=head1 NAME
-perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.31 $, $Date: 1999/04/14 03:46:19 $)
+perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually
all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native
-platform), as are proprietary systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
+platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
QNX, BeOS, and the Amiga. There are also the beginnings of support
for MPE/iX.
Some URLs that might help you are:
http://language.perl.com/info/software.html
- http://www.perl.com/latest/
+ http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html#binary
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/
-Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to LMOLNAR's djgpp
+Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp
port in http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/msdos/ , which comes with clear
installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS using
-IlyaZ's OS/2 port is available at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perl5dos.html
-and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~piet/perlwin3.html .
+Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at
+http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html
+and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html .
=head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl?
If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you
may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
-symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
+symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
part of the output of
% perl -V
Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the
archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of.
-Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include perl core
+Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core
modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking,
devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames,
=head2 Where can I get information on Perl?
-The complete Perl documentation is available with the perl distribution.
-If you have perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
+The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
+If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
$MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
will be different; for example, it might be only in HTML format. But all
-proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
+proper Perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.
You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't
have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
http://language.perl.com/info/documentation.html
http://reference.perl.com/query.cgi?tutorials
-=head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on USENET? Where do I post questions?
+=head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
following groups:
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
-There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
+There is also Usenet gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
news://news.perl.com/perl.porters-gw/ .
including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources;
see their FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/) for details.
-If you're just looking for software, first use Alta Vista, Deja News, and
+If you're just looking for software, first use AltaVista
+(http://www.altavista.com), Deja (http://www.deja.com), and
search CPAN. This is faster and more productive than just posting
a request.
=head2 Perl Books
A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of
-these are good, some are ok, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
+these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom
Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive
reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.
The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by
-the creator of Perl, is now in its second edition:
+the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition:
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
- by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
- ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English)
- ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
- URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl2/
- (French, German, Italian, and Hungarian translations also
- available)
+ by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
+ 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
+ (English, translations to several languages are also available)
The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands
of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs
The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
- with Foreword by Larry Wall
- ISBN: 1-56592-243-3
- URL: http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
+ with Foreword by Larry Wall
+ ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998]
+ http://perl.oreilly.com/cookbook/
If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book
might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But if you're not, check
Learning Perl (the "Llama Book"):
by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
with Foreword by Larry Wall
- ISBN: 1-56592-284-0
- URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
+ ISBN 1-56592-284-0 [2nd Edition July 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
Despite the picture at the URL above, the second edition of "Llama
Book" really has a blue cover, and is updated for the 5.004 release
What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally
useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
-Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow; those marked with
-a star may be ordered from O'Reilly.
+Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
=over
=item References
- *Programming Perl
- by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz
+ Programming Perl
+ by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
+ ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
+
+ Perl 5 Pocket Reference
+ by Johan Vromans
+ ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
- *Perl 5 Desktop Reference
- By Johan Vromans
+ Perl in a Nutshell
+ by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan
+ ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/
=item Tutorials
-
- *Learning Perl [2nd edition]
+
+ Elements of Programming with Perl
+ by Andrew L. Johnson
+ ISBN 1884777805 [1st edition October 1999]
+ http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
+
+ Learning Perl
by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
with foreword by Larry Wall
+ ISBN 1-56592-284-0 [2nd edition July 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/
- *Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
+ Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
with foreword by Larry Wall
+ ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
Perl: The Programmer's Companion
by Nigel Chapman
+ ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1st edition October 1997]
+ http://catalog.wiley.com/title.cgi?isbn=047197563X
- Cross-Platform Perl
- by Eric F. Johnson
+ Cross-Platform Perl
+ by Eric Foster-Johnson
+ ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000]
+ http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm
- MacPerl: Power and Ease
- by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, foreword by Matthias Neeracher
+ MacPerl: Power and Ease
+ by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor,
+ with foreword by Matthias Neeracher
+ ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998]
+ http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/
=item Task-Oriented
- *The Perl Cookbook
+ The Perl Cookbook
by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
with foreword by Larry Wall
+ ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
- Perl5 Interactive Course [2nd edition]
+ Perl5 Interactive Course
by Jon Orwant
+ ISBN 1571690646 [1st edition June 1997]
- *Advanced Perl Programming
+ Advanced Perl Programming
by Sriram Srinivasan
+ ISBN 1-56592-220-4 [1st edition August 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/advperl/
Effective Perl Programming
by Joseph Hall
+ ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
+ http://www.awl.com/
=item Special Topics
- *Mastering Regular Expressions
- by Jeffrey Friedl
+ Mastering Regular Expressions
+ by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
+ ISBN 1-56592-257-3 [1st edition January 1997]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/
- How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site [2nd edition]
+ How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site
by Lincoln Stein
+ ISBN 0-201-63389-2 [1st edition 1995]
+ http://www.awl.com/
+
+ Object Oriented Perl
+ Damian Conway
+ with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
+ ISBN 1884777791 [1st edition August 1999]
+ http://www.manning.com/Conway/
+
+ Learning Perl/Tk
+ by Nancy Walsh
+ ISBN 1-56592-314-6 [1st edition January 1999]
+ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperltk/
=back
To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick a site from
the list below and use it to grab the complete list of mirror sites.
