3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)
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.perl.com/CPAN/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.
133 =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
135 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
137 =head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
139 The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
140 If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
141 installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
142 This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
143 $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
144 will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All
145 proper Perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
147 You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
148 have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
149 work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
151 If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.cpan.org/ or
152 http://www.perldoc.com/ both offer the complete documentation
155 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below
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. The following URLs might also be of
167 http://perldoc.cpan.org/
168 http://www.perldoc.com/
169 http://reference.perl.com/query.cgi?tutorials
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 Usenet gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
186 Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
187 news://news.perl.com/perl.porters-gw/ .
189 =head2 Where should I post source code?
191 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
192 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
193 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
194 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
195 see their FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
197 If you're just looking for software, first use Google
198 (http://www.google.com), Deja (http://www.deja.com), and
199 CPAN Search (http://search.cpan.org). This is faster and more
200 productive than just posting a request.
204 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
205 these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
206 Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
207 reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html .
209 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
210 the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition:
212 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
213 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
214 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
215 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
216 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
218 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
219 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
221 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
222 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
223 with Foreword by Larry Wall
224 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998]
225 http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
227 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
228 suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out the
231 Learning Perl (the "Llama Book")
232 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
233 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
234 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
236 If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and
237 possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much
238 hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the
241 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
243 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
244 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
245 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
247 If you are more at home in Windows the following is available
248 (though unfortunately rather dated).
250 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book")
251 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
252 with foreword by Larry Wall
253 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
254 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
256 Addison-Wesley (http://www.awlonline.com/) and Manning
257 (http://www.manning.com/) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
258 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
259 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
261 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
262 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
264 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
265 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
267 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
274 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
275 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
276 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
278 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
280 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
281 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
284 by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
285 ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998]
286 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/
290 Elements of Programming with Perl
292 ISBN 1884777805 [1st edition October 1999]
293 http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
296 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
297 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001]
298 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/
300 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
301 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
302 with foreword by Larry Wall
303 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
304 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
306 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
308 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
309 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
310 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
313 by Eric Foster-Johnson
314 ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000]
315 http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm
317 MacPerl: Power and Ease
318 by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor,
319 with foreword by Matthias Neeracher
320 ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998]
321 http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/
326 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
327 with foreword by Larry Wall
328 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
329 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
331 Effective Perl Programming
333 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
339 Mastering Regular Expressions
340 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
341 ISBN 1-56592-257-3 [1st edition January 1997]
342 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/
344 Network Programming with Perl
346 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
347 http://www.awlonline.com/
351 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
352 ISBN 1884777791 [1st edition August 1999]
353 http://www.manning.com/Conway/
355 Data Munging with Perl
357 ISBN 1930110006 [1st edition 2001]
358 http://www.manning.com/cross
362 ISBN 1-56592-314-6 [1st edition January 1999]
363 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperltk/
367 =head2 Perl in Magazines
369 The first and only periodical devoted to All Things Perl,
370 I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies,
371 announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web
372 development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
373 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
374 and the Perl Poetry Contests. As of mid-2001, the dead tree version
375 of TPJ will be published as a quarterly supplement of SysAdmin
376 magazine ( http://www.sysadmin.com/ ) For more details on TPJ,
377 see http://www.tpj.com/
379 Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on
380 Perl are I<Web Techniques> ( http://www.webtechniques.com/ ),
381 I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ),
382 I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ),
383 and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:>
384 ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
386 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwarz are available on the web at
387 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
388 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
389 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
391 =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
393 To get the best performance, pick a site from
394 the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites
395 which is at /CPAN/MIRRORED.BY or at http://mirror.cpan.org/.
396 From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
397 following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors
398 (the complete list contains 165 sites as of January 2001):
401 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/
402 http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/CPAN/
403 ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/
404 ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
405 ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/
406 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
407 ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/lang/CPAN/
408 ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/
409 ftp://cpan.if.usp.br/pub/mirror/CPAN/
411 One may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code
412 for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org.
413 [Note: This only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.]
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 http://lists.cpan.org/
423 =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
425 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
428 http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=comp.lang.perl.misc
430 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
431 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
432 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
435 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
437 In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
438 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
439 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
440 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
441 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
442 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
443 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriads of
444 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
447 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
448 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
449 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
450 Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if
451 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of Perl,
452 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
453 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
454 also all come with Perl.
456 Alternatively, you can purchase commercial incidence based support
457 through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
459 "The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by
460 ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many
461 years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals
462 on a wide range of platforms.
464 "Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers,
465 we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an
466 explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
468 Contact The Perl Clinic at
472 North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
473 Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
477 Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
478 Fax: 00 44 1483 862801
480 See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
482 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
484 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
485 shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
486 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org .
488 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
489 "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
490 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
491 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
494 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
496 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
498 The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted by
499 The O'Reilly Network, a subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
501 Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language which
502 maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy
503 site for the Perl language.
505 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
506 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
507 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
508 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
510 Perl Mongers also maintain the perl.org domain to provide general
511 support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
512 lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
513 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
514 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
516 http://bugs.perl.org/
517 http://history.perl.org/
518 http://lists.perl.org/
519 http://news.perl.org/
522 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
524 Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
527 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
528 under the same terms as Perl itself.
530 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
531 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
532 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
533 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
534 be courteous but is not required.