perl.porters-gw/ . |
161 | |
162 | =head2 Where should I post source code? |
163 | |
164 | You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, |
165 | but feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to |
166 | cross-post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting |
167 | standards, including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT |
168 | include alt.sources; see their FAQ for details. |
169 | |
170 | =head2 Perl Books |
171 | |
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172 | A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of |
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173 | these are good, some are ok, but many aren't worth your money. Tom |
174 | Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive |
175 | reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html. |
176 | |
177 | The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by the |
178 | creator of Perl and his apostles, is now in its second edition and |
179 | fourth printing. |
180 | |
181 | Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"): |
182 | Authors: Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz |
183 | ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English) |
184 | ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese) |
185 | (French and German translations in progress) |
186 | |
187 | Note that O'Reilly books are color-coded: turquoise (some would call |
188 | it teal) covers indicate perl5 coverage, while magenta (some would |
189 | call it pink) covers indicate perl4 only. Check the cover color |
190 | before you buy! |
191 | |
192 | What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally |
193 | useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary. |
194 | |
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195 | If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book |
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196 | just might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But if you're not, |
197 | check out the "Llama Book". It currently doesn't cover perl5, but the |
198 | 2nd edition is nearly done and should be out by summer 97: |
199 | |
200 | Learning Perl (the Llama Book): |
201 | Author: Randal Schwartz, with intro by Larry Wall |
202 | ISBN 1-56592-042-2 (English) |
203 | ISBN 4-89502-678-1 (Japanese) |
204 | ISBN 2-84177-005-2 (French) |
205 | ISBN 3-930673-08-8 (German) |
206 | |
207 | Another stand-out book in the turquoise O'Reilly Perl line is the "Hip |
208 | Owls" book. It covers regular expressions inside and out, with quite a |
209 | bit devoted exclusively to Perl: |
210 | |
211 | Mastering Regular Expressions (the Cute Owls Book): |
212 | Author: Jeffrey Friedl |
213 | ISBN 1-56592-257-3 |
214 | |
215 | You can order any of these books from O'Reilly & Associates, |
216 | 1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is 1-707-829-0515. If you can locate |
217 | an O'Reilly order form, you can also fax to 1-707-829-0104. See |
218 | http://www.ora.com/ on the Web. |
219 | |
220 | Recommended Perl books that are not from O'Reilly are the following: |
221 | |
222 | Cross-Platform Perl, (for Unix and Windows NT) |
223 | Author: Eric F. Johnson |
224 | ISBN: 1-55851-483-X |
225 | |
226 | How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site, (2nd edition) |
227 | Author: Lincoln Stein, M.D., Ph.D. |
228 | ISBN: 0-201-63462-7 |
229 | |
230 | CGI Programming in C & Perl, |
231 | Author: Thomas Boutell |
232 | ISBN: 0-201-42219-0 |
233 | |
234 | Note that some of these address specific application areas (e.g. the |
235 | Web) and are not general-purpose programming books. |
236 | |
237 | =head2 Perl in Magazines |
238 | |
239 | The Perl Journal is the first and only magazine dedicated to Perl. |
240 | It is published (on paper, not online) quarterly by Jon Orwant |
241 | (orwant@tpj.com), editor. Subscription information is at http://tpj.com |
242 | or via email to subscriptions@tpj.com. |
243 | |
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244 | Beyond this, two other magazines that frequently carry high-quality |
245 | articles on Perl are Web Techniques (see |
246 | http://www.webtechniques.com/) and Unix Review |
247 | (http://www.unixreview.com/). Randal Schwartz's Web Technique's |
248 | columns are available on the web at |
249 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ . |
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250 | |
251 | =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access |
252 | |
253 | To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick a site from |
254 | the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites. |
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255 | From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the |
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256 | following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors. |
257 | |
258 | http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to another mirror) |
259 | http://www.perl.org/CPAN |
260 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ |
261 | http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/ |
262 | ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/ |
263 | |
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264 | http:/www.oasis.leo.org/perl/ has, amongst other things, source to |
265 | versions 1 through 5 of Perl. |
266 | |
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267 | =head2 What mailing lists are there for perl? |
268 | |
269 | Most of the major modules (tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own |
270 | mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for |
271 | subscription information. The following are a list of mailing lists |
272 | related to perl itself. |
273 | |
274 | If you subscribe to a mailing list, it behooves you to know how to |
275 | unsubscribe from it. Strident pleas to the list itself to get you off |
276 | will not be favorably received. |
277 | |
278 | =over 4 |
279 | |
280 | =item MacPerl |
281 | |
282 | There is a mailing list for discussing Macintosh Perl. Contact |
283 | "mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch". |
284 | |
285 | Also see Matthias Neeracher's (the creator and maintainer of MacPerl) |
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286 | webpage at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri/macintosh/perl.html for |
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287 | many links to interesting MacPerl sites, and the applications/MPW |
288 | tools, precompiled. |
289 | |
290 | =item Perl5-Porters |
291 | |
292 | The core development team have a mailing list for discussing fixes and |
293 | changes to the language. Send mail to |
294 | "perl5-porters-request@perl.org" with help in the body of the message |
295 | for information on subscribing. |
296 | |
297 | =item NTPerl |
298 | |
299 | This list is used to discuss issues involving Win32 Perl 5 (Windows NT |
300 | and Win95). Subscribe by emailing ListManager@ActiveWare.com with the |
301 | message body: |
302 | |
303 | subscribe Perl-Win32-Users |
304 | |
305 | The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine |
306 | your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, email |
307 | the following in the message body to the same address like so: |
308 | |
309 | unsubscribe Perl-Win32-Users |
310 | |
