deliberate in your decision.
The material below is separated into three main sections: main issues of
-portability (L<"ISSUES">, platform-specific issues (L<"PLATFORMS">, and
+portability (L<"ISSUES">), platform-specific issues (L<"PLATFORMS">), and
built-in perl functions that behave differently on various ports
-(L<"FUNCTION IMPLEMENTATIONS">.
+(L<"FUNCTION IMPLEMENTATIONS">).
This information should not be considered complete; it includes possibly
transient information about idiosyncrasies of some of the ports, almost
all of which are in a state of constant evolution. Thus, this material
should be considered a perpetual work in progress
-(<IMG SRC="yellow_sign.gif" ALT="Under Construction">).
+(C<< <IMG SRC="yellow_sign.gif" ALT="Under Construction"> >>).
=head1 ISSUES
#...
}
-You can get away with this on Unix and MacOS (they have a single
+You can get away with this on Unix and Mac OS (they have a single
character end-of-line), but the same program will break under DOSish
perls because you're only chop()ing half the end-of-line. Instead,
-chomp() should be used to trim newlines. The Dunce::Files module can
-help audit your code for misuses of chop().
+chomp() should be used to trim newlines. The L<Dunce::Files> module
+can help audit your code for misuses of chop().
When dealing with binary files (or text files in binary mode) be sure
to explicitly set $/ to the appropriate value for your file format
Some of this may be confusing. Here's a handy reference to the ASCII CR
and LF characters. You can print it out and stick it in your wallet.
- LF == \012 == \x0A == \cJ == ASCII 10
- CR == \015 == \x0D == \cM == ASCII 13
+ LF eq \012 eq \x0A eq \cJ eq chr(10) eq ASCII 10
+ CR eq \015 eq \x0D eq \cM eq chr(13) eq ASCII 13
| Unix | DOS | Mac |
---------------------------
"\n", and "\n" on output becomes CRLF.
These are just the most common definitions of C<\n> and C<\r> in Perl.
-There may well be others.
+There may well be others. For example, on an EBCDIC implementation
+such as z/OS (OS/390) or OS/400 (using the ILE, the PASE is ASCII-based)
+the above material is similar to "Unix" but the code numbers change:
+
+ LF eq \025 eq \x15 eq \cU eq chr(21) eq CP-1047 21
+ LF eq \045 eq \x25 eq chr(37) eq CP-0037 37
+ CR eq \015 eq \x0D eq \cM eq chr(13) eq CP-1047 13
+ CR eq \015 eq \x0D eq \cM eq chr(13) eq CP-0037 13
+
+ | z/OS | OS/400 |
+ ----------------------
+ \n | LF | LF |
+ \r | CR | CR |
+ \n * | LF | LF |
+ \r * | CR | CR |
+ ----------------------
+ * text-mode STDIO
=head2 Numbers endianness and Width
connections use the C<pack> and C<unpack> formats C<n> and C<N>, the
"network" orders. These are guaranteed to be portable.
+As of perl 5.9.2, you can also use the C<E<gt>> and C<E<lt>> modifiers
+to force big- or little-endian byte-order. This is useful if you want
+to store signed integers or 64-bit integers, for example.
+
You can explore the endianness of your platform by unpacking a
data structure packed in native format such as:
One can circumnavigate both these problems in two ways. Either
transfer and store numbers always in text format, instead of raw
binary, or else consider using modules like Data::Dumper (included in
-the standard distribution as of Perl 5.005) and Storable. Keeping
-all data as text significantly simplifies matters.
+the standard distribution as of Perl 5.005) and Storable (included as
+of perl 5.8). Keeping all data as text significantly simplifies matters.
+
+The v-strings are portable only up to v2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF), that's
+how far EBCDIC, or more precisely UTF-EBCDIC will go.
=head2 Files and Filesystems
modification timestamp), or one second granularity of any timestamps
(e.g. the FAT filesystem limits the time granularity to two seconds).
+The "inode change timestamp" (the C<-C> filetest) may really be the
+"creation timestamp" (which it is not in UNIX).
+
VOS perl can emulate Unix filenames with C</> as path separator. The
native pathname characters greater-than, less-than, number-sign, and
percent-sign are always accepted.
separator, or go native and use C<.> for path separator and C<:> to
signal filesystems and disk names.
+Don't assume UNIX filesystem access semantics: that read, write,
+and execute are all the permissions there are, and even if they exist,
+that their semantics (for example what do r, w, and x mean on
+a directory) are the UNIX ones. The various UNIX/POSIX compatibility
+layers usually try to make interfaces like chmod() work, but sometimes
+there simply is no good mapping.
+
If all this is intimidating, have no (well, maybe only a little)
fear. There are modules that can help. The File::Spec modules
provide methods to do the Right Thing on whatever platform happens
Don't assume a text file will end with a newline. They should,
but people forget.
-Do not have two files of the same name with different case, like
-F<test.pl> and F<Test.pl>, as many platforms have case-insensitive
-filenames. Also, try not to have non-word characters (except for C<.>)
-in the names, and keep them to the 8.3 convention, for maximum
-portability, onerous a burden though this may appear.
+Do not have two files or directories of the same name with different
+case, like F<test.pl> and F<Test.pl>, as many platforms have
+case-insensitive (or at least case-forgiving) filenames. Also, try
+not to have non-word characters (except for C<.>) in the names, and
+keep them to the 8.3 convention, for maximum portability, onerous a
+burden though this may appear.
Likewise, when using the AutoSplit module, try to keep your functions to
8.3 naming and case-insensitive conventions; or, at the least,
make it so the resulting files have a unique (case-insensitively)
first 8 characters.
-Whitespace in filenames is tolerated on most systems, but not all.
-Many systems (DOS, VMS) cannot have more than one C<.> in their filenames.
+Whitespace in filenames is tolerated on most systems, but not all,
+and even on systems where it might be tolerated, some utilities
+might become confused by such whitespace.
+
+Many systems (DOS, VMS ODS-2) cannot have more than one C<.> in their
+filenames.
Don't assume C<< > >> won't be the first character of a filename.
-Always use C<< < >> explicitly to open a file for reading,
-unless you want the user to be able to specify a pipe open.
+Always use C<< < >> explicitly to open a file for reading, or even
+better, use the three-arg version of open, unless you want the user to
+be able to specify a pipe open.
- open(FILE, "< $existing_file") or die $!;
+ open(FILE, '<', $existing_file) or die $!;
If filenames might use strange characters, it is safest to open it
with C<sysopen> instead of C<open>. C<open> is magic and can
translate characters like C<< > >>, C<< < >>, and C<|>, which may
be the wrong thing to do. (Sometimes, though, it's the right thing.)
+Three-arg open can also help protect against this translation in cases
+where it is undesirable.
+
+Don't use C<:> as a part of a filename since many systems use that for
+their own semantics (Mac OS Classic for separating pathname components,
+many networking schemes and utilities for separating the nodename and
+the pathname, and so on). For the same reasons, avoid C<@>, C<;> and
+C<|>.
+
+Don't assume that in pathnames you can collapse two leading slashes
+C<//> into one: some networking and clustering filesystems have special
+semantics for that. Let the operating system to sort it out.
