3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 7861 $)
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 multi-gigabyte
94 archive replicated on hundreds of machines all over the world. CPAN
95 contains source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and
96 many 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 via
101 DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the end) for
102 how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ has a nice
103 interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY mirror directory.
105 See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for answers
106 to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN including how to
109 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
110 sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
111 rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
112 instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
113 as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as
114 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
116 Considering that, as of 2006, there are over ten thousand existing
117 modules in the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you
118 can think of. Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/
119 include Perl core modules; development support; operating system
120 interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communication; data
121 type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to
122 other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking;
123 internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and
124 daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail
125 and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft
126 Windows modules; and miscellaneous modules.
128 See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or
129 http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by
132 CPAN is a free service and 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 later in
156 L<perlfaq2> for more details.
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 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
256 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
257 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
258 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
260 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning
261 ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
262 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
263 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
265 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
266 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
268 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
269 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
271 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
278 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
279 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
280 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
282 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
284 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
285 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
291 ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004]
292 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344
294 Elements of Programming with Perl
296 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
297 http://www.manning.com/johnson/
300 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
301 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
302 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
304 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
305 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
306 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
307 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
311 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
313 ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002]
314 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14
317 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
318 with foreword by Larry Wall
319 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
320 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
322 Effective Perl Programming
324 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
327 Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
329 ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
330 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171
336 ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005]
337 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/
340 by Mark-Jason Dominus
341 ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005]
342 http://hop.perl.plover.com/
344 Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5
346 ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004]
347 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
349 Mastering Regular Expressions
350 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
351 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002]
352 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/
354 Network Programming with Perl
356 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
357 http://www.awlonline.com/
361 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
362 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
363 http://www.manning.com/conway/
365 Data Munging with Perl
367 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
368 http://www.manning.com/cross
371 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
372 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
373 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
375 Extending and Embedding Perl
376 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
377 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
378 http://www.manning.com/jenness
380 Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
382 ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004]
383 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/
387 =head2 Which magazines have Perl content?
389 I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ) focuses on Perl
390 almost completely (although it sometimes sneaks in an article about
393 Magazines that frequently carry quality articles on Perl include I<The
394 Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), I<Unix Review> (
395 http://www.unixreview.com/ ), I<Linux Magazine> (
396 http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to
397 its members, I<login:> ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
399 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
400 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
401 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
402 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
404 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things
405 Perl, I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case
406 studies, announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns
407 on web development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming,
408 regular expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl
409 Contest and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ
410 moved to a reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers
411 can download issues as PDF documents. In 2006, TPJ merged with Dr.
412 Dobbs Journal (online edition). To read old TPJ articles, see
413 http://www.ddj.com/ .
415 =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
417 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
418 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
419 subscription information.
421 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
423 http://lists.perl.org/
425 =head2 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc?
427 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
430 http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc
432 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
433 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
434 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
437 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
439 In a real sense, perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
440 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
441 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
442 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
443 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
444 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
445 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
446 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
449 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
450 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
451 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
452 Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if
453 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of perl,
454 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
455 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
456 also all come with perl.
458 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
460 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
461 shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
462 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org or at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .
464 For Perl modules, you can submit bug reports to the Request Tracker set
465 up at http://rt.cpan.org .
467 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
468 "What platforms is perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
469 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
470 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
473 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
475 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
477 Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a
478 subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.
480 The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language
481 which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general
482 advocacy site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide
483 general support services to the Perl community, including the hosting
484 of mailing lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
485 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
486 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
488 http://learn.perl.org/
490 http://jobs.perl.org/
491 http://lists.perl.org/
493 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
494 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
495 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
496 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
498 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
499 a replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see
500 the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document.
504 Revision: $Revision: 7861 $
506 Date: $Date: 2006-09-29 22:19:18 +0200 (ven, 29 sep 2006) $
508 See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.
510 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
512 Copyright (c) 1997-2006 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
513 other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
515 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
516 under the same terms as Perl itself.
518 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
519 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
520 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
521 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
522 be courteous but is not required.