311 | You can also check http://www.activeware.com/ and select "Mailing Lists" |
312 | to join or leave this list. |
313 | |
314 | =item Perl-Packrats |
315 | |
316 | Discussion related to archiving of perl materials, particularly the |
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317 | Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Subscribe by emailing |
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318 | majordomo@cis.ufl.edu: |
319 | |
320 | subscribe perl-packrats |
321 | |
322 | The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine |
323 | your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, simple |
324 | prepend the same command with an "un", and mail to the same address |
325 | like so: |
326 | |
327 | unsubscribe perl-packrats |
328 | |
329 | =back |
330 | |
331 | =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc |
332 | |
333 | Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista? |
334 | |
335 | ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost |
336 | complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through |
337 | 12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month. |
338 | |
339 | You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism |
340 | than a file listing, preferably one that allows you to retrieve |
341 | articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at least author, date, |
342 | subject, thread (as in "trn") and probably keywords. The best |
343 | solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is |
344 | very slow to select on 18000 articles. |
345 | |
346 | If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections, please |
347 | let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know. |
348 | |
349 | =head2 Perl Training |
350 | |
351 | While some large training companies offer their own courses on Perl, |
352 | you may prefer to contact individuals near and dear to the heart of |
353 | Perl development. Two well-known members of the Perl development team |
354 | who offer such things are Tom Christiansen <perl-classes@perl.com> |
355 | and Randal Schwartz <perl-training-info@stonehenge.com>, plus their |
356 | respective minions, who offer a variety of professional tutorials |
357 | and seminars on Perl. These courses include large public seminars, |
358 | private corporate training, and fly-ins to Colorado and Oregon. |
359 | See http://www.perl.com/perl/info/training.html for more details. |
360 | |
361 | =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl? |
362 | |
363 | In a sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: It has a licence |
364 | that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is |
365 | distributed in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a |
366 | very large user community and an extensive literature. The |
367 | comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide |
368 | free answers to your questions in near real-time. Perl has |
369 | traditionally been supported by Larry, dozens of software designers |
370 | and developers, and thousands of programmers, all working for free |
371 | to create a useful thing to make life better for everyone. |
372 | |
373 | However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a |
374 | purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go |
375 | wrong. Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual |
376 | obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from |
377 | several sources if that will help. |
378 | |
379 | Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically |
380 | provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl. |
381 | Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The |
382 | Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them: |
383 | |
384 | "Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need |
385 | a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay |
386 | only for what you need? |
387 | |
388 | "The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and |
389 | support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten |
390 | years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl |
391 | at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl |
392 | porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the |
393 | DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The |
394 | Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5 |
395 | Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part |
396 | of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work |
397 | will be donated to The Perl Institute." |
398 | |
399 | For more information, contact the The Perl Clinic: |
400 | |
401 | Tel: +44 1483 424424 |
402 | Fax: +44 1483 419419 |
403 | Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/ |
404 | Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk |
405 | |
406 | =head2 Where do I send bug reports? |
407 | |
408 | If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules |
409 | shipped with perl, use the perlbug program in the perl distribution or |
410 | email your report to perlbug@perl.com. |
411 | |
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412 | If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to |
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413 | "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a |
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414 | non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the |
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415 | documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post |
416 | bugs. |
417 | |
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418 | Read the perlbug man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information. |
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419 | |
420 | =head2 What is perl.com? perl.org? The Perl Institute? |
421 | |
422 | perl.org is the official vehicle for The Perl Institute. The motto of |
423 | TPI is "helping people help Perl help people" (or something like |
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424 | that). It's a non-profit organization supporting development, |
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425 | documentation, and dissemination of perl. Current directors of TPI |
426 | include Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz, whom you |
427 | may have heard of somewhere else around here. |
428 | |
429 | The perl.com domain is Tom Christiansen's domain. He created it as a |
430 | public service long before perl.org came about. It's the original PBS |
431 | of the Perl world, a clearinghouse for information about all things |
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432 | Perlian, accepting no paid advertisements, glossy gifs, or (gasp!) |
433 | java applets on its pages. |
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434 | |
435 | =head2 How do I learn about object-oriented Perl programming? |
436 | |
437 | L<perltoot> (distributed with 5.004 or later) is a good place to start. |
438 | Also, L<perlobj>, L<perlref>, and L<perlmod> are useful references, |
439 | while L<perlbot> has some excellent tips and tricks. |
440 | |
441 | =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT |
442 | |
443 | Copyright (c) 1997 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington. |
444 | All rights reserved. See L<perlfaq> for distribution information. |