+
+The I<portable filename characters> as defined by ANSI C are
+
+ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r t u v w x y z
+ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R T U V W X Y Z
+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
+ . _ -
+
+and the "-" shouldn't be the first character. If you want to be
+hypercorrect, stay case-insensitive and within the 8.3 naming
+convention (all the files and directories have to be unique within one
+directory if their names are lowercased and truncated to eight
+characters before the C<.>, if any, and to three characters after the
+C<.>, if any). (And do not use C<.>s in directory names.)
=head2 System Interaction
not work everywhere. This is probably for the user of the program
to deal with, so don't stay up late worrying about it.
-Some platforms can't delete or rename files held open by the system.
-Remember to C<close> files when you are done with them. Don't
-C<unlink> or C<rename> an open file. Don't C<tie> or C<open> a
-file already tied or opened; C<untie> or C<close> it first.
+Some platforms can't delete or rename files held open by the system,
+this limitation may also apply to changing filesystem metainformation
+like file permissions or owners. Remember to C<close> files when you
+are done with them. Don't C<unlink> or C<rename> an open file. Don't
+C<tie> or C<open> a file already tied or opened; C<untie> or C<close>
+it first.
Don't open the same file more than once at a time for writing, as some
operating systems put mandatory locks on such files.
+Don't assume that write/modify permission on a directory gives the
+right to add or delete files/directories in that directory. That is
+filesystem specific: in some filesystems you need write/modify
+permission also (or even just) in the file/directory itself. In some
+filesystems (AFS, DFS) the permission to add/delete directory entries
+is a completely separate permission.
+
+Don't assume that a single C<unlink> completely gets rid of the file:
+some filesystems (most notably the ones in VMS) have versioned
+filesystems, and unlink() removes only the most recent one (it doesn't
+remove all the versions because by default the native tools on those
+platforms remove just the most recent version, too). The portable
+idiom to remove all the versions of a file is
+
+ 1 while unlink "file";
+
+This will terminate if the file is undeleteable for some reason
+(protected, not there, and so on).
+
Don't count on a specific environment variable existing in C<%ENV>.
Don't count on C<%ENV> entries being case-sensitive, or even
case-preserving. Don't try to clear %ENV by saying C<%ENV = ();>, or,
Don't count on per-program environment variables, or per-program current
directories.
-Don't count on specific values of C<$!>.
+Don't count on specific values of C<$!>, neither numeric nor
+especially the strings values-- users may switch their locales causing
+error messages to be translated into their languages. If you can
+trust a POSIXish environment, you can portably use the symbols defined
+by the Errno module, like ENOENT. And don't trust on the values of C<$!>
+at all except immediately after a failed system call.
+
+=head2 Command names versus file pathnames
+
+Don't assume that the name used to invoke a command or program with
+C<system> or C<exec> can also be used to test for the existence of the
+file that holds the executable code for that command or program.
+First, many systems have "internal" commands that are built-in to the
+shell or OS and while these commands can be invoked, there is no
+corresponding file. Second, some operating systems (e.g., Cygwin,
+DJGPP, OS/2, and VOS) have required suffixes for executable files;
+these suffixes are generally permitted on the command name but are not
+required. Thus, a command like "perl" might exist in a file named
+"perl", "perl.exe", or "perl.pm", depending on the operating system.
+The variable "_exe" in the Config module holds the executable suffix,
+if any. Third, the VMS port carefully sets up $^X and
+$Config{perlpath} so that no further processing is required. This is
+just as well, because the matching regular expression used below would
+then have to deal with a possible trailing version number in the VMS
+file name.
+
+To convert $^X to a file pathname, taking account of the requirements
+of the various operating system possibilities, say:
+
+ use Config;
+ $thisperl = $^X;
+ if ($^O ne 'VMS')
+ {$thisperl .= $Config{_exe} unless $thisperl =~ m/$Config{_exe}$/i;}
+
+To convert $Config{perlpath} to a file pathname, say:
+
+ use Config;
+ $thisperl = $Config{perlpath};
+ if ($^O ne 'VMS')
+ {$thisperl .= $Config{_exe} unless $thisperl =~ m/$Config{_exe}$/i;}
+
+=head2 Networking
+
+Don't assume that you can reach the public Internet.
+
+Don't assume that there is only one way to get through firewalls
+to the public Internet.
+
+Don't assume that you can reach outside world through any other port
+than 80, or some web proxy. ftp is blocked by many firewalls.
+
+Don't assume that you can send email by connecting to the local SMTP port.
+
+Don't assume that you can reach yourself or any node by the name
+'localhost'. The same goes for '127.0.0.1'. You will have to try both.
+
+Don't assume that the host has only one network card, or that it
+can't bind to many virtual IP addresses.
+
+Don't assume a particular network device name.
+
+Don't assume a particular set of ioctl()s will work.
+
+Don't assume that you can ping hosts and get replies.
+
+Don't assume that any particular port (service) will respond.
+
+Don't assume that Sys::Hostname (or any other API or command)
+returns either a fully qualified hostname or a non-qualified hostname:
+it all depends on how the system had been configured. Also remember
+things like DHCP and NAT-- the hostname you get back might not be very
+useful.
+
+All the above "don't":s may look daunting, and they are -- but the key
+is to degrade gracefully if one cannot reach the particular network
+service one wants. Croaking or hanging do not look very professional.
=head2 Interprocess Communication (IPC)
The Unix System V IPC (C<msg*(), sem*(), shm*()>) is not available
even on all Unix platforms.
+Do not use either the bare result of C<pack("N", 10, 20, 30, 40)> or
+bare v-strings (such as C<v10.20.30.40>) to represent IPv4 addresses:
+both forms just pack the four bytes into network order. That this
+would be equal to the C language C<in_addr> struct (which is what the
+socket code internally uses) is not guaranteed. To be portable use
+the routines of the Socket extension, such as C<inet_aton()>,
+C<inet_ntoa()>, and C<sockaddr_in()>.
+
The rule of thumb for portable code is: Do it all in portable Perl, or
use a module (that may internally implement it with platform-specific
code, but expose a common interface).
The system's notion of time of day and calendar date is controlled in
widely different ways. Don't assume the timezone is stored in C<$ENV{TZ}>,
and even if it is, don't assume that you can control the timezone through
-that variable.
+that variable. Don't assume anything about the three-letter timezone
+abbreviations (for example that MST would be the Mountain Standard Time,
+it's been known to stand for Moscow Standard Time). If you need to
+use timezones, express them in some unambiguous format like the
+exact number of minutes offset from UTC, or the POSIX timezone
+format.
Don't assume that the epoch starts at 00:00:00, January 1, 1970,
-because that is OS- and implementation-specific. It is better to store a date
-in an unambiguous representation. The ISO-8601 standard defines
-"YYYY-MM-DD" as the date format. A text representation (like "1987-12-18")
-can be easily converted into an OS-specific value using a module like
-Date::Parse. An array of values, such as those returned by
-C<localtime>, can be converted to an OS-specific representation using
-Time::Local.
+because that is OS- and implementation-specific. It is better to
+store a date in an unambiguous representation. The ISO 8601 standard
+defines YYYY-MM-DD as the date format, or YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SS
+(that's a literal "T" separating the date from the time).
+Please do use the ISO 8601 instead of making us to guess what
+date 02/03/04 might be. ISO 8601 even sorts nicely as-is.
+A text representation (like "1987-12-18") can be easily converted
+into an OS-specific value using a module like Date::Parse.
+An array of values, such as those returned by C<localtime>, can be
+converted to an OS-specific representation using Time::Local.
When calculating specific times, such as for tests in time or date modules,
it may be appropriate to calculate an offset for the epoch.
some large number. C<$offset> can then be added to a Unix time value
to get what should be the proper value on any system.
+On Windows (at least), you shouldn't pass a negative value to C<gmtime> or
+C<localtime>.
+
=head2 Character sets and character encoding
-Assume little about character sets. Assume nothing about
-numerical values (C<ord>, C<chr>) of characters. Do not
-assume that the alphabetic characters are encoded contiguously (in
-the numeric sense). Do not assume anything about the ordering of the
-characters. The lowercase letters may come before or after the
-uppercase letters; the lowercase and uppercase may be interlaced so
-that both `a' and `A' come before `b'; the accented and other
-international characters may be interlaced so that E<auml> comes
-before `b'.
+Assume very little about character sets.
+
+Assume nothing about numerical values (C<ord>, C<chr>) of characters.
+Do not use explicit code point ranges (like \xHH-\xHH); use for
+example symbolic character classes like C<[:print:]>.
+
+Do not assume that the alphabetic characters are encoded contiguously
+(in the numeric sense). There may be gaps.
+
+Do not assume anything about the ordering of the characters.
+The lowercase letters may come before or after the uppercase letters;
+the lowercase and uppercase may be interlaced so that both "a" and "A"
+come before "b"; the accented and other international characters may
+be interlaced so that E<auml> comes before "b".
=head2 Internationalisation
users. The system affects character sets and encoding, and date
and time formatting--amongst other things.
+If you really want to be international, you should consider Unicode.
+See L<perluniintro> and L<perlunicode> for more information.
+
+If you want to use non-ASCII bytes (outside the bytes 0x00..0x7f) in
+the "source code" of your code, to be portable you have to be explicit
+about what bytes they are. Someone might for example be using your
+code under a UTF-8 locale, in which case random native bytes might be
+illegal ("Malformed UTF-8 ...") This means that for example embedding
+ISO 8859-1 bytes beyond 0x7f into your strings might cause trouble
+later. If the bytes are native 8-bit bytes, you can use the C<bytes>
+pragma. If the bytes are in a string (regular expression being a
+curious string), you can often also use the C<\xHH> notation instead
+of embedding the bytes as-is. If they are in some particular legacy
+encoding (ether single-byte or something more complicated), you can
+use the C<encoding> pragma. (If you want to write your code in UTF-8,
+you can use either the C<utf8> pragma, or the C<encoding> pragma.)
+The C<bytes> and C<utf8> pragmata are available since Perl 5.6.0, and
+the C<encoding> pragma since Perl 5.8.0.
+
=head2 System Resources
If your code is destined for systems with severely constrained (or
Most multi-user platforms provide basic levels of security, usually
implemented at the filesystem level. Some, however, do
-not--unfortunately. Thus the notion of user id, or "home" directory,
+not-- unfortunately. Thus the notion of user id, or "home" directory,
or even the state of being logged-in, may be unrecognizable on many
platforms. If you write programs that are security-conscious, it
is usually best to know what type of system you will be running
under so that you can write code explicitly for that platform (or
class of platforms).
+Don't assume the UNIX filesystem access semantics: the operating
+system or the filesystem may be using some ACL systems, which are
+richer languages than the usual rwx. Even if the rwx exist,
+their semantics might be different.
+
+(From security viewpoint testing for permissions before attempting to
+do something is silly anyway: if one tries this, there is potential
+for race conditions-- someone or something might change the
+permissions between the permissions check and the actual operation.
+Just try the operation.)
+
+Don't assume the UNIX user and group semantics: especially, don't
+expect the C<< $< >> and C<< $> >> (or the C<$(> and C<$)>) to work
+for switching identities (or memberships).
+
+Don't assume set-uid and set-gid semantics. (And even if you do,
+think twice: set-uid and set-gid are a known can of security worms.)
+
=head2 Style
For those times when it is necessary to have platform-specific code,
Module code may be fully portable, but its tests might not be. This
often happens when tests spawn off other processes or call external
programs to aid in the testing, or when (as noted above) the tests
-assume certain things about the filesystem and paths. Be careful
-not to depend on a specific output style for errors, such as when
-checking C<$!> after an system call. Some platforms expect a certain
-output format, and perl on those platforms may have been adjusted
-accordingly. Most specifically, don't anchor a regex when testing
-an error value.
+assume certain things about the filesystem and paths. Be careful not
+to depend on a specific output style for errors, such as when checking
+C<$!> after a failed system call. Using C<$!> for anything else than
+displaying it as output is doubtful (though see the Errno module for
+testing reasonably portably for error value). Some platforms expect
+a certain output format, and Perl on those platforms may have been
+adjusted accordingly. Most specifically, don't anchor a regex when
+testing an error value.
=head1 CPAN Testers
platforms; two, to provide users with information about whether
a given module works on a given platform.
+Also see:
+
=over 4
-=item Mailing list: cpan-testers@perl.org
+=item *
-=item Testing results: http://testers.cpan.org/
+Mailing list: cpan-testers@perl.org
+
+=item *
+
+Testing results: http://testers.cpan.org/
=back
--------------------------------------------
AIX aix aix
BSD/OS bsdos i386-bsdos
+ Darwin darwin darwin
dgux dgux AViiON-dgux
DYNIX/ptx dynixptx i386-dynixptx
FreeBSD freebsd freebsd-i386
Linux linux ppc-linux
HP-UX hpux PA-RISC1.1
IRIX irix irix
- Mac OS X rhapsody rhapsody
+ Mac OS X darwin darwin
MachTen PPC machten powerpc-machten
NeXT 3 next next-fat
NeXT 4 next OPENSTEP-Mach
The C<$^O> variable and the C<$Config{archname}> values for various
DOSish perls are as follows:
- OS $^O $Config{'archname'}
- --------------------------------------------
- MS-DOS dos
- PC-DOS dos
- OS/2 os2
- Windows 95 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86
- Windows 98 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86
- Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-x86
- Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-ALPHA
- Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-ppc
- Cygwin cygwin
+ OS $^O $Config{archname} ID Version
+ --------------------------------------------------------
+ MS-DOS dos ?
+ PC-DOS dos ?
+ OS/2 os2 ?
+ Windows 3.1 ? ? 0 3 01
+ Windows 95 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 1 4 00
+ Windows 98 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 1 4 10
+ Windows ME MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 1 ?
+ Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 4 xx
+ Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-ALPHA 2 4 xx
+ Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-ppc 2 4 xx
+ Windows 2000 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 5 00
+ Windows XP MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 5 01
+ Windows 2003 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 5 02
+ Windows CE MSWin32 ? 3
+ Cygwin cygwin cygwin
The various MSWin32 Perl's can distinguish the OS they are running on
via the value of the fifth element of the list returned from
print +('3.1','95','NT')[$os_version_info[4]],"\n";
}
+There are also Win32::IsWinNT() and Win32::IsWin95(), try C<perldoc Win32>,
+and as of libwin32 0.19 (not part of the core Perl distribution)
+Win32::GetOSName(). The very portable POSIX::uname() will work too:
+
+ c:\> perl -MPOSIX -we "print join '|', uname"
+ Windows NT|moonru|5.0|Build 2195 (Service Pack 2)|x86
+
Also see:
=over 4
The EMX environment for DOS, OS/2, etc. emx@iaehv.nl,
http://www.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu/emx+gcc/index.html or
-ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/dev/emx. Also L<perlos2>.
+ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/dev/emx/ Also L<perlos2>.
=item *
$is_ppc = $MacPerl::Architecture eq 'MacPPC';
$is_68k = $MacPerl::Architecture eq 'Mac68K';
-S<Mac OS X> and S<Mac OS X Server>, based on NeXT's OpenStep OS, will
-(in theory) be able to run MacPerl natively, under the "Classic"
-environment. The new "Cocoa" environment (formerly called the "Yellow Box")
-may run a slightly modified version of MacPerl, using the Carbon interfaces.
-
-S<Mac OS X Server> and its Open Source version, Darwin, both run Unix
-perl natively (with a few patches). Full support for these
-is slated for perl 5.6.
+S<Mac OS X>, based on NeXT's OpenStep OS, runs MacPerl natively, under the
+"Classic" environment. There is no "Carbon" version of MacPerl to run
+under the primary Mac OS X environment. S<Mac OS X> and its Open Source
+version, Darwin, both run Unix perl natively.
Also see:
=item *
+MacPerl Development, http://dev.macperl.org/ .
+
+=item *
+
The MacPerl Pages, http://www.macperl.com/ .
=item *
-The MacPerl mailing lists, http://www.macperl.org/ .
+The MacPerl mailing lists, http://lists.perl.org/ .
=item *
-MacPerl Module Porters, http://pudge.net/mmp/ .
+MPW, ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Core_Mac_OS_Tools/
=back
=head2 VMS
Perl on VMS is discussed in L<perlvms> in the perl distribution.
+
+The official name of VMS as of this writing is OpenVMS.
+
Perl on VMS can accept either VMS- or Unix-style file
specifications as in either of the following:
Do take care with C<$ ASSIGN/nolog/user SYS$COMMAND: SYS$INPUT> if your
perl-in-DCL script expects to do things like C<< $read = <STDIN>; >>.
-Filenames are in the format "name.extension;version". The maximum
-length for filenames is 39 characters, and the maximum length for
+The VMS operating system has two filesystems, known as ODS-2 and ODS-5.
+
+For ODS-2, filenames are in the format "name.extension;version". The
+maximum length for filenames is 39 characters, and the maximum length for
extensions is also 39 characters. Version is a number from 1 to
32767. Valid characters are C</[A-Z0-9$_-]/>.
-VMS's RMS filesystem is case-insensitive and does not preserve case.
-C<readdir> returns lowercased filenames, but specifying a file for
-opening remains case-insensitive. Files without extensions have a
-trailing period on them, so doing a C<readdir> with a file named F<A.;5>
-will return F<a.> (though that file could be opened with
+The ODS-2 filesystem is case-insensitive and does not preserve case.
+Perl simulates this by converting all filenames to lowercase internally.
+
+For ODS-5, filenames may have almost any character in them and can include
+Unicode characters. Characters that could be misinterpreted by the DCL
+shell or file parsing utilities need to be prefixed with the C<^>
+character, or replaced with hexadecimal characters prefixed with the
+C<^> character. Such prefixing is only needed with the pathnames are
+in VMS format in applications. Programs that can accept the UNIX format
+of pathnames do not need the escape characters. The maximum length for
+filenames is 255 characters. The ODS-5 file system can handle both
+a case preserved and a case sensitive mode.
+
+ODS-5 is only available on the OpenVMS for 64 bit platforms.
+
+Support for the extended file specifications is being done as optional
+settings to preserve backward compatibility with Perl scripts that
+assume the previous VMS limitations.
+
+In general routines on VMS that get a UNIX format file specification
+should return it in a UNIX format, and when they get a VMS format
+specification they should return a VMS format unless they are documented
+to do a conversion.
+
+For routines that generate return a file specification, VMS allows setting
+if the C library which Perl is built on if it will be returned in VMS
+format or in UNIX format.
+
+With the ODS-2 file system, there is not much difference in syntax of
+filenames without paths for VMS or UNIX. With the extended character
+set available with ODS-5 there can be a significant difference.
+
+Because of this, existing Perl scripts written for VMS were sometimes
+treating VMS and UNIX filenames interchangeably. Without the extended
+character set enabled, this behavior will mostly be maintained for
+backwards compatibility.
+
+When extended characters are enabled with ODS-5, the handling of
+UNIX formatted file specifications is to that of a UNIX system.
+
+VMS file specifications without extensions have a trailing dot. An
+equivalent UNIX file specification should not show the trailing dot.
+
+The result of all of this, is that for VMS, for portable scripts, you
+can not depend on Perl to present the filenames in lowercase, to be
+case sensitive, and that the filenames could be returned in either
+UNIX or VMS format.
+
+And if a routine returns a file specification, unless it is intended to
+convert it, it should return it in the same format as it found it.
+
+C<readdir> by default has traditionally returned lowercased filenames.
+When the ODS-5 support is enabled, it will return the exact case of the
+filename on the disk.
+
+Files without extensions have a trailing period on them, so doing a
+C<readdir> in the default mode with a file named F<A.;5> will
+return F<a.> when VMS is (though that file could be opened with
C<open(FH, 'A')>).
+With support for extended file specifications and if C<opendir> was
+given a UNIX format directory, a file named F<A.;5> will return F<a>
+and optionally in the exact case on the disk. When C<opendir> is given
+a VMS format directory, then C<readdir> should return F<a.>, and
+again with the optionally the exact case.
+
RMS had an eight level limit on directory depths from any rooted logical
(allowing 16 levels overall) prior to VMS 7.2. Hence
C<PERL_ROOT:[LIB.2.3.4.5.6.7.8]> is a valid directory specification but
The VMS::Filespec module, which gets installed as part of the build
process on VMS, is a pure Perl module that can easily be installed on
non-VMS platforms and can be helpful for conversions to and from RMS
-native formats.
+native formats. It is also now the only way that you should check to
+see if VMS is in a case sensitive mode.
-What C<\n> represents depends on the type of file opened. It could
-be C<\015>, C<\012>, C<\015\012>, or nothing. The VMS::Stdio module
-provides access to the special fopen() requirements of files with unusual
-attributes on VMS.
+What C<\n> represents depends on the type of file opened. It usually
+represents C<\012> but it could also be C<\015>, C<\012>, C<\015\012>,
+C<\000>, C<\040>, or nothing depending on the file organization and
+record format. The VMS::Stdio module provides access to the
+special fopen() requirements of files with unusual attributes on VMS.
TCP/IP stacks are optional on VMS, so socket routines might not be
implemented. UDP sockets may not be supported.
+The TCP/IP library support for all current versions of VMS is dynamically
+loaded if present, so even if the routines are configured, they may
+return a status indicating that they are not implemented.
+
The value of C<$^O> on OpenVMS is "VMS". To determine the architecture
that you are running on without resorting to loading all of C<%Config>
you can examine the content of the C<@INC> array like so:
} elsif (grep(/VMS_VAX/, @INC)) {
print "I'm on VAX!\n";
+ } elsif (grep(/VMS_IA64/, @INC)) {
+ print "I'm on IA64!\n";
+
} else {
print "I'm not so sure about where $^O is...\n";
}
+In general, the significant differences should only be if Perl is running
+on VMS_VAX or one of the 64 bit OpenVMS platforms.
+
On VMS, perl determines the UTC offset from the C<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL>
logical name. Although the VMS epoch began at 17-NOV-1858 00:00:00.00,
calls to C<localtime> are adjusted to count offsets from
(installed as L<perlvos>). Perl on VOS can accept either VOS- or
Unix-style file specifications as in either of the following:
- $ perl -ne "print if /perl_setup/i" >system>notices
- $ perl -ne "print if /perl_setup/i" /system/notices
+ C<< $ perl -ne "print if /perl_setup/i" >system>notices >>
+ C<< $ perl -ne "print if /perl_setup/i" /system/notices >>
or even a mixture of both as in:
- $ perl -ne "print if /perl_setup/i" >system/notices
+ C<< $ perl -ne "print if /perl_setup/i" >system/notices >>
Even though VOS allows the slash character to appear in object
names, because the VOS port of Perl interprets it as a pathname
renamed before they can be processed by Perl. Note that VOS limits
file names to 32 or fewer characters.
-See F<README.vos> for restrictions that apply when Perl is built
-with the alpha version of VOS POSIX.1 support.
-
-Perl on VOS is built without any extensions and does not support
-dynamic loading.
-
The value of C<$^O> on VOS is "VOS". To determine the architecture that
you are running on without resorting to loading all of C<%Config> you
can examine the content of the @INC array like so:
die;
}
- if (grep(/860/, @INC)) {
- print "This box is a Stratus XA/R!\n";
-
- } elsif (grep(/7100/, @INC)) {
- print "This box is a Stratus HP 7100 or 8xxx!\n";
-
- } elsif (grep(/8000/, @INC)) {
- print "This box is a Stratus HP 8xxx!\n";
-
- } else {
- print "This box is a Stratus 68K!\n";
- }
-
Also see:
=over 4
=item *
-F<README.vos>
+F<README.vos> (installed as L<perlvos>)
=item *
There is no specific mailing list for Perl on VOS. You can post
comments to the comp.sys.stratus newsgroup, or subscribe to the general
-Stratus mailing list. Send a letter with "Subscribe Info-Stratus" in
+Stratus mailing list. Send a letter with "subscribe Info-Stratus" in
the message body to majordomo@list.stratagy.com.
=item *
-VOS Perl on the web at http://ftp.stratus.com/pub/vos/vos.html
+VOS Perl on the web at http://ftp.stratus.com/pub/vos/posix/posix.html
=back
systems). On the mainframe perl currently works under the "Unix system
services for OS/390" (formerly known as OpenEdition), VM/ESA OpenEdition, or
the BS200 POSIX-BC system (BS2000 is supported in perl 5.6 and greater).
-See L<perlos390> for details.
+See L<perlos390> for details. Note that for OS/400 there is also a port of
+Perl 5.8.1/5.9.0 or later to the PASE which is ASCII-based (as opposed to
+ILE which is EBCDIC-based), see L<perlos400>.
As of R2.5 of USS for OS/390 and Version 2.3 of VM/ESA these Unix
sub-systems do not support the C<#!> shebang trick for script invocation.
=item *
-*
-
L<perlos390>, F<README.os390>, F<perlbs2000>, F<README.vmesa>,
L<perlebcdic>.
general usage issues for all EBCDIC Perls. Send a message body of
"subscribe perl-mvs" to majordomo@perl.org.
-=item *
+=item *
AS/400 Perl information at
http://as400.rochester.ibm.com/
OS $^O $Config{'archname'}
------------------------------------------
Amiga DOS amigaos m68k-amigos
+ BeOS beos
MPE/iX mpeix PA-RISC1.1
See also:
=item *
-Plan 9, F<README.plan9>
+S<Plan 9>, F<README.plan9>
=back
=over 8
-=item -X FILEHANDLE
-
-=item -X EXPR
-
=item -X
C<-r>, C<-w>, and C<-x> have a limited meaning only; directories
C<-x> (or C<-X>) determine if a file has an executable file type.
(S<RISC OS>)
-=item alarm SECONDS
+=item atan2
-=item alarm
+Due to issues with various CPUs, math libraries, compilers, and standards,
+results for C<atan2()> may vary depending on any combination of the above.
+Perl attempts to conform to the Open Group/IEEE standards for the results
+returned from C<atan2()>, but cannot force the issue if the system Perl is
+run on does not allow it. (Tru64, HP-UX 10.20)
-Not implemented. (Win32)
+The current version of the standards for C<atan2()> is available at
+L<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/atan2.html>.
-=item binmode FILEHANDLE
+=item binmode
Meaningless. (S<Mac OS>, S<RISC OS>)
The value returned by C<tell> may be affected after the call, and
the filehandle may be flushed. (Win32)
-=item chmod LIST
+=item chmod
Only limited meaning. Disabling/enabling write permission is mapped to
locking/unlocking the file. (S<Mac OS>)
Access permissions are mapped onto VOS access-control list changes. (VOS)
-=item chown LIST
+The actual permissions set depend on the value of the C<CYGWIN>
+in the SYSTEM environment settings. (Cygwin)
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
+=item chown
+
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>, S<RISC OS>)
Does nothing, but won't fail. (Win32)
-=item chroot FILENAME
+A little funky, because VOS's notion of ownership is a little funky (VOS).
=item chroot
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, Plan9, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<Plan 9>, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
-=item crypt PLAINTEXT,SALT
+=item crypt
May not be available if library or source was not provided when building
perl. (Win32)
-Not implemented. (VOS)
-
-=item dbmclose HASH
+=item dbmclose
-Not implemented. (VMS, Plan9, VOS)
+Not implemented. (VMS, S<Plan 9>, VOS)
-=item dbmopen HASH,DBNAME,MODE
+=item dbmopen
-Not implemented. (VMS, Plan9, VOS)
+Not implemented. (VMS, S<Plan 9>, VOS)
-=item dump LABEL
+=item dump
Not useful. (S<Mac OS>, S<RISC OS>)
-Not implemented. (Win32)
+Not supported. (Cygwin, Win32)
Invokes VMS debugger. (VMS)
-=item exec LIST
+=item exec
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>)
Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.
(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
-=item fcntl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
+=item exit
-Not implemented. (Win32, VMS)
+Emulates UNIX exit() (which considers C<exit 1> to indicate an error) by
+mapping the C<1> to SS$_ABORT (C<44>). This behavior may be overridden
+with the pragma C<use vmsish 'exit'>. As with the CRTL's exit()
+function, C<exit 0> is also mapped to an exit status of SS$_NORMAL
+(C<1>); this mapping cannot be overridden. Any other argument to exit()
+is used directly as Perl's exit status. On VMS, unless the future
+POSIX_EXIT mode is enabled, the exit code should always be a valid
+VMS exit code and not a generic number. When the POSIX_EXIT mode is
+enabled, a generic number will be encoded in a method compatible with
+the C library _POSIX_EXIT macro so that it can be decoded by other
+programs, particularly ones written in C, like the GNV package. (VMS)
+
+=item fcntl
+
+Not implemented. (Win32)
+Some functions available based on the version of VMS. (VMS)
-=item flock FILEHANDLE,OPERATION
+=item flock
Not implemented (S<Mac OS>, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS).
=item fork
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, AmigaOS, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, AmigaOS, S<RISC OS>, VM/ESA, VMS)
Emulated using multiple interpreters. See L<perlfork>. (Win32)
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, S<RISC OS>)
-=item getpgrp PID
+=item getpgrp
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
=item getppid
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<RISC OS>)
-=item getpriority WHICH,WHO
+=item getpriority
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
-=item getpwnam NAME
+=item getpwnam
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32)
Not useful. (S<RISC OS>)
-=item getgrnam NAME
+=item getgrnam
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
-=item getnetbyname NAME
+=item getnetbyname
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>)
-=item getpwuid UID
+=item getpwuid
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32)
Not useful. (S<RISC OS>)
-=item getgrgid GID
+=item getgrgid
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
-=item getnetbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
+=item getnetbyaddr
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>)
-=item getprotobynumber NUMBER
+=item getprotobynumber
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>)
-=item getservbyport PORT,PROTO
+=item getservbyport
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>)
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, VM/ESA)
+=item gethostbyname
+
+C<gethostbyname('localhost')> does not work everywhere: you may have
+to use C<gethostbyname('127.0.0.1')>. (S<Mac OS>, S<Irix 5>)
+
=item gethostent
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32)
=item getnetent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>)
=item getprotoent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>)
=item getservent
-Not implemented. (Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (Win32, S<Plan 9>)
-=item setpwent
-
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<RISC OS>)
+=item sethostent
-=item setgrent
-
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>, S<RISC OS>)
-=item sethostent STAYOPEN
+=item setnetent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9, S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>, S<RISC OS>)
-=item setnetent STAYOPEN
+=item setprotoent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9, S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>, S<RISC OS>)
-=item setprotoent STAYOPEN
+=item setservent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9, S<RISC OS>)
-
-=item setservent STAYOPEN
-
-Not implemented. (Plan9, Win32, S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented. (S<Plan 9>, Win32, S<RISC OS>)
=item endpwent
=item endnetent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>)
=item endprotoent
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<Plan 9>)
=item endservent
-Not implemented. (Plan9, Win32)
+Not implemented. (S<Plan 9>, Win32)
=item getsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Plan9)
-
-=item glob EXPR
+Not implemented. (S<Plan 9>)
=item glob
-Globbing built-in, but only C<*> and C<?> metacharacters are supported.
-(S<Mac OS>)
-
This operator is implemented via the File::Glob extension on most
platforms. See L<File::Glob> for portability information.
+=item gmtime
+
+Same portability caveats as L<localtime>.
+
=item ioctl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
Not implemented. (VMS)
Available only for socket handles. (S<RISC OS>)
-=item kill SIGNAL, LIST
+=item kill
+
+C<kill(0, LIST)> is implemented for the sake of taint checking;
+use with other signals is unimplemented. (S<Mac OS>)
-Not implemented, hence not useful for taint checking. (S<Mac OS>,
-S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented, hence not useful for taint checking. (S<RISC OS>)
C<kill()> doesn't have the semantics of C<raise()>, i.e. it doesn't send
a signal to the identified process like it does on Unix platforms.
$sig is 0 and the specified process exists, it returns true without
actually terminating it. (Win32)
-=item link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
+Is not supported for process identification number of 0 or negative
+numbers. (VMS)
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, MPE/iX, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
+=item link
+
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, MPE/iX, S<RISC OS>)
Link count not updated because hard links are not quite that hard
(They are sort of half-way between hard and soft links). (AmigaOS)
Hard links are implemented on Win32 (Windows NT and Windows 2000)
under NTFS only.
-=item lstat FILEHANDLE
+Available on 64 bit OpenVMS 8.2 and later. (VMS)
+
+=item localtime
-=item lstat EXPR
+Because Perl currently relies on the native standard C localtime()
+function, it is only safe to use times between 0 and (2**31)-1. Times
+outside this range may result in unexpected behavior depending on your
+operating system's implementation of localtime().
=item lstat
-Not implemented. (VMS, S<RISC OS>)
+Not implemented. (S<RISC OS>)
Return values (especially for device and inode) may be bogus. (Win32)
-=item msgctl ID,CMD,ARG
-
-=item msgget KEY,FLAGS
+=item msgctl
-=item msgsnd ID,MSG,FLAGS
+=item msgget
-=item msgrcv ID,VAR,SIZE,TYPE,FLAGS
+=item msgsnd
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, Plan9, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
+=item msgrcv
-=item open FILEHANDLE,EXPR
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<Plan 9>, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
-=item open FILEHANDLE
+=item open
The C<|> variants are supported only if ToolServer is installed.
(S<Mac OS>)
Opening a process does not automatically flush output handles on some
platforms. (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
-=item pipe READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE
-
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>)
+=item pipe
Very limited functionality. (MiNT)
-=item readlink EXPR
-
=item readlink
Not implemented. (Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
-=item select RBITS,WBITS,EBITS,TIMEOUT
+=item rename
+
+Can't move directories between directories on different logical volumes. (Win32)
+
+=item select
-Only implemented on sockets. (Win32)
+Only implemented on sockets. (Win32, VMS)
Only reliable on sockets. (S<RISC OS>)
-Note that the C<socket FILEHANDLE> form is generally portable.
+Note that the C<select FILEHANDLE> form is generally portable.
-=item semctl ID,SEMNUM,CMD,ARG
+=item semctl
-=item semget KEY,NSEMS,FLAGS
+=item semget
-=item semop KEY,OPSTRING
+=item semop
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
=item setgrent
-Not implemented. (MPE/iX, Win32)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, MPE/iX, VMS, Win32, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
-=item setpgrp PID,PGRP
+=item setpgrp
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
-=item setpriority WHICH,WHO,PRIORITY
+=item setpriority
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
=item setpwent
-Not implemented. (MPE/iX, Win32)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, MPE/iX, Win32, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
-=item setsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME,OPTVAL
+=item setsockopt
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Plan9)
+Not implemented. (S<Plan 9>)
-=item shmctl ID,CMD,ARG
+=item shmctl
-=item shmget KEY,SIZE,FLAGS
+=item shmget
-=item shmread ID,VAR,POS,SIZE
+=item shmread
-=item shmwrite ID,STRING,POS,SIZE
+=item shmwrite
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS)
-=item sockatmark SOCKET
+=item sockatmark
A relatively recent addition to socket functions, may not
be implemented even in UNIX platforms.
-=item socketpair SOCKET1,SOCKET2,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
+=item socketpair
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
-
-=item stat FILEHANDLE
+Not implemented. (Win32, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
-=item stat EXPR
+Available on 64 bit OpenVMS 8.2 and later. (VMS)
=item stat
'not numeric' warnings.
mtime and atime are the same thing, and ctime is creation time instead of
-inode change time. (S<Mac OS>)
+inode change time. (S<Mac OS>).
+
+ctime not supported on UFS (S<Mac OS X>).
+
+ctime is creation time instead of inode change time (Win32).
device and inode are not meaningful. (Win32)
dev, rdev, blksize, and blocks are not available. inode is not
meaningful and will differ between stat calls on the same file. (os2)
-=item symlink OLDFILE,NEWFILE
+some versions of cygwin when doing a stat("foo") and if not finding it
+may then attempt to stat("foo.exe") (Cygwin)
+
+=item symlink
Not implemented. (Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
-=item syscall LIST
+=item syscall
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, VMS, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
-=item sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS
+=item sysopen
The traditional "0", "1", and "2" MODEs are implemented with different
numeric values on some systems. The flags exported by C<Fcntl>
(O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, O_RDWR) should work everywhere though. (S<Mac
OS>, OS/390, VM/ESA)
-=item system LIST
+=item system
Only implemented if ToolServer is installed. (S<Mac OS>)
Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.
