3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.30 $, $Date: 1998/12/29 19:43:32 $)
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.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz , which
16 in 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 proprietary systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
21 QNX, BeOS, and the Amiga. There are also the beginnings of support
24 Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including
25 Apple systems, can be found http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory.
26 Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may
27 and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways.
28 You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just
29 what the differences are. These differences can be either positive
30 (e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that
31 are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g.
32 might be based upon a less current source release of perl).
34 =head2 How can I get a binary version of Perl?
36 If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever
37 reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
38 grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl
39 with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to
40 get free compilers for, not for Unix systems.
42 Some URLs that might help you are:
44 http://language.perl.com/info/software.html
45 http://www.perl.com/latest/
46 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/
48 If you want information on proprietary systems. A simple installation
49 guide for MS-DOS is available at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perl5dos.html
50 and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perlwin3.html .
52 =head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl?
54 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor
55 should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
57 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
58 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
59 information on where to get such a binary version.
61 =head2 I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.
63 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
64 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
65 eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other
66 approaches are doomed to failure.
68 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
69 the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for.
71 % perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'
73 If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you
74 may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
75 symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
80 You might also want to check out L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own
81 module/library directory?">.
83 =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
85 Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution.
86 It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
87 Configure script can't work around for any given system or
90 =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
92 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a huge archive
93 replicated on dozens of machines all over the world. CPAN contains
94 source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many
95 third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
96 commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
97 walking and CGI scripts. The master machine for CPAN is
98 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/, but you can use the
99 address http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html to fetch a copy from a
100 "site near you". See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the
101 end) for how this process works.
103 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
104 sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
105 rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
106 instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
107 as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as
108 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
110 Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the
111 archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of.
112 Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include perl core
113 modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking,
114 devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
115 interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames,
116 file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world
117 wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and
118 compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow
119 utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and
120 miscellaneous modules.
122 =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
124 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
126 =head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
128 The complete Perl documentation is available with the perl distribution.
129 If you have perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
130 installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
131 This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
132 $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
133 will be different; for example, it might be only in HTML format. But all
134 proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
136 You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
137 have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
138 work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
140 If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which contains the
141 complete documentation in various formats, including native pod,
142 troff, html, and plain text. There's also a web page at
143 http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that might help.
145 Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the section below
148 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
149 include L<perltoot> for objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening
150 semantics, L<perlreftut> for managing references, and L<perlxstut>
151 for linking C and Perl together. There may be more by the
152 time you read this. The following URLs might also be of
155 http://language.perl.com/info/documentation.html
156 http://reference.perl.com/query.cgi?tutorials
158 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on USENET? Where do I post questions?
160 The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
163 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
164 comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
165 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
166 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
167 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
169 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
171 There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
172 Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
173 news://news.perl.com/perl.porters-gw/ .
175 =head2 Where should I post source code?
177 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
178 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
179 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
180 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
181 see their FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
183 If you're just looking for software, first use Alta Vista, Deja News, and
184 search CPAN. This is faster and more productive than just posting
189 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
190 these are good, some are ok, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
191 Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
192 reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.
194 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
195 the creator of Perl, is now in its second edition:
197 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
198 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
199 ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English)
200 ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
201 URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl2/
202 (French, German, Italian, and Hungarian translations also
205 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
206 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs
207 (first premiering at the 1998 Perl Conference), is:
209 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
210 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
211 with Foreword by Larry Wall
213 URL: http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
215 If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book
216 might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But if you're not, check
219 Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"):
220 by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
221 with Foreword by Larry Wall
223 URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
225 Despite the picture at the URL above, the second edition of "Llama
226 Book" really has a blue cover, and is updated for the 5.004 release
227 of Perl. Various foreign language editions are available, including
228 I<Learning Perl on Win32 Systems> (the Gecko Book).
230 If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and possibly
231 even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much hand-holding as
232 we try to provide in the Llama or its defurred cousin the Gecko, please
233 check out the delightful book, I<Perl: The Programmer's Companion>,
234 written by Nigel Chapman.
236 You can order O'Reilly books directly from O'Reilly & Associates,
237 1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is 1-707-829-0515. If you can
238 locate an O'Reilly order form, you can also fax to 1-707-829-0104.
239 See http://www.ora.com/ on the Web.
241 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
242 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
244 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow; those marked with
245 a star may be ordered from O'Reilly.
252 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
254 *Perl 5 Desktop Reference
259 *Learning Perl [2nd edition]
260 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
261 with foreword by Larry Wall
263 *Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
264 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
265 with foreword by Larry Wall
267 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
273 MacPerl: Power and Ease
274 by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, foreword by Matthias Neeracher
279 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
280 with foreword by Larry Wall
282 Perl5 Interactive Course [2nd edition]
285 *Advanced Perl Programming
288 Effective Perl Programming
293 *Mastering Regular Expressions
296 How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition]
301 =head2 Perl in Magazines
303 The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl, I<The
304 Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
305 announcements, contests, and much more. TPJ has columns on web
306 development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
307 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl
308 Contest. It is published quarterly under the gentle hand of its
309 editor, Jon Orwant. See http://www.tpj.com/ or send mail to
310 subscriptions@tpj.com .
312 Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry high-quality articles
313 on Perl are I<Web Techniques> (see http://www.webtechniques.com/),
314 I<Performance Computing> (http://www.performance-computing.com/), and Usenix's
315 newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>, at http://www.usenix.org/.
316 Randal's Web Technique's columns are available on the web at
317 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/.
319 =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
321 To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick a site from
322 the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites.
323 >From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
324 following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
326 http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local
327 http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to an ftp mirror)
328 http://www.perl.org/CPAN
329 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
330 http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
331 ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
333 =head2 What mailing lists are there for perl?
335 Most of the major modules (tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
336 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
337 subscription information. The Perl Institute attempts to maintain a
338 list of mailing lists at:
340 http://www.perl.org/maillist.html
342 =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
344 Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista? Those are the
345 best archives. Just look up "*perl*" as a newsgroup.
347 http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=terse&showsort=date&maxhits=25&subjects=&groups=*perl*&authors=&fromdate=&todate=
349 You'll probably want to trim that down a bit, though.
351 ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost
352 complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through
353 12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
355 You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism
356 than a file listing, preferably one that allows you to retrieve
357 articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at least author, date,
358 subject, thread (as in "trn") and probably keywords. The best
359 solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is
360 very slow to select on 18000 articles.
362 If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections, please
363 let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
365 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
367 In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: It has a licence
368 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
369 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
370 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
371 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
372 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
373 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriads of
374 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
377 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
378 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
379 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
380 Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if
381 that will help. For example, many perl books carry a perl distribution
382 on them, as do the O'Reily Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
383 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
384 also all come with Perl.
386 Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically
387 provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl.
388 Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The
389 Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
391 "Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need
392 a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay
393 only for what you need?
395 "The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and
396 support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten
397 years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl
398 at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl
399 porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the
400 DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The
401 Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5
402 Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part
403 of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work
404 will be donated to The Perl Institute."
406 For more information, contact The Perl Clinic:
410 Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/
411 Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk
413 See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
415 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
417 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
418 shipped with perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the perl distribution or
419 mail your report to perlbug@perl.com .
421 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
422 "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
423 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
424 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
427 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
429 =head2 What is perl.com?
431 The perl.com domain is owned by Tom Christiansen, who created it as a
432 public service long before perl.org came about. Despite the name, it's a
433 pretty non-commercial site meant to be a clearinghouse for information
434 about all things Perlian, accepting no paid advertisements, bouncy
435 happy gifs, or silly java applets on its pages. The Perl Home Page at
436 http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted on a T3 line courtesy of Songline
437 Systems, a software-oriented subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
438 Other starting points include
440 http://language.perl.com/
441 http://conference.perl.com/
442 http://reference.perl.com/
444 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
446 Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
449 When included as an integrated part of the Standard Distribution
450 of Perl or of its documentation (printed or otherwise), this work is
451 covered under Perl's Artistic Licence. For separate distributions of
452 all or part of this FAQ outside of that, see L<perlfaq>.
454 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are public
455 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
456 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
457 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
458 be courteous but is not required.