3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.16 $, $Date: 1997/04/23 18:04:09 $)
7 This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find
8 source and documentation for Perl, support and training, 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 can
15 find this at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz, which is a
16 gzipped archive in POSIX tar format. This source builds with no
17 porting whatsoever on most Unix systems (Perl's native environment),
18 as well as Windows NT, Plan 9, VMS, QNX, OS/2, and the Amiga.
20 Binary distributions for various platforms can be found
21 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory. Some of these ports (especially
22 the ones that are not part of the standard sources) may behave differently
23 than what is documented in the standard source documentation. These
24 differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features of the
25 particular platform that are not supported in the source release of perl)
26 or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current source release of perl).
28 A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is:
29 http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html
30 [This FAQ is seriously outdated as of Jan 1998--it is only relevant to
31 the perl that ActiveState distributes, especially where it describes
32 various inadequacies and differences with the standard perl extension
35 =head2 How can I get a binary version of Perl?
37 If you don't have a C compiler because for whatever reasons your
38 vendor did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
39 grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl
40 with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to
41 get free compilers for, not for Unix systems.
43 Your first stop should be http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports to see what
44 information is already available. A simple installation guide for
45 MS-DOS is available at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perl5dos.html , and
46 similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perlwin3.html
49 =head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl?
51 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor
52 should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
54 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
55 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
56 information on where to get such a binary version.
58 =head2 I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.
60 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
61 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
62 eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other
63 approaches are doomed to failure.
65 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
66 the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for.
68 perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'
70 If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you
71 may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
72 symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately.
74 You might also want to check out L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own
75 module/library directory?">.
77 =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
79 Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution.
80 It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncracies that the
81 Configure script can't work around for any given system or
84 =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
86 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a huge archive
87 replicated on dozens of machines all over the world. CPAN contains
88 source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many
89 third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
90 commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
91 walking and CGI scripts. The master machine for CPAN is
92 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/, but you can use the
93 address http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html to fetch a copy from a
94 "site near you". See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the
95 end) for how this process works.
97 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
98 sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
99 rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
100 instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
101 as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as
102 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
104 Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the
105 archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of.
106 Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include perl core
107 modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking,
108 devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
109 interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames,
110 file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world
111 wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and
112 compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow
113 utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and
114 miscellaneous modules.
116 =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
118 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
120 =head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
122 The complete Perl documentation is available with the perl
123 distribution. If you have perl installed locally, you probably have
124 the documentation installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a
125 system resembling Unix. This will lead you to other important man
126 pages. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
127 will be different; for example, it might be only in HTML format. But
128 all proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
130 You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
131 have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
132 work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
134 If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which contains the
135 complete documentation in various formats, including native pod,
136 troff, html, and plain text. There's also a web page at
137 http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that might help.
139 It's also worth noting that there's a PDF version of the complete
140 documentation for perl available in the CPAN/authors/id/BMIDD
143 Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the section below
146 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on USENET? Where do I post questions?
148 The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
151 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
152 comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
153 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
154 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
156 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
158 There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
159 Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
160 news://genetics.upenn.edu/perl.porters-gw/ .
162 =head2 Where should I post source code?
164 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate,
165 but feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to
166 cross-post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting
167 standards, including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT
168 include alt.sources; see their FAQ for details.
172 A number books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
173 these are good, some are ok, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
174 Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
175 reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.
177 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by the
178 creator of Perl and his apostles, is now in its second edition and
181 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
182 Authors: Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
183 ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English)
184 ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
185 (French and German translations in progress)
187 Note that O'Reilly books are color-coded: turquoise (some would call
188 it teal) covers indicate perl5 coverage, while magenta (some would
189 call it pink) covers indicate perl4 only. Check the cover color
192 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
193 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
195 If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book
196 just might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But if you're not,
197 check out the "Llama Book". It currently doesn't cover perl5, but the
198 2nd edition is nearly done and should be out by summer 97:
200 Learning Perl (the Llama Book):
201 Author: Randal Schwartz, with intro by Larry Wall
202 ISBN 1-56592-042-2 (English)
203 ISBN 4-89502-678-1 (Japanese)
204 ISBN 2-84177-005-2 (French)
205 ISBN 3-930673-08-8 (German)
207 Another stand-out book in the turquoise O'Reilly Perl line is the "Hip
208 Owls" book. It covers regular expressions inside and out, with quite a
209 bit devoted exclusively to Perl:
211 Mastering Regular Expressions (the Cute Owls Book):
212 Author: Jeffrey Friedl
215 You can order any of these books from O'Reilly & Associates,
216 1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is 1-707-829-0515. If you can locate
217 an O'Reilly order form, you can also fax to 1-707-829-0104. See
218 http://www.ora.com/ on the Web.
220 Recommended Perl books that are not from O'Reilly are the following:
222 Cross-Platform Perl, (for Unix and Windows NT)
223 Author: Eric F. Johnson
226 How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site, (2nd edition)
227 Author: Lincoln Stein, M.D., Ph.D.
230 CGI Programming in C & Perl,
231 Author: Thomas Boutell
234 Note that some of these address specific application areas (e.g. the
235 Web) and are not general-purpose programming books.
237 =head2 Perl in Magazines
239 The Perl Journal is the first and only magazine dedicated to Perl.
240 It is published (on paper, not online) quarterly by Jon Orwant
241 (orwant@tpj.com), editor. Subscription information is at http://tpj.com
242 or via email to subscriptions@tpj.com.
244 Beyond this, two other magazines that frequently carry high-quality
245 articles on Perl are Web Techniques (see
246 http://www.webtechniques.com/) and Unix Review
247 (http://www.unixreview.com/). Randal Schwartz's Web Technique's
248 columns are available on the web at
249 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ .
251 =head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access
253 To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick a site from
254 the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites.
255 From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
256 following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
258 http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to another mirror)
259 http://www.perl.org/CPAN
260 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
261 http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
262 ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
264 http:/www.oasis.leo.org/perl/ has, amongst other things, source to
265 versions 1 through 5 of Perl.
267 =head2 What mailing lists are there for perl?
269 Most of the major modules (tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
270 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
271 subscription information. The following are a list of mailing lists
272 related to perl itself.
274 If you subscribe to a mailing list, it behooves you to know how to
275 unsubscribe from it. Strident pleas to the list itself to get you off
276 will not be favorably received.
282 There is a mailing list for discussing Macintosh Perl. Contact
283 "mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch".
285 Also see Matthias Neeracher's (the creator and maintainer of MacPerl)
286 webpage at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri/macintosh/perl.html for
287 many links to interesting MacPerl sites, and the applications/MPW
292 The core development team have a mailing list for discussing fixes and
293 changes to the language. Send mail to
294 "perl5-porters-request@perl.org" with help in the body of the message
295 for information on subscribing.
299 This list is used to discuss issues involving Win32 Perl 5 (Windows NT
300 and Win95). Subscribe by emailing ListManager@ActiveWare.com with the
303 subscribe Perl-Win32-Users
305 The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine
306 your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, email
307 the following in the message body to the same address like so:
309 unsubscribe Perl-Win32-Users
311 You can also check http://www.activeware.com/ and select "Mailing Lists"
312 to join or leave this list.
316 Discussion related to archiving of perl materials, particularly the
317 Comprehensive PerlArchive Network (CPAN). Subscribe by emailing
318 majordomo@cis.ufl.edu:
320 subscribe perl-packrats
322 The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine
323 your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, simple
324 prepend the same command with an "un", and mail to the same address
327 unsubscribe perl-packrats
331 =head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
333 Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista?
335 ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost
336 complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through
337 12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
339 You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism
340 than a file listing, preferably one that allows you to retrieve
341 articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at least author, date,
342 subject, thread (as in "trn") and probably keywords. The best
343 solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is
344 very slow to select on 18000 articles.
346 If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections, please
347 let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
351 While some large training companies offer their own courses on Perl,
352 you may prefer to contact individuals near and dear to the heart of
353 Perl development. Two well-known members of the Perl development team
354 who offer such things are Tom Christiansen <perl-classes@perl.com>
355 and Randal Schwartz <perl-training-info@stonehenge.com>, plus their
356 respective minions, who offer a variety of professional tutorials
357 and seminars on Perl. These courses include large public seminars,
358 private corporate training, and fly-ins to Colorado and Oregon.
359 See http://www.perl.com/perl/info/training.html for more details.
361 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?
363 In a sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: It has a licence
364 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is
365 distributed in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a
366 very large user community and an extensive literature. The
367 comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide
368 free answers to your questions in near real-time. Perl has
369 traditionally been supported by Larry, dozens of software designers
370 and developers, and thousands of programmers, all working for free
371 to create a useful thing to make life better for everyone.
373 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
374 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go
375 wrong. Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual
376 obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from
377 several sources if that will help.
379 Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically
380 provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl.
381 Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The
382 Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
384 "Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need
385 a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay
386 only for what you need?
388 "The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and
389 support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten
390 years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl
391 at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl
392 porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the
393 DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The
394 Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5
395 Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part
396 of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work
397 will be donated to The Perl Institute."
399 For more information, contact the The Perl Clinic:
403 Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/
404 Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk
406 =head2 Where do I send bug reports?
408 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
409 shipped with perl, use the perlbug program in the perl distribution or
410 email your report to perlbug@perl.com.
412 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
413 "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
414 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
415 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
418 Read the perlbug man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
420 =head2 What is perl.com? perl.org? The Perl Institute?
422 perl.org is the official vehicle for The Perl Institute. The motto of
423 TPI is "helping people help Perl help people" (or something like
424 that). It's a non-profit organization supporting development,
425 documentation, and dissemination of perl. Current directors of TPI
426 include Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz, whom you
427 may have heard of somewhere else around here.
429 The perl.com domain is Tom Christiansen's domain. He created it as a
430 public service long before perl.org came about. It's the original PBS
431 of the Perl world, a clearinghouse for information about all things
432 Perlian, accepting no paid advertisements, glossy gifs, or (gasp!)
433 java applets on its pages.
435 =head2 How do I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?
437 L<perltoot> (distributed with 5.004 or later) is a good place to start.
438 Also, L<perlobj>, L<perlref>, and L<perlmod> are useful references,
439 while L<perlbot> has some excellent tips and tricks.
441 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
443 Copyright (c) 1997 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
444 All rights reserved. See L<perlfaq> for distribution information.