Although it's rumored that the (imminent) 5.004 release may build on Windows NT, this is yet to be proven. Binary distributions for 32-bit Microsoft systems and for Apple systems can be found http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ directory. Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways. You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just what the differences are. These differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current source release of perl).
A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is:
http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html
make install. Most other approaches are doomed to failure.
One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for.
perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'
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.
CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
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 modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communciation; data type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and miscellaneous modules.
man perl if you're on a system resembling Unix. This will lead you to other
important man pages. 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.
You might also try perldoc perl in case your system doesn't have a proper man command, or it's been
misinstalled. If that doesn't work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod
for documentation.
If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which contains the complete documentation in various formats, including native pod, troff, html, and plain text. There's also a web page at http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that might help.
It's also worth noting that there's a PDF version of the complete documentation for perl available in the CPAN/authors/id/BMIDD directory.
Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below for more details.
comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the crack Perl development team (perl5-porters) at news://genetics.upenn.edu/perl.porters-gw/ if you'd like.
The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by the creator of Perl and his apostles, is now in its second edition and fourth printing. Note that O'Reilly books are color-coded: turquoise (some would call it teal) covers indicate perl5 coverage, while magenta (some would call it pink) covers indicate perl4 only. Check the cover color before you buy!
Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
Authors: Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
ISBN 1-56592-149-6 (English)
ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
(French and German translations in progress)
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.
If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the Camel Book just might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But if you're not, check out the ``Llama Book''. It currently doesn't cover perl5, but the 2nd edition is nearly done and should be out by summer 97:
Learning Perl (the Llama Book):
Author: Randal Schwartz, with intro by Larry Wall
ISBN 1-56592-042-2 (English)
ISBN 4-89502-678-1 (Japanese)
ISBN 2-84177-005-2 (French)
ISBN 3-930673-08-8 (German)
Another stand-out book in the turquoise O'Reilly Perl line is the ``Hip Owls'' book. It covers regular expressions inside and out, with quite a bit devoted exclusively to Perl:
Mastering Regular Expressions (the Cute Owls Book): Author: Jeffrey Friedl ISBN 1-56592-257-3
You can order any of these books from O'Reilly & Associates, 1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is 1-707-829-0515. If you can locate an O'Reilly order form, you can also fax to 1-707-829-0104. See http://www.ora.com/ on the Web.
Recommended Perl books that are not from O'Reilly are the following:
Cross-Platform Perl, (for Unix and Windows NT)
Author: Eric F. Johnson
ISBN: 1-55851-483-X
How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site, (2nd edition) Author: Lincoln Stein, M.D., Ph.D. ISBN: 0-201-63462-7
CGI Programming in C & Perl, Author: Thomas Boutell ISBN: 0-201-42219-0
Note that some of these address specific application areas (e.g. the Web) and are not general-purpose programming books.
Beyond this, two other magazines that frequently carry high-quality articles on Perl are Web Techniques (see http://www.webtechniques.com/) and Unix Review (http://www.unixreview.com/).
On the Web:
http://www.perl.com/CPAN (multiplex only)
http://www.perl.org/CPAN
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
FTP, BY CONTINENT:
Africa
South Africa ftp://ftp.is.co.za/programming/perl/CPAN/
Asia
Hong Kong ftp://ftp.hkstar.com/pub/CPAN/
Japan ftp://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp/lang/perl/CPAN/
South Korea ftp://ftp.nuri.net/pub/CPAN/
Taiwan ftp://dongpo.math.ncu.edu.tw/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.wownet.net/pub2/PERL/
Australasia
Australia ftp://ftp.netinfo.com.au/pub/perl/CPAN/
New Zealand ftp://ftp.tekotago.ac.nz/pub/perl/CPAN/
Europe
Austria ftp://ftp.tuwien.ac.at/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
Belgium ftp://ftp.kulnet.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/mirror/CPAN/
Czech Republic ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/Languages/Perl/CPAN/
Denmark ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
Finland ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
France ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.pasteur.fr/pub/computing/unix/perl/CPAN/
Germany ftp://ftp.gmd.de/packages/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/programming/languages/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/source/Perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.uni-hamburg.de/pub/soft/lang/perl/CPAN/
Greece ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/lang/perl/
Hungary ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/packages/perl/CPAN/
Italy ftp://cis.utovrm.it/CPAN/
the Netherlands ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.EU.net/packages/cpan/
Norway ftp://ftp.uit.no/pub/languages/perl/cpan/
Poland ftp://ftp.pk.edu.pl/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/CPAN/
Portugal ftp://ftp.ci.uminho.pt/pub/lang/perl/
ftp://ftp.telepac.pt/pub/CPAN/
Russia ftp://ftp.sai.msu.su/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/
Slovenia ftp://ftp.arnes.si/software/perl/CPAN/
Spain ftp://ftp.etse.urv.es/pub/mirror/perl/
ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/CPAN/
Sweden ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/
Switzerland ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/CPAN/
UK ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/perl/CPAN/
ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/CPAN/
ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/perl-CPAN/
North America
Ontario ftp://ftp.utilis.com/public/CPAN/
ftp://enterprise.ic.gc.ca/pub/perl/CPAN/
Manitoba ftp://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/pub/CPAN/
California ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/perl/
Colorado ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
Florida ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/
Illinois ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/
Massachusetts ftp://ftp.iguide.com/pub/mirrors/packages/perl/CPAN/
New York ftp://ftp.rge.com/pub/languages/perl/
North Carolina ftp://ftp.duke.edu/pub/perl/
Oklahoma ftp://ftp.ou.edu/mirrors/CPAN/
Oregon ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/packages/CPAN/
Pennsylvania ftp://ftp.epix.net/pub/languages/perl/
Texas ftp://ftp.sedl.org/pub/mirrors/CPAN/
ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perl/
Washington ftp://ftp.spu.edu/pub/CPAN/
South America
Chile ftp://sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/Lang/perl/CPAN/
Also see Matthias Neeracher's (the creator and maintainer of MacPerl) webpage at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri/macintosh/perl.html for many links to interesting MacPerl sites, and the applications/MPW tools, precompiled.
subscribe ntperl
The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, simple prepend the same command with an ``un'', and mail to the same address like so:
unsubscribe ntperl
subscribe perl-packrats
The list software, also written in perl, will automatically determine your address, and subscribe you automatically. To unsubscribe, simple prepend the same command with an ``un'', and mail to the same address like so:
unsubscribe perl-packrats
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, subject, thread (as in ``trn'') and probably keywords. The best solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH pick command, but it is very slow to select on 18000 articles.
If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections, please let perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com know.
However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go wrong. 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.
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 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
If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to ``What platforms is Perl available for?''), a binary distribution, or a non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post bugs.
Read the perlbug man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
The perl.com domain is Tom Christiansen's domain. He created it as a public service long before perl.org came about. It's the original PBS of the Perl world, a clearinghouse for information about all things Perlian, accepting no paid advertisements, glossy gifs, or (gasp!) java applets on its pages.