1# vim: syntax=pod 2 3If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. 4It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially 5designed to be readable as is. 6 7=head1 NAME 8 9perlplan9 - Plan 9-specific documentation for Perl 10 11=head1 DESCRIPTION 12 13These are a few notes describing features peculiar to 14Plan 9 Perl. As such, it is not intended to be a replacement 15for the rest of the Perl 5 documentation (which is both 16copious and excellent). If you have any questions to 17which you can't find answers in these man pages, contact 18Luther Huffman at lutherh@stratcom.com and we'll try to 19answer them. 20 21=head2 Invoking Perl 22 23Perl is invoked from the command line as described in 24L<perl>. Most perl scripts, however, do have a first line 25such as "#!/usr/local/bin/perl". This is known as a shebang 26(shell-bang) statement and tells the OS shell where to find 27the perl interpreter. In Plan 9 Perl this statement should be 28"#!/bin/perl" if you wish to be able to directly invoke the 29script by its name. 30 Alternatively, you may invoke perl with the command "Perl" 31instead of "perl". This will produce Acme-friendly error 32messages of the form "filename:18". 33 34Some scripts, usually identified with a *.PL extension, are 35self-configuring and are able to correctly create their own 36shebang path from config information located in Plan 9 37Perl. These you won't need to be worried about. 38 39=head2 What's in Plan 9 Perl 40 41Although Plan 9 Perl currently only provides static 42loading, it is built with a number of useful extensions. 43These include Opcode, FileHandle, Fcntl, and POSIX. Expect 44to see others (and DynaLoading!) in the future. 45 46=head2 What's not in Plan 9 Perl 47 48As mentioned previously, dynamic loading isn't currently 49available nor is MakeMaker. Both are high-priority items. 50 51=head2 Perl5 Functions not currently supported in Plan 9 Perl 52 53Some, such as C<chown> and C<umask> aren't provided 54because the concept does not exist within Plan 9. Others, 55such as some of the socket-related functions, simply 56haven't been written yet. Many in the latter category 57may be supported in the future. 58 59The functions not currently implemented include: 60 61 chown, chroot, dbmclose, dbmopen, getsockopt, 62 setsockopt, recvmsg, sendmsg, getnetbyname, 63 getnetbyaddr, getnetent, getprotoent, getservent, 64 sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent, 65 endservent, endnetent, endprotoent, umask 66 67There may be several other functions that have undefined 68behavior so this list shouldn't be considered complete. 69 70=head2 Signals in Plan 9 Perl 71 72For compatibility with perl scripts written for the Unix 73environment, Plan 9 Perl uses the POSIX signal emulation 74provided in Plan 9's ANSI POSIX Environment (APE). Signal stacking 75isn't supported. The signals provided are: 76 77 SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGILL, SIGABRT, 78 SIGFPE, SIGKILL, SIGSEGV, SIGPIPE, SIGPIPE, SIGALRM, 79 SIGTERM, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2, SIGCHLD, SIGCONT, 80 SIGSTOP, SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU 81 82=head1 COMPILING AND INSTALLING PERL ON PLAN 9 83 84WELCOME to Plan 9 Perl, brave soul! 85 86 This is a preliminary alpha version of Plan 9 Perl. Still to be 87implemented are MakeMaker and DynaLoader. Many perl commands are 88missing or currently behave in an inscrutable manner. These gaps will, 89with perseverance and a modicum of luck, be remedied in the near 90future.To install this software: 91 921. Create the source directories and libraries for perl by running the 93plan9/setup.rc command (i.e., located in the plan9 subdirectory). 94Note: the setup routine assumes that you haven't dearchived these 95files into /sys/src/cmd/perl. After running setup.rc you may delete 96the copy of the source you originally detarred, as source code has now 97been installed in /sys/src/cmd/perl. If you plan on installing perl 98binaries for all architectures, run "setup.rc -a". 99 1002. After making sure that you have adequate privileges to build system 101software, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust version 102appropriately) run: 103 104 mk install 105 106If you wish to install perl versions for all architectures (68020, 107mips, sparc and 386) run: 108 109 mk installall 110 1113. Wait. The build process will take a *long* time because perl 112bootstraps itself. A 75MHz Pentium, 16MB RAM machine takes roughly 30 113minutes to build the distribution from scratch. 114 115=head2 Installing Perl Documentation on Plan 9 116 117This perl distribution comes with a tremendous amount of 118documentation. To add these to the built-in manuals that come with 119Plan 9, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust version appropriately) 120run: 121 122 mk man 123 124To begin your reading, start with: 125 126 man perl 127 128This is a good introduction and will direct you towards other man 129pages that may interest you. 130 131(Note: "mk man" may produce some extraneous noise. Fear not.) 132 133=head1 BUGS 134 135"As many as there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the 136world . . ." - Carl Sagan 137 138=head1 Revision date 139 140This document was revised 09-October-1996 for Perl 5.003_7. 141 142=head1 AUTHOR 143 144Direct questions, comments, and the unlikely bug report (ahem) direct 145comments toward: 146 147Luther Huffman, lutherh@stratcom.com, 148Strategic Computer Solutions, Inc. 149