3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.35 $, $Date: 2005/10/13 19:43:13 $)
7 This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find
8 source and documentation for Perl, support, and
11 =head2 What machines support perl? Where do I get it?
13 The standard release of perl (the one maintained by the perl
14 development team) is distributed only in source code form. You
15 can find this at http://www.cpan.org/src/latest.tar.gz , which
16 is in a standard Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format).
18 Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually
19 all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (perl's native
20 platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
21 QNX, BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga.
23 Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including
24 Apple systems, can be found http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory.
25 Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may
26 and in fact do differ from the base perl port in a variety of ways.
27 You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just
28 what the differences are. These differences can be either positive
29 (e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that
30 are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g.
31 might be based upon a less current source release of perl).
33 =head2 How can I get a binary version of perl?
35 If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever
36 reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
37 grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl
38 with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to
39 get free compilers for, not for Unix systems.
41 Some URLs that might help you are:
43 http://www.cpan.org/ports/
44 http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html
46 Someone looking for a perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp
47 port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with clear
48 installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS using
49 Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at
50 http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html
51 and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html .
53 =head2 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter?
55 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor
56 should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
58 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
59 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
60 information on where to get such a binary version.
62 =head2 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.
64 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
65 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
66 eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other
67 approaches are doomed to failure.
69 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
70 the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries:
72 % perl -le 'print for @INC'
74 If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you
75 may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
76 symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
81 You might also want to check out
82 L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">.
84 =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
86 Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution.
87 It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
88 Configure script can't work around for any given system or
91 =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
93 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a ~1.2Gb archive
94 replicated on nearly 200 machines all over the world. CPAN contains
95 source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many
96 third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
97 commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
98 walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is
99 http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at
100 http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you
101 via DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the
102 end) for how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/
103 has a nice interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY
106 See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for
107 answers to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN
108 including how to become a mirror.
110 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
111 sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
112 rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
113 instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
114 as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as
115 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
117 Considering that there are close to two thousand existing modules in
118 the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of.
119 Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core
120 modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking,
121 devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
122 interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames,
123 file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world
124 wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and
125 compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow
126 utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and
127 miscellaneous modules.
129 See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or
130 http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by category.
132 CPAN is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media.
134 =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
136 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
138 =head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
140 The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
141 If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
142 installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
143 This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
144 $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
145 will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All
146 proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
148 You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
149 have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
150 work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
152 If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the
153 complete documentation in HTML and PDF format.
155 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below
158 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
159 include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's
160 approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics,
161 L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular
162 expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging,
163 and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more
164 by the time you read this. These URLs might also be useful:
166 http://perldoc.perl.org/
167 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
169 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
171 Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet:
173 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
174 comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion
175 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
176 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
177 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
179 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
181 Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and
182 comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still
183 be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because
184 postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the
185 official list of group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics
186 which do not have a more-appropriate specific group.
188 There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
189 perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists
190 at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available
191 under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other
192 groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as
193 http://lists.cpan.org/ ).
195 A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site,
196 http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list
197 http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners .
199 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
200 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,
201 but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool.
203 =head2 Where should I post source code?
205 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
206 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
207 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
208 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
209 see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details.
211 If you're just looking for software, first use Google
212 ( http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface
213 ( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ).
214 This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
218 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few
219 of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money.
220 There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at
221 http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you
222 can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org .
224 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
225 the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:
227 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
228 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
229 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
230 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
231 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
233 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
234 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
236 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
237 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
238 with Foreword by Larry Wall
239 ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003]
240 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/
242 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
243 suffice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the
247 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
248 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
249 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
251 And for more advanced information on writing larger programs,
252 presented in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education
253 with the Alpaca book:
255 Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules (the "Alpaca Book")
256 by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
257 ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003]
258 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
260 If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and
261 possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much
262 hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the
265 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
267 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
268 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
269 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
271 If you are more at home in Windows the following is available
272 (though unfortunately rather dated).
274 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book")
275 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
276 with foreword by Larry Wall
277 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
278 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
280 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning
281 ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
282 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
283 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
285 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
286 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
288 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
289 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
291 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
298 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
299 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
300 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
302 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
304 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
305 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
311 ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004]
312 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344
314 Elements of Programming with Perl
316 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
317 http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
320 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
321 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
322 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
324 Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules
325 by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
326 ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003]
327 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
331 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
333 ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002]
334 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14
337 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
338 with foreword by Larry Wall
339 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
340 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
342 Effective Perl Programming
344 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
347 Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
349 ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
350 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171
354 Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5
356 ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004
357 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
359 Mastering Regular Expressions
360 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
361 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002]
362 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/
364 Network Programming with Perl
366 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
367 http://www.awlonline.com/
371 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
372 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
373 http://www.manning.com/Conway/
375 Data Munging with Perl
377 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
378 http://www.manning.com/cross
381 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
382 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
383 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
385 Extending and Embedding Perl
386 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
387 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
388 http://www.manning.com/jenness
390 Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
392 ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004]
393 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/
397 =head2 Perl in Magazines
399 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things Perl,
400 I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
401 announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web
402 development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
403 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
404 and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ moved to a
405 reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers can download
406 issues as PDF documents. For more details on TPJ, see http://www.tpj.com/
408 Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on
409 Perl are I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ),
410 I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ),
411 I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ),
412 and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>
413 ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
415 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
416 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
417 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
418 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
420 =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
422 To get the best performance, pick a site from the list at
423 http://www.cpan.org/SITES.html . From there you can find the quickest
426 You may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code
427 for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org. [Note: This
428 only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.]
430 =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
432 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
433 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
434 subscription information.
436 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
438 http://lists.perl.org/
440 =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
442 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
445 http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc
447 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
448 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
449 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
452 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
454 In a real sense, perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
455 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
456 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
457 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
458 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
459 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
460 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
461 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
464 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
465 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
466 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
467 Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if
468 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of perl,
469 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
470 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
471 also all come with perl.
473 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
475 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
476 shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
477 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org or at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .
479 For Perl modules, you can submit bug reports to the Request Tracker set
480 up at http://rt.cpan.org .
482 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
483 "What platforms is perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
484 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
485 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
488 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
490 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
492 Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a
493 subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.
495 The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language
496 which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general
497 advocacy site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide
498 general support services to the Perl community, including the hosting
499 of mailing lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
500 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
501 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
503 http://learn.perl.org/
505 http://jobs.perl.org/
506 http://lists.perl.org/
508 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
509 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
510 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
511 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
513 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
514 a replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see
515 the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document.
517 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
519 Copyright (c) 1997-2005 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
520 other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
522 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
523 under the same terms as Perl itself.
525 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
526 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
527 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
528 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
529 be courteous but is not required.