(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
+The return value is POSIX-like (shifted up by 8 bits), which only allows
+room for a made-up value derived from the severity bits of the native
+32-bit condition code (unless overridden by C<use vmsish 'status'>).
+If the native condition code is one that has a POSIX value encoded, the
+POSIX value will be decoded to extract the expected exit value.
+For more details see L<perlvms/$?>. (VMS)
+
=item times
Only the first entry returned is nonzero. (S<Mac OS>)
Not useful. (S<RISC OS>)
-=item truncate FILEHANDLE,LENGTH
+=item truncate
-=item truncate EXPR,LENGTH
+Not implemented. (Older versions of VMS)
-Not implemented. (VMS)
-
-Truncation to zero-length only. (VOS)
+Truncation to same-or-shorter lengths only. (VOS)
If a FILEHANDLE is supplied, it must be writable and opened in append
-mode (i.e., use C<open(FH, '>>filename')>
+mode (i.e., use C<<< open(FH, '>>filename') >>>
or C<sysopen(FH,...,O_APPEND|O_RDWR)>. If a filename is supplied, it
should not be held open elsewhere. (Win32)
-=item umask EXPR
-
=item umask
Returns undef where unavailable, as of version 5.005.
C<umask> works but the correct permissions are set only when the file
is finally closed. (AmigaOS)
-=item utime LIST
+=item utime
-Only the modification time is updated. (S<Mac OS>, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
+Only the modification time is updated. (S<BeOS>, S<Mac OS>, VMS, S<RISC OS>)
May not behave as expected. Behavior depends on the C runtime
library's implementation of utime(), and the filesystem being
=item wait
-=item waitpid PID,FLAGS
+=item waitpid
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, VOS)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>)
Can only be applied to process handles returned for processes spawned
using C<system(1, ...)> or pseudo processes created with C<fork()>. (Win32)
=back
-=head1 CHANGES
-
-=over 4
-
-=item v1.47, 22 March 2000
-
-Various cleanups from Tom Christiansen, including migration of
-long platform listings from L<perl>.
-
-=item v1.46, 12 February 2000
-
-Updates for VOS and MPE/iX. (Peter Prymmer) Other small changes.
-
-=item v1.45, 20 December 1999
-
-Small changes from 5.005_63 distribution, more changes to EBCDIC info.
-
-=item v1.44, 19 July 1999
-
-A bunch of updates from Peter Prymmer for C<$^O> values,
-endianness, File::Spec, VMS, BS2000, OS/400.
-
-=item v1.43, 24 May 1999
-
-Added a lot of cleaning up from Tom Christiansen.
-
-=item v1.42, 22 May 1999
-
-Added notes about tests, sprintf/printf, and epoch offsets.
-
-=item v1.41, 19 May 1999
-
-Lots more little changes to formatting and content.
-
-Added a bunch of C<$^O> and related values
-for various platforms; fixed mail and web addresses, and added
-and changed miscellaneous notes. (Peter Prymmer)
-
-=item v1.40, 11 April 1999
-
-Miscellaneous changes.
-
-=item v1.39, 11 February 1999
-
-Changes from Jarkko and EMX URL fixes Michael Schwern. Additional
-note about newlines added.
-
-=item v1.38, 31 December 1998
-
-More changes from Jarkko.
-
-=item v1.37, 19 December 1998
-
-More minor changes. Merge two separate version 1.35 documents.
-
-=item v1.36, 9 September 1998
-
-Updated for Stratus VOS. Also known as version 1.35.
-
-=item v1.35, 13 August 1998
-
-Integrate more minor changes, plus addition of new sections under
-L<"ISSUES">: L<"Numbers endianness and Width">,
-L<"Character sets and character encoding">,
-L<"Internationalisation">.
-
-=item v1.33, 06 August 1998
-
-Integrate more minor changes.
-
-=item v1.32, 05 August 1998
-
-Integrate more minor changes.
-
-=item v1.30, 03 August 1998
-
-Major update for RISC OS, other minor changes.
-
-=item v1.23, 10 July 1998
-
-First public release with perl5.005.
-
-=back
=head1 Supported Platforms
-As of early March 2000 (the Perl release 5.6.0), the following
-platforms are able to build Perl from the standard source code
-distribution available at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/index.html
-
- AIX
- DOS DJGPP 1)
- EPOC
- FreeBSD
- HP-UX
- IRIX
- Linux
- LynxOS
- MachTen
- MPE/iX
- NetBSD
- OpenBSD
- OS/2
- QNX
- Rhapsody/Darwin 2)
- SCO SV
- SINIX
- Solaris
- SVR4
- Tru64 UNIX 3)
- UNICOS
- UNICOS/mk
- Unixware
- VMS
- VOS
- Windows 3.1 1)
- Windows 95 1) 4)
- Windows 98 1) 4)
- Windows NT 1) 4)
+As of July 2002 (the Perl release 5.8.0), the following platforms are
+able to build Perl from the standard source code distribution
+available at http://www.cpan.org/src/index.html
+
+ AIX
+ BeOS
+ BSD/OS (BSDi)
+ Cygwin
+ DG/UX
+ DOS DJGPP 1)
+ DYNIX/ptx
+ EPOC R5
+ FreeBSD
+ HI-UXMPP (Hitachi) (5.8.0 worked but we didn't know it)
+ HP-UX
+ IRIX
+ Linux
+ Mac OS Classic
+ Mac OS X (Darwin)
+ MPE/iX
+ NetBSD
+ NetWare
+ NonStop-UX
+ ReliantUNIX (formerly SINIX)
+ OpenBSD
+ OpenVMS (formerly VMS)
+ Open UNIX (Unixware) (since Perl 5.8.1/5.9.0)
+ OS/2
+ OS/400 (using the PASE) (since Perl 5.8.1/5.9.0)
+ PowerUX
+ POSIX-BC (formerly BS2000)
+ QNX
+ Solaris
+ SunOS 4
+ SUPER-UX (NEC)
+ Tru64 UNIX (formerly DEC OSF/1, Digital UNIX)
+ UNICOS
+ UNICOS/mk
+ UTS
+ VOS
+ Win95/98/ME/2K/XP 2)
+ WinCE
+ z/OS (formerly OS/390)
+ VM/ESA
1) in DOS mode either the DOS or OS/2 ports can be used
- 2) new in 5.6.0: the BSD/NeXT-based UNIX of Mac OS X
- 3) formerly known as Digital UNIX and before that DEC OSF/1
- 4) compilers: Borland, Cygwin, Mingw32 EGCS/GCC, VC++
-
-The following platforms worked for the previous major release
-(5.005_03 being the latest maintenance release of that, as of early
-March 2000), but be did not manage to test these in time for the 5.6.0
-release of Perl. There is a very good chance that these will work
-just fine with 5.6.0.
-
- A/UX
- BeOS
- BSD/OS
- DG/UX
- DYNIX/ptx
- DomainOS
- Hurd
- NextSTEP
- OpenSTEP
- PowerMAX
- SCO ODT/OSR
- SunOS
- Ultrix
-
-The following platform worked for the previous major release (5.005_03
-being the latest maintenance release of that, as of early March 2000).
-However, standardization on UTF-8 as the internal string representation
-in 5.6.0 has introduced incompatibilities in this EBCDIC platform.
-Support for this platform may be enabled in a future release:
-
- OS390 1)
-
- 1) Previously known as MVS, or OpenEdition MVS.
-
-Strongly related to the OS390 platform by also being EBCDIC-based
-mainframe platforms are the following platforms:
-
- BS2000
- VM/ESA
-
-These are also not expected to work under 5.6.0 for the same reasons
-as OS390. Contact the mailing list perl-mvs@perl.org for more details.
-
-MacOS (Classic, pre-X) is almost 5.6.0-ready; building from the source
-does work with 5.6.0, but additional MacOS specific source code is needed
-for a complete port. Contact the mailing list macperl-porters@macperl.org
-for more information.
-
-The following platforms have been known to build Perl from source in
-the past, but we haven't been able to verify their status for the
-current release, either because the hardware/software platforms are
-rare or because we don't have an active champion on these
-platforms--or both:
+ 2) compilers: Borland, MinGW (GCC), VC6
+
+The following platforms worked with the previous releases (5.6 and
+5.7), but we did not manage either to fix or to test these in time
+for the 5.8.0 release. There is a very good chance that many of these
+will work fine with the 5.8.0.
+
+ BSD/OS
+ DomainOS
+ Hurd
+ LynxOS
+ MachTen
+ PowerMAX
+ SCO SV
+ SVR4
+ Unixware
+ Windows 3.1
+
+Known to be broken for 5.8.0 (but 5.6.1 and 5.7.2 can be used):
- 3b1
AmigaOS
- ConvexOS
- CX/UX
- DC/OSx
- DDE SMES
- DOS EMX
- Dynix
- EP/IX
- ESIX
- FPS
- GENIX
- Greenhills
- ISC
- MachTen 68k
- MiNT
- MPC
- NEWS-OS
- Opus
- Plan 9
- PowerUX
- RISC/os
- Stellar
- SVR2
- TI1500
- TitanOS
- Unisys Dynix
- Unixware
-
-Support for the following platform is planned for a future Perl release:
-
- Netware
+
+The following platforms have been known to build Perl from source in
+the past (5.005_03 and earlier), but we haven't been able to verify
+their status for the current release, either because the
+hardware/software platforms are rare or because we don't have an
+active champion on these platforms--or both. They used to work,
+though, so go ahead and try compiling them, and let perlbug@perl.org
+of any trouble.
+
+ 3b1
+ A/UX
+ ConvexOS
+ CX/UX
+ DC/OSx
+ DDE SMES
+ DOS EMX
+ Dynix
+ EP/IX
+ ESIX
+ FPS
+ GENIX
+ Greenhills
+ ISC
+ MachTen 68k
+ MiNT
+ MPC
+ NEWS-OS
+ NextSTEP
+ OpenSTEP
+ Opus
+ Plan 9
+ RISC/os
+ SCO ODT/OSR
+ Stellar
+ SVR2
+ TI1500
+ TitanOS
+ Ultrix
+ Unisys Dynix
The following platforms have their own source code distributions and
-binaries available via http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/index.html:
+binaries available via http://www.cpan.org/ports/
- Perl release
+ Perl release
- AS/400 5.003
- Netware 5.003_07
- Tandem Guardian 5.004
+ OS/400 (ILE) 5.005_02
+ Tandem Guardian 5.004
The following platforms have only binaries available via
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/index.html :
+http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html :
- Perl release
+ Perl release
- Acorn RISCOS 5.005_02
- AOS 5.002
- LynxOS 5.004_02
+ Acorn RISCOS 5.005_02
+ AOS 5.002
+ LynxOS 5.004_02
Although we do suggest that you always build your own Perl from
the source code, both for maximal configurability and for security,
in case you are in a hurry you can check
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/index.html for binary distributions.
+http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html for binary distributions.
=head1 SEE ALSO
-L<perlaix>, L<perlamiga>, L<perlcygwin>, L<perldos>, L<perlepoc>,
-L<perlebcdic>, L<perlhpux>, L<perlos2>, L<perlos390>, L<perlbs2000>,
-L<perlwin32>, L<perlvms>, L<perlvos>, and L<Win32>.
+L<perlaix>, L<perlamiga>, L<perlapollo>, L<perlbeos>, L<perlbs2000>,
+L<perlce>, L<perlcygwin>, L<perldgux>, L<perldos>, L<perlepoc>,
+L<perlebcdic>, L<perlfreebsd>, L<perlhurd>, L<perlhpux>, L<perlirix>,
+L<perlmachten>, L<perlmacos>, L<perlmacosx>, L<perlmint>, L<perlmpeix>,
+L<perlnetware>, L<perlos2>, L<perlos390>, L<perlos400>,
+L<perlplan9>, L<perlqnx>, L<perlsolaris>, L<perltru64>,
+L<perlunicode>, L<perlvmesa>, L<perlvms>, L<perlvos>,
+L<perlwin32>, and L<Win32>.
=head1 AUTHORS / CONTRIBUTORS
-Abigail <abigail@fnx.com>,
+Abigail <abigail@foad.org>,
Charles Bailey <bailey@newman.upenn.edu>,
Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>,
Tom Christiansen <tchrist@perl.com>,
-Nicholas Clark <Nicholas.Clark@liverpool.ac.uk>,
+Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>,
Thomas Dorner <Thomas.Dorner@start.de>,
-Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>,
-Dominic Dunlop <domo@vo.lu>,
-Neale Ferguson <neale@mailbox.tabnsw.com.au>,
+Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafayette.edu>,
+Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>,
+Neale Ferguson <neale@vma.tabnsw.com.au>,
David J. Fiander <davidf@mks.com>,
-Paul Green <Paul_Green@stratus.com>,
-M.J.T. Guy <mjtg@cus.cam.ac.uk>,
+Paul Green <Paul.Green@stratus.com>,
+M.J.T. Guy <mjtg@cam.ac.uk>,
Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>,
Luther Huffman <lutherh@stratcom.com>,
-Nick Ing-Simmons <nick@ni-s.u-net.com>,
-Andreas J. KE<ouml>nig <koenig@kulturbox.de>,
+Nick Ing-Simmons <nick@ing-simmons.net>,
+Andreas J. KE<ouml>nig <a.koenig@mind.de>,
Markus Laker <mlaker@contax.co.uk>,
Andrew M. Langmead <aml@world.std.com>,
Larry Moore <ljmoore@freespace.net>,
Paul Moore <Paul.Moore@uk.origin-it.com>,
Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>,
-Matthias Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>,
+Matthias Neeracher <neeracher@mac.com>,
+Philip Newton <pne@cpan.org>,
Gary Ng <71564.1743@CompuServe.COM>,
Tom Phoenix <rootbeer@teleport.com>,
AndrE<eacute> Pirard <A.Pirard@ulg.ac.be>,
Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@activestate.com>,
Paul J. Schinder <schinder@pobox.com>,
Michael G Schwern <schwern@pobox.com>,
-Dan Sugalski <sugalskd@ous.edu>,
+Dan Sugalski <dan@sidhe.org>,
Nathan Torkington <gnat@frii.com>.
-
-This document is maintained by Chris Nandor
-<pudge@pobox.com>.
-
-=head1 VERSION
-
-Version 1.47, last modified 22 March 2000
+John Malmberg <wb8tyw@qsl.net>
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff