3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.3 $, $Date: 2001/11/09 08:06:04 $)
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 ~700mb 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://reference.perl.com/query.cgi?tutorials
171 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
173 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
175 The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
178 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
179 comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
180 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
181 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
182 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
184 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
186 There is also Usenet gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
187 Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
188 http://nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters .
190 =head2 Where should I post source code?
192 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
193 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
194 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
195 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
196 see their FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
198 If you're just looking for software, first use Google
199 (http://www.google.com), Deja (http://www.deja.com), and
200 CPAN Search (http://search.cpan.org). This is faster and more
201 productive than just posting a request.
205 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
206 these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
207 Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
208 reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html .
210 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
211 the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition:
213 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
214 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
215 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
216 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
217 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
219 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
220 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
222 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
223 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
224 with Foreword by Larry Wall
225 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998]
226 http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
228 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
229 suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out the
232 Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
233 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
234 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
235 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
237 If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and
238 possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much
239 hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the
242 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
244 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
245 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
246 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
248 If you are more at home in Windows the following is available
249 (though unfortunately rather dated).
251 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book")
252 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
253 with foreword by Larry Wall
254 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
255 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
257 Addison-Wesley (http://www.awlonline.com/) and Manning
258 (http://www.manning.com/) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
259 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
260 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
262 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
263 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
265 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
266 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
268 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
275 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
276 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
277 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
279 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
281 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
282 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
285 by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
286 ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998]
287 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/
291 Elements of Programming with Perl
293 ISBN 1884777805 [1st edition October 1999]
294 http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
297 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
298 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
299 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
301 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
302 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
303 with foreword by Larry Wall
304 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
305 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
307 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
309 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
310 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
311 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
314 by Eric Foster-Johnson
315 ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000]
316 http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm
318 MacPerl: Power and Ease
319 by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor,
320 with foreword by Matthias Neeracher
321 ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998]
322 http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/
327 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
328 with foreword by Larry Wall
329 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
330 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
332 Effective Perl Programming
334 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
340 Mastering Regular Expressions
341 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
342 ISBN 1-56592-257-3 [1st edition January 1997]
343 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/
345 Network Programming with Perl
347 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
348 http://www.awlonline.com/
352 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
353 ISBN 1884777791 [1st edition August 1999]
354 http://www.manning.com/Conway/
356 Data Munging with Perl
358 ISBN 1930110006 [1st edition 2001]
359 http://www.manning.com/cross
363 ISBN 1-56592-314-6 [1st edition January 1999]
364 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperltk/
368 =head2 Perl in Magazines
370 The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl,
371 I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
372 announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web
373 development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
374 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
375 and the Perl Poetry Contests. As of mid-2001, the dead tree version
376 of TPJ will be published as a quarterly supplement of SysAdmin
377 magazine ( http://www.sysadmin.com/ ) For more details on TPJ,
378 see http://www.tpj.com/
380 Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on
381 Perl are I<Web Techniques> ( http://www.webtechniques.com/ ),
382 I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ),
383 I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ),
384 and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>
385 ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
387 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
388 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
389 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
390 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
392 =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
394 To get the best performance, pick a site from
395 the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites
396 which is at /CPAN/MIRRORED.BY or at http://mirror.cpan.org/.
397 From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
398 following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors
399 (the complete list contains 165 sites as of January 2001):
402 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/
403 http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/CPAN/
404 ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/
405 ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
406 ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/
407 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
408 ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/lang/CPAN/
409 ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/
410 ftp://cpan.if.usp.br/pub/mirror/CPAN/
412 One may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code
413 for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org.
414 [Note: This only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.]
416 =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
418 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
419 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
420 subscription information.
422 http://lists.cpan.org/
424 =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
426 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
429 http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=comp.lang.perl.misc
431 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
432 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
433 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
436 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
438 In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
439 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
440 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
441 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
442 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
443 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
444 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
445 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
448 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
449 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
450 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
451 Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if
452 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of Perl,
453 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
454 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
455 also all come with Perl.
457 Alternatively, you can purchase commercial incidence based support
458 through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
460 "The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by
461 ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many
462 years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals
463 on a wide range of platforms.
465 "Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers,
466 we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an
467 explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
469 Contact The Perl Clinic at
473 North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
474 Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
478 Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
479 Fax: 00 44 1483 862801
481 See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
483 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
485 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
486 shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
487 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org .
489 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
490 "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
491 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
492 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
495 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
497 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
499 The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted by
500 The O'Reilly Network, a subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
502 Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language which
503 maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy
504 site for the Perl language.
506 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
507 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
508 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
509 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
511 Perl Mongers also maintain the perl.org domain to provide general
512 support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
513 lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
514 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
515 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
517 http://bugs.perl.org/
518 http://history.perl.org/
519 http://lists.perl.org/
520 http://news.perl.org/
523 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
524 a replicated worlwide repository of Perl software, see
525 the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document.
527 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
529 Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
532 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
533 under the same terms as Perl itself.
535 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
536 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
537 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
538 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
539 be courteous but is not required.