3 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 9462 $)
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. A simple installation guide for
58 MS-DOS using Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at
59 http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html
60 and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html .
62 =head2 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter?
64 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor
65 should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
67 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
68 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
69 information on where to get such a binary version.
71 You might look around the net for a pre-built binary of Perl (or a
72 C compiler!) that meets your needs, though:
74 For Windows, Vanilla Perl (http://vanillaperl.com/) comes with a
75 bundled C compiler. ActivePerl is a pre-compiled version of Perl
78 For Sun systems, SunFreeware.com provides binaries of most popular
79 applications, including compilers and Perl.
81 =head2 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.
83 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
84 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
85 eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other
86 approaches are doomed to failure.
88 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
89 the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries:
91 % perl -le 'print for @INC'
93 If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you
94 may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
95 symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
100 You might also want to check out
101 L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">.
103 =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
105 Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution.
106 It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
107 Configure script can't work around for any given system or
110 =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
112 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a multi-gigabyte
113 archive replicated on hundreds of machines all over the world. CPAN
114 contains source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and
115 many third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
116 commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
117 walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is
118 http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at
119 http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you via
120 DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the end) for
121 how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ has a nice
122 interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY mirror directory.
124 See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for answers
125 to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN including how to
128 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
129 sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
130 rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
131 instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
132 as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as
133 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
135 Considering that, as of 2006, there are over ten thousand existing
136 modules in the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you
137 can think of. Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/
138 include Perl core modules; development support; operating system
139 interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communication; data
140 type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to
141 other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking;
142 internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and
143 daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail
144 and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft
145 Windows modules; and miscellaneous modules.
147 See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or
148 http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by
151 CPAN is a free service and is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media.
153 =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
155 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
157 =head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
159 The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
160 If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
161 installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
162 This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
163 $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
164 will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All
165 proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
167 You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
168 have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
169 work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
171 If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the
172 complete documentation in HTML and PDF format.
174 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section later in
175 L<perlfaq2> for more details.
177 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
178 include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's
179 approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics,
180 L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular
181 expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging,
182 and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more
183 by the time you read this. These URLs might also be useful:
185 http://perldoc.perl.org/
186 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
188 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
190 Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet:
192 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
193 comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion
194 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
195 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
196 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
198 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
200 Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and
201 comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still
202 be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because
203 postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the
204 official list of group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics
205 which do not have a more-appropriate specific group.
207 There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
208 perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists
209 at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available
210 under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other
211 groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as
212 http://lists.cpan.org/ ).
214 A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site,
215 http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list
216 http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners .
218 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
219 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,
220 but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool.
222 =head2 Where should I post source code?
224 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
225 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post
226 to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards,
227 including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
228 see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details.
230 If you're just looking for software, first use Google
231 ( http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface
232 ( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ).
233 This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
237 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few
238 of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money.
239 There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at
240 http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you
241 can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org .
243 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
244 the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:
246 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
247 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
248 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
249 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
250 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
252 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
253 of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
255 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
256 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
257 with Foreword by Larry Wall
258 ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003]
259 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/
261 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
262 suffice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the
266 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
267 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
268 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
270 And for more advanced information on writing larger programs,
271 presented in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education
272 with the Alpaca book:
274 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
275 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
276 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
277 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
279 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning
280 ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
281 such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and
282 I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein.
284 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
285 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
287 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
288 useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
290 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
297 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
298 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
299 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
301 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
303 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
304 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
310 ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004]
311 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344
313 Elements of Programming with Perl
315 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
316 http://www.manning.com/johnson/
319 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
320 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
321 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
323 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
324 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
325 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
326 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
330 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
332 ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002]
333 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14
336 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
337 with foreword by Larry Wall
338 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
339 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
341 Effective Perl Programming
343 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
346 Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
348 ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
349 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171
355 ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005]
356 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/
359 by Mark-Jason Dominus
360 ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005]
361 http://hop.perl.plover.com/
363 Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5
365 ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004]
366 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
368 Mastering Regular Expressions
369 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
370 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002]
371 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/
373 Network Programming with Perl
375 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
376 http://www.awlonline.com/
380 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
381 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
382 http://www.manning.com/conway/
384 Data Munging with Perl
386 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
387 http://www.manning.com/cross
390 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
391 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
392 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
394 Extending and Embedding Perl
395 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
396 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
397 http://www.manning.com/jenness
399 Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
401 ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004]
402 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/
406 =head2 Which magazines have Perl content?
408 I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ) focuses on Perl
409 almost completely (although it sometimes sneaks in an article about
410 another language). There's also I<$foo Magazin>, a german magazine
411 dedicated to Perl, at ( http://www.foo-magazin.de ).
413 Magazines that frequently carry quality articles on Perl include I<The
414 Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), I<Unix Review> (
415 http://www.unixreview.com/ ), I<Linux Magazine> (
416 http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to
417 its members, I<login:> ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
419 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
420 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
421 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
422 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
424 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things
425 Perl, I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case
426 studies, announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns
427 on web development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming,
428 regular expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl
429 Contest and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ
430 moved to a reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers
431 can download issues as PDF documents. In 2006, TPJ merged with Dr.
432 Dobbs Journal (online edition). To read old TPJ articles, see
433 http://www.ddj.com/ .
435 =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
437 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
438 mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
439 subscription information.
441 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
443 http://lists.perl.org/
445 =head2 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc?
447 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
450 http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc
452 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
453 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience
454 to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you
457 =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
459 In a real sense, perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license
460 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
461 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
462 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
463 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
464 questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by
465 Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad
466 programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life
469 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
470 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
471 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
472 Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if
473 that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of perl,
474 as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
475 and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
476 also all come with perl.
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 or at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .
484 For Perl modules, you can submit bug reports to the Request Tracker set
485 up at http://rt.cpan.org .
487 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
488 "What platforms is perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
489 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the
490 documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
493 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
495 =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
497 Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a
498 subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.
500 The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language
501 which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general
502 advocacy site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide
503 general support services to the Perl community, including the hosting
504 of mailing lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
505 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
506 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
508 http://learn.perl.org/
510 http://jobs.perl.org/
511 http://lists.perl.org/
513 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
514 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
515 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about
516 joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
518 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
519 a replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see
520 the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document.
524 Revision: $Revision: 9462 $
526 Date: $Date: 2007-04-27 08:24:33 +0200 (Fri, 27 Apr 2007) $
528 See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.
530 =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
532 Copyright (c) 1997-2007 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
533 other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
535 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
536 under the same terms as Perl itself.
538 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
539 domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
540 derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
541 see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
542 be courteous but is not required.