->From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
-following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors.
-
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN (redirects to an ftp mirror)
- http://www.perl.org/CPAN
+From there you can find the quickest site for you. Remember, the
+following list is I<not> the complete list of CPAN mirrors
+(the complete list contains 136 sites as of July 2000):
+
+ http://www.perl.com/CPAN/
+ http://www.cpan.org/CPAN/
+ http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
- http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
- ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/lang/CPAN/
+ ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/
+ ftp://cpan.if.usp.br/pub/mirror/CPAN/
-=head2 What mailing lists are there for perl?
+=head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
-Most of the major modules (tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
+Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own
mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
-subscription information. The Perl Institute attempts to maintain a
+subscription information. The Perl Mongers attempt to maintain a
list of mailing lists at:
- http://www.perl.org/maillist.html
+ http://www.perl.org/support/online_support.html#mail
=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc
-Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista? Those are the
+Have you tried Deja or AltaVista? Those are the
best archives. Just look up "*perl*" as a newsgroup.
- http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=terse&showsort=date&maxhits=25&subjects=&groups=*perl*&authors=&fromdate=&todate=
+ http://www.deja.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=terse&showsort=date&maxhits=25&subjects=&groups=*perl*&authors=&fromdate=&todate=
You'll probably want to trim that down a bit, though.
-ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an almost
-complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91 through
-12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
-
You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism
than a file listing, preferably one that allows you to retrieve
articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at least author, date,
However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations.
-Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if
-that will help. For example, many perl books carry a perl distribution
+Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if
+that will help. For example, many Perl books carry a Perl distribution
on them, as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor
and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions
also all come with Perl.
-Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus historically
-provided this service, they no longer sell support contracts for Perl.
-Instead, the Paul Ingram Group will be taking up the slack through The
-Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
-
-"Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do you need
-a support contract with defined levels of service? Do you want to pay
-only for what you need?
-
-"The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software development and
-support services to some of the world's largest corporations for ten
-years. We are now offering the same quality support services for Perl
-at The Perl Clinic. This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl
-porter since 1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the
-DBI, DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of The
-Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for Perl5
-Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to ship as part
-of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from our Perl support work
-will be donated to The Perl Institute."
-
-For more information, contact The Perl Clinic:
-
- Tel: +44 1483 424424
- Fax: +44 1483 419419
- Web: http://www.perl.co.uk/
- Email: perl-support-info@perl.co.uk or Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk
+Or you can purchase commercial incidence based support through the Perl
+Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
+
+"The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by
+ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many
+years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals
+on a wide range of platforms.
+
+"Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers,
+we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an
+explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
+
+Contact The Perl Clinic at:
+
+ www.PerlClinic.com
+
+ North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
+ Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
+ Fax: 1 604 606-4640
+
+ Europe (GMT)
+ Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
+ Fax: 00 44 1483 862801
See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.
=head2 Where do I send bug reports?
If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
-shipped with perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the perl distribution or
+shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or
mail your report to perlbug@perl.com .
If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
-=head2 What is perl.com?
+=head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
The perl.com domain is owned by Tom Christiansen, who created it as a
public service long before perl.org came about. Despite the name, it's a
pretty non-commercial site meant to be a clearinghouse for information
about all things Perlian, accepting no paid advertisements, bouncy
-happy gifs, or silly java applets on its pages. The Perl Home Page at
+happy GIFs, or silly Java applets on its pages. The Perl Home Page at
http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted on a T3 line courtesy of Songline
Systems, a software-oriented subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates.
Other starting points include
http://conference.perl.com/
http://reference.perl.com/
+Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language. For
+details, see the Perl Mongers web site at http://www.perlmongers.org/.
+
+Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
+groups. See the Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more
+information about joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl
+user group.
+
+Perl Mongers also maintains the perl.org domain to provide general
+support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
+lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
+http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
+and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
+
+ http://history.perl.org/
+ http://bugs.perl.org/
+ http://www.news.perl.org/
+
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
covered under Perl's Artistic License. For separate distributions of
all or part of this FAQ outside of that, see L<perlfaq>.
-Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are public
+Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff