1=head1 NAME 2 3perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.25 $, $Date: 2003/10/16 04:57:38 $) 4 5=head1 DESCRIPTION 6 7This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find 8source and documentation for Perl, support, and 9related matters. 10 11=head2 What machines support Perl? Where do I get it? 12 13The standard release of Perl (the one maintained by the perl 14development team) is distributed only in source code form. You 15can find this at http://www.cpan.org/src/latest.tar.gz , which 16is in a standard Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format). 17 18Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually 19all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native 20platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, 21QNX, BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga. 22 23Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including 24Apple systems, can be found http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. 25Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may 26and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways. 27You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just 28what the differences are. These differences can be either positive 29(e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that 30are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g. 31might be based upon a less current source release of perl). 32 33=head2 How can I get a binary version of Perl? 34 35If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever 36reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is 37grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl 38with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to 39get free compilers for, not for Unix systems. 40 41Some URLs that might help you are: 42 43 http://www.cpan.org/ports/ 44 http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html 45 46Someone looking for a Perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp 47port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with clear 48installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS using 49Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at 50http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html 51and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html . 52 53=head2 I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl? 54 55Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor 56should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you. 57 58What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system 59first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for 60information on where to get such a binary version. 61 62=head2 I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work. 63 64That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ. 65You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will 66eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other 67approaches are doomed to failure. 68 69One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out 70the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries: 71 72 % perl -le 'print for @INC' 73 74If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you 75may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create 76symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as 77part of the output of 78 79 % perl -V 80 81You might also want to check out 82L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">. 83 84=head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work? 85 86Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution. 87It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the 88Configure script can't work around for any given system or 89architecture. 90 91=head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean? 92 93CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a ~1.2Gb archive 94replicated on nearly 200 machines all over the world. CPAN contains 95source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many 96third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from 97commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web 98walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is 99http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at 100http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you 101via DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the 102end) for how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ 103has a nice interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY 104mirror directory. 105 106See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for 107answers to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN 108including how to become a mirror. 109 110CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN 111sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the 112rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For 113instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN 114as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as 115ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh . 116 117Considering that there are close to two thousand existing modules in 118the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of. 119Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core 120modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking, 121devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database 122interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames, 123file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world 124wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and 125compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow 126utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and 127miscellaneous modules. 128 129See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or 130http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by category. 131 132CPAN is not affiliated with O'Reilly and Associates. 133 134=head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl? 135 136Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is. 137 138=head2 Where can I get information on Perl? 139 140The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution. 141If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation 142installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix. 143This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your 144$MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation 145will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All 146proper Perl installations have fully-accessible documentation. 147 148You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't 149have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't 150work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation. 151 152If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.cpan.org/ or 153http://www.perldoc.com/ both offer the complete documentation 154in html format. 155 156Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below 157for more details. 158 159Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases 160include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's 161approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics, 162L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular 163expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging, 164and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more 165by the time you read this. The following URLs might also be of 166assistance: 167 168 http://perldoc.cpan.org/ 169 http://www.perldoc.com/ 170 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials 171 172=head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions? 173 174Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet: 175 176 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group 177 comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion 178 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group 179 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules 180 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl 181 182 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web. 183 184Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and 185comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still 186be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because 187postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the 188official list of group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics 189which do not have a more-appropriate specific group. 190 191There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by 192perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists 193at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available 194under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other 195groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as 196http://lists.cpan.org/ ). 197 198A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site, 199http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list 200http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners . 201 202Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you: 203asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine, 204but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool. 205 206=head2 Where should I post source code? 207 208You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but 209feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post 210to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards, 211including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources; 212see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details. 213 214If you're just looking for software, first use Google 215( http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface 216( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ). 217This is faster and more productive than just posting a request. 218 219=head2 Perl Books 220 221A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few of 222these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. Tom 223Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some with extensive 224reviews, at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html . 225 226The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by 227the creator of Perl, is now (July 2000) in its third edition: 228 229 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"): 230 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant 231 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] 232 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ 233 (English, translations to several languages are also available) 234 235The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands 236of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is: 237 238 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"): 239 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, 240 with Foreword by Larry Wall 241 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st Edition August 1998] 242 http://perl.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/ 243 244If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might 245suffice for you to learn Perl from. If you're not, check out the 246Llama book: 247 248 Learning Perl (the "Llama Book") 249 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix 250 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001] 251 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/ 252 253And for more advanced information on writing larger programs, 254presented in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education 255with the Alpaca book: 256 257 Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules (the "Alpaca Book") 258 by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway) 259 ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003] 260 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/ 261 262If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and 263possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much 264hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the 265delightful book 266 267 Perl: The Programmer's Companion 268 by Nigel Chapman 269 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998] 270 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm 271 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc) 272 273If you are more at home in Windows the following is available 274(though unfortunately rather dated). 275 276 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book") 277 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen, 278 with foreword by Larry Wall 279 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997] 280 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/ 281 282Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning 283( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books 284such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and 285I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein. 286 287An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at 288http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual. 289 290What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally 291useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary. 292 293Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow. 294 295=over 4 296 297=item References 298 299 Programming Perl 300 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant 301 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] 302 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ 303 304 Perl 5 Pocket Reference 305 by Johan Vromans 306 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000] 307 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/ 308 309 Perl in a Nutshell 310 by Ellen Siever, Stephan Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan 311 ISBN 1-56592-286-7 [1st edition December 1998] 312 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlnut/ 313 314=item Tutorials 315 316 Elements of Programming with Perl 317 by Andrew L. Johnson 318 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999] 319 http://www.manning.com/Johnson/ 320 321 Learning Perl 322 by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix 323 ISBN 0-596-00132-0 [3rd edition July 2001] 324 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/ 325 326 Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules 327 by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway) 328 ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003] 329 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/ 330 331 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems 332 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen, 333 with foreword by Larry Wall 334 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997] 335 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/ 336 337 Perl: The Programmer's Companion 338 by Nigel Chapman 339 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998] 340 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm 341 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc) 342 343 Cross-Platform Perl 344 by Eric Foster-Johnson 345 ISBN 1-55851-483-X [2nd edition September 2000] 346 http://www.pconline.com/~erc/perlbook.htm 347 348 MacPerl: Power and Ease 349 by Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor, 350 with foreword by Matthias Neeracher 351 ISBN 1-881957-32-2 [1st edition May 1998] 352 http://www.macperl.com/ptf_book/ 353 354=item Task-Oriented 355 356 The Perl Cookbook 357 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington 358 with foreword by Larry Wall 359 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998] 360 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/ 361 362 Effective Perl Programming 363 by Joseph Hall 364 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998] 365 http://www.awl.com/ 366 367 368=item Special Topics 369 370 Mastering Regular Expressions 371 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl 372 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002] 373 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/ 374 375 Network Programming with Perl 376 by Lincoln Stein 377 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001] 378 http://www.awlonline.com/ 379 380 Object Oriented Perl 381 Damian Conway 382 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz 383 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999] 384 http://www.manning.com/Conway/ 385 386 Data Munging with Perl 387 Dave Cross 388 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001] 389 http://www.manning.com/cross 390 391 Mastering Perl/Tk 392 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh 393 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002] 394 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/ 395 396 Extending and Embedding Perl 397 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens 398 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002] 399 http://www.manning.com/jenness 400 401=back 402 403=head2 Perl in Magazines 404 405The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things Perl, 406I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies, 407announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web 408development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular 409expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest 410and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ moved to a 411reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers can download 412issues as PDF documents. For more details on TPJ, see http://www.tpj.com/ 413 414Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on 415Perl are I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), 416I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ), 417I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), 418and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:> 419( http://www.usenix.org/ ) 420 421The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at 422http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ , 423http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and 424http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ . 425 426=head2 Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access 427 428To get the best performance, pick a site from the list at 429http://www.cpan.org/SITES.html . From there you can find the quickest 430site for you. 431 432You may also use xx.cpan.org where "xx" is the 2-letter country code 433for your domain; e.g. Australia would use au.cpan.org. [Note: This 434only applies to countries that host at least one mirror.] 435 436=head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl? 437 438Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own 439mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for 440subscription information. 441 442A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at: 443 444 http://lists.perl.org/ 445 446=head2 Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc 447 448The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup 449content. 450 451http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc 452 453If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the 454same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience 455to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you 456seek. 457 458=head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl? 459 460In a real sense, Perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license 461that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed 462in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large 463user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.* 464newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your 465questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by 466Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad 467programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life 468better for everyone. 469 470However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a 471purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry. 472Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations. 473Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if 474that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of Perl, 475as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor 476and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions 477also all come with Perl. 478 479Alternatively, you can purchase commercial incidence based support 480through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them: 481 482"The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by 483ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many 484years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals 485on a wide range of platforms. 486 487"Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers, 488we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an 489explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed." 490 491Contact The Perl Clinic at 492 493 www.PerlClinic.com 494 495 North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) 496 Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm 497 Fax: 1 604 606-4640 498 499 Europe (GMT) 500 Tel: 00 44 1483 862814 501 Fax: 00 44 1483 862801 502 503See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support. 504 505=head2 Where do I send bug reports? 506 507If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules 508shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or 509mail your report to perlbug@perl.org . 510 511If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to 512"What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a 513non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the 514documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post 515bugs. 516 517Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information. 518 519=head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org? 520 521The Perl Home Page at http://www.perl.com/ is currently hosted by 522The O'Reilly Network, a subsidiary of O'Reilly and Associates. 523 524Perl Mongers is an advocacy organization for the Perl language which 525maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy 526site for the Perl language. 527 528Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user 529groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the 530Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about 531joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group. 532 533Perl Mongers also maintain the perl.org domain to provide general 534support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing 535lists, web sites, and other services. The web site 536http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language, 537and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as 538 539 http://bugs.perl.org/ 540 http://history.perl.org/ 541 http://lists.perl.org/ 542 http://use.perl.org/ 543 544http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, 545a replicated worlwide repository of Perl software, see 546the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document. 547 548=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT 549 550Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington. 551All rights reserved. 552 553This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 554under the same terms as Perl itself. 555 556Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public 557domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any 558derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you 559see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would 560be courteous but is not required. 561