3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.17 $, $Date: 2002/11/16 23:33:08 $)
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 on my system. How can I compile perl?
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 -e 'print join("\n",@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 and Associates.
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.cpan.org/ or
153 http://www.perldoc.com/ both offer the complete documentation
156 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below
159 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
160 include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's
161 approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics,
162 L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular
163 expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging,
164 and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more
165 by the time you read this. The following URLs might also be of
168 http://perldoc.cpan.org/
169 http://www.perldoc.com/
170 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
172 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
174 The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
177 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
178 comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
179 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
180 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
181 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
183 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
185 There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by perl.org at
186 nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists at
187 http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available under the
188 C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other groups are listed at
189 http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as http://lists.cpan.org/ ).
191 A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site, http://www.perlmonks.org/
193 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
194 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,
195 but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool.
197 =head2 Where should I post source code?
199 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
200 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
201 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
202 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
203 see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details.
205 If you're just looking for software, first use Google
206 ( http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface
207 ( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ).
208 This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
212 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
213 these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
214 Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
215 reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html .
217 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
218 the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition:
220 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
221 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
222 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
223 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
224 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
226 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
227 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
229 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
230 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
231 with Foreword by Larry Wall
232 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998]
233 http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
235 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
236 suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out the
239 Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
240 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
241 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
242 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
244 If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and
245 possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much
246 hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the
249 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
251 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
252 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
253 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
255 If you are more at home in Windows the following is available
256 (though unfortunately rather dated).
258 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book")
259 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
260 with foreword by Larry Wall
261 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
262 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
264 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning
265 ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
266 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
267 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
269 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
270 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
272 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
273 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
275 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
282 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
283 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
284 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
286 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
288 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
289 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
292 by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
293 ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998]
294 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/
298 Elements of Programming with Perl
300 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
301 http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
304 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
305 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
306 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
308 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
309 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
310 with foreword by Larry Wall
311 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
312 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
314 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
316 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
317 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
318 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
321 by Eric Foster-Johnson
322 ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000]
323 http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm
325 MacPerl: Power and Ease
326 by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor,
327 with foreword by Matthias Neeracher
328 ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998]
329 http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/
334 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
335 with foreword by Larry Wall
336 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
337 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
339 Effective Perl Programming
341 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
347 Mastering Regular Expressions
348 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
349 ISBN 1-56592-257-3 [1st edition January 1997]
350 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/
352 Network Programming with Perl
354 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
355 http://www.awlonline.com/
359 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
360 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
361 http://www.manning.com/Conway/
363 Data Munging with Perl
365 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
366 http://www.manning.com/cross
369 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
370 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
371 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
375 =head2 Perl in Magazines
377 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things Perl,
378 I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
379 announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web
380 development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
381 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
382 and the Perl Poetry Contests. As of mid-2001, the dead tree version
383 of TPJ will be published as a quarterly supplement of SysAdmin
384 magazine ( http://www.sysadminmag.com/ ) For more details on TPJ,
385 see http://www.tpj.com/
387 Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on
388 Perl are I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ),
389 I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ),
390 I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ),
391 and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>
392 ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
394 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
395 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
396 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
397 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
399 =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
401 To get the best performance, pick a site from the list at
402 http://www.cpan.org/SITES.html . From there you can find the quickest
405 You may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code
406 for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org. [Note: This
407 only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.]
409 =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
411 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
412 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
413 subscription information.
415 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
417 http://lists.perl.org/
419 =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
421 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
424 http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc
426 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
427 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
428 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
431 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
433 In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
434 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
435 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
436 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
437 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
438 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
439 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
440 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
443 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
444 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
445 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
446 Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if
447 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of Perl,
448 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
449 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
450 also all come with Perl.
452 Alternatively, you can purchase commercial incidence based support
453 through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
455 "The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by
456 ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many
457 years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals
458 on a wide range of platforms.
460 "Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers,
461 we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an
462 explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
464 Contact The Perl Clinic at
468 North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
469 Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
473 Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
474 Fax: 00 44 1483 862801
476 See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
478 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
480 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
481 shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
482 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org .
484 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
485 "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
486 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
487 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
490 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
492 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
494 The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted by
495 The O'Reilly Network, a subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
497 Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language which
498 maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy
499 site for the Perl language.
501 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
502 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
503 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
504 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
506 Perl Mongers also maintain the perl.org domain to provide general
507 support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
508 lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
509 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
510 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
512 http://bugs.perl.org/
513 http://history.perl.org/
514 http://lists.perl.org/
517 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
518 a replicated worlwide repository of Perl software, see
519 the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document.
521 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
523 Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
526 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
527 under the same terms as Perl itself.
529 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
530 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
531 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
532 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
533 be courteous but is not required.