3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 10144 $)
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 For Windows, ActiveState provides a pre-built Perl for free:
37 http://www.activestate.com/
39 Sunfreeware.com provides binaries for many utilities, including
40 Perl, for Solaris on both Intel and SPARC hardware:
42 http://www.sunfreeware.com/
44 If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever
45 reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
46 grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl
47 with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to
48 get free compilers for, not for Unix systems.
50 Some URLs that might help you are:
52 http://www.cpan.org/ports/
53 http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html
55 Someone looking for a perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's
56 djgpp port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with
57 clear installation instructions.
59 =head2 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter?
61 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor
62 should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
64 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
65 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
66 information on where to get such a binary version.
68 You might look around the net for a pre-built binary of Perl (or a
69 C compiler!) that meets your needs, though:
71 For Windows, Vanilla Perl ( http://vanillaperl.com/ ) and Strawberry Perl
72 ( http://strawberryperl.com/ ) come with a
73 bundled C compiler. ActivePerl is a pre-compiled version of Perl
76 For Sun systems, SunFreeware.com provides binaries of most popular
77 applications, including compilers and Perl.
79 =head2 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.
81 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
82 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
83 eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other
84 approaches are doomed to failure.
86 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
87 the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries:
89 % perl -le 'print for @INC'
91 If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you
92 may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
93 symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
98 You might also want to check out
99 L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">.
101 =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
103 Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution.
104 It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
105 Configure script can't work around for any given system or
108 =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
110 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a multi-gigabyte
111 archive replicated on hundreds of machines all over the world. CPAN
112 contains source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and
113 many third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
114 commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
115 walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is
116 http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at
117 http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you via
118 DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the end) for
119 how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ has a nice
120 interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY mirror directory.
122 See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for answers
123 to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN including how to
126 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
127 sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
128 rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
129 instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
130 as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as
131 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
133 Considering that, as of 2006, there are over ten thousand existing
134 modules in the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you
135 can think of. Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/
136 include Perl core modules; development support; operating system
137 interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communication; data
138 type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to
139 other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking;
140 internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and
141 daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail
142 and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft
143 Windows modules; and miscellaneous modules.
145 See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or
146 http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by
149 CPAN is a free service and is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media.
151 =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
153 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
155 =head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
157 The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
158 If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
159 installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
160 This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
161 $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
162 will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All
163 proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
165 You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
166 have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
167 work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
169 If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the
170 complete documentation in HTML and PDF format.
172 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section later in
173 L<perlfaq2> for more details.
175 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
176 include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's
177 approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics,
178 L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular
179 expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging,
180 and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more
181 by the time you read this. These URLs might also be useful:
183 http://perldoc.perl.org/
184 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
186 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
188 Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet:
190 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
191 comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion
192 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
193 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
194 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
196 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
198 Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and
199 comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still
200 be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because
201 postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the
202 official list of group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics
203 which do not have a more-appropriate specific group.
205 There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
206 perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists
207 at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available
208 under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other
209 groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as
210 http://lists.cpan.org/ ).
212 A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site,
213 http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list
214 http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners .
216 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
217 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,
218 but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool.
220 =head2 Where should I post source code?
222 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
223 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
224 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
225 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
226 see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details.
228 If you're just looking for software, first use Google
229 ( http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface
230 ( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ).
231 This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
235 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few
236 of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money.
237 There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at
238 http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you
239 can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org .
241 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
242 the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:
244 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
245 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
246 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
247 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
248 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
250 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
251 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
253 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
254 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
255 with Foreword by Larry Wall
256 ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003]
257 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/
259 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
260 suffice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the
264 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
265 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
266 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
268 And for more advanced information on writing larger programs,
269 presented in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education
270 with the Alpaca book:
272 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
273 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
274 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
275 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
277 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning
278 ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
279 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
280 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
282 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
283 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
285 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
286 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
288 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
295 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
296 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
297 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
299 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
301 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
302 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
308 ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004]
309 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344
311 Elements of Programming with Perl
313 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
314 http://www.manning.com/johnson/
317 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
318 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
319 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
321 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
322 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
323 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
324 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/intermediateperl/
328 ISBN 0-596-52724-1 [1st edition July 2007]
329 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242/
333 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
335 ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002]
336 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14
339 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
340 with foreword by Larry Wall
341 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
342 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
344 Effective Perl Programming
346 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
349 Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
351 ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
352 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171
358 ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005]
359 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/
362 by Mark-Jason Dominus
363 ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005]
364 http://hop.perl.plover.com/
366 Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5
368 ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004]
369 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
371 Mastering Regular Expressions
372 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
373 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002]
374 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/
376 Network Programming with Perl
378 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
379 http://www.awlonline.com/
383 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
384 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
385 http://www.manning.com/conway/
387 Data Munging with Perl
389 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
390 http://www.manning.com/cross
393 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
394 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
395 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
397 Extending and Embedding Perl
398 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
399 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
400 http://www.manning.com/jenness
402 Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
404 ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004]
405 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/
408 by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
409 ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]
410 http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590594541
414 =head2 Which magazines have Perl content?
416 I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ) focuses on Perl
417 almost completely (although it sometimes sneaks in an article about
418 another language). There's also I<$foo Magazin>, a german magazine
419 dedicated to Perl, at ( http://www.foo-magazin.de ).
421 Magazines that frequently carry quality articles on Perl include I<The
422 Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), I<Unix Review> (
423 http://www.unixreview.com/ ), I<Linux Magazine> (
424 http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to
425 its members, I<login:> ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
427 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
428 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
429 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
430 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
432 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things
433 Perl, I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case
434 studies, announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns
435 on web development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming,
436 regular expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl
437 Contest and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ
438 moved to a reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers
439 can download issues as PDF documents. In 2006, TPJ merged with Dr.
440 Dobbs Journal (online edition). To read old TPJ articles, see
441 http://www.ddj.com/ .
443 =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
445 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
446 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
447 subscription information.
449 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
451 http://lists.perl.org/
453 =head2 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc?
455 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
458 http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc
460 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
461 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
462 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
465 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
467 In a real sense, perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
468 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
469 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
470 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
471 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
472 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
473 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
474 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
477 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
478 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
479 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
480 Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if
481 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of perl,
482 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
483 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
484 also all come with perl.
486 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
488 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
489 shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
490 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org or at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .
492 For Perl modules, you can submit bug reports to the Request Tracker set
493 up at http://rt.cpan.org .
495 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
496 "What platforms is perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
497 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
498 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
501 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
503 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
505 Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a
506 subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.
508 The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language
509 which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general
510 advocacy site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide
511 general support services to the Perl community, including the hosting
512 of mailing lists, web sites, and other services. There are also many
513 other sub-domains for special topics like learning Perl, Perl news, jobs
516 http://learn.perl.org/
518 http://jobs.perl.org/
519 http://lists.perl.org/
521 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
522 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
523 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
524 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
526 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
527 a replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see
528 the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document.
532 Revision: $Revision: 10144 $
534 Date: $Date: 2007-10-31 13:50:01 +0100 (Wed, 31 Oct 2007) $
536 See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.
538 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
540 Copyright (c) 1997-2007 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
541 other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
543 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
544 under the same terms as Perl itself.
546 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
547 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
548 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
549 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
550 be courteous but is not required.