1PERLFAQ2(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLFAQ2(1)
2
6 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.39 $, $Date:
7 2006/01/08 14:27:07 $)
8
10 This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find source
11 and documentation for Perl, support, and related matters.
12 What machines support perl? Where do I get it?
14 The standard release of perl (the one maintained by the perl develop‐
16 ment team) is distributed only in source code form. You can find this
17 at http://www.cpan.org/src/latest.tar.gz , which is in a standard
18 Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format).
19 Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually
21 all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (perl's native
22 platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, QNX,
23 BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga.
24 Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including Apple
26 systems, can be found http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. Because
27 these are not part of the standard distribution, they may and in fact
28 do differ from the base perl port in a variety of ways. You'll have to
29 check their respective release notes to see just what the differences
30 are. These differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the
31 features of the particular platform that are not supported in the
32 source release of perl) or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less
33 current source release of perl).
34 How can I get a binary version of perl?
36 If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever reasons
38 did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is grab a
39 binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl with.
40 CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to get free
41 compilers for, not for Unix systems.
42 Some URLs that might help you are:
44 http://www.cpan.org/ports/
46 http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html
47 Someone looking for a perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's
49 djgpp port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with clear
50 installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS
51 using Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at
52 http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html and similarly for Windows
53 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html .
54 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter?
56 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor should
58 be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
59 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
61 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for informa‐
62 tion on where to get such a binary version.
63 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't
65 work.
66 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
68 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
69 eventually live on, and then type "make install". Most other
70 approaches are doomed to failure.
71 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print
73 out the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries:
74 % perl -le 'print for @INC'
76 If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then
78 you may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or
79 create symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is
80 also printed as part of the output of
81 % perl -V
83 You might also want to check out "How do I keep my own module/library
85 directory?" in perlfaq8.
86 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic load‐
88 ing/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
89 Read the INSTALL file, which is part of the source distribution. It
91 describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the Con‐
92 figure script can't work around for any given system or architecture.
93 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN?
95 What does CPAN/src/... mean?
96 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a ~1.2Gb archive
98 replicated on nearly 200 machines all over the world. CPAN contains
99 source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many third-
100 party modules and extensions, designed for everything from commercial
101 database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web walking and CGI
102 scripts. The master web site for CPAN is http://www.cpan.org/ and
103 there is the CPAN Multiplexer at http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which
104 will choose a mirror near you via DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN
105 (without a slash at the end) for how this process works. Also,
106 http://mirror.cpan.org/ has a nice interface to the
107 http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY mirror directory.
108 See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for answers
110 to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN including how to
111 become a mirror.
112 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN sites.
114 CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the rest of the
115 path is the path from that directory to the file. For instance, if
116 you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN as your CPAN
117 site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as
118 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
119 Considering that there are close to two thousand existing modules in
121 the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think
122 of. Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl
123 core modules; development support; operating system interfaces; net‐
124 working, devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities;
125 database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages;
126 filenames, file systems, and file locking; internationalization and
127 locale; world wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving
128 and compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow utili‐
129 ties; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and miscellaneous
130 modules.
131 See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or
133 http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by cate‐
134 gory.
135 CPAN is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media.
137 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
139 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
141 Where can I get information on Perl?
143 The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribu‐
145 tion. If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the docu‐
146 mentation installed as well: type "man perl" if you're on a system
147 resembling Unix. This will lead you to other important man pages,
148 including how to set your $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system,
149 access to the documentation will be different; for example, documenta‐
150 tion might only be in HTML format. All proper perl installations have
151 fully-accessible documentation.
152 You might also try "perldoc perl" in case your system doesn't have a
154 proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't work,
155 try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
156 If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the com‐
158 plete documentation in HTML and PDF format.
159 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below for
161 more details.
162 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
164 include perltoot for objects or perlboot for a beginner's approach to
165 objects, perlopentut for file opening semantics, perlreftut for manag‐
166 ing references, perlretut for regular expressions, perlthrtut for
167 threads, perldebtut for debugging, and perlxstut for linking C and Perl
168 together. There may be more by the time you read this. These URLs
169 might also be useful:
170 http://perldoc.perl.org/
172 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
173 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
175 Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet:
177 comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
179 comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion
180 comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
181 comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
182 comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl
183 comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.
185 Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and
187 comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still
188 be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because postings
189 there will not appear on news servers which honour the official list of
190 group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics which do not have a
191 more-appropriate specific group.
192 There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
194 perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists at
195 http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available under
196 the "perl.*" hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other groups are
197 listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as http://lists.cpan.org/
198 ).
199 A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site, http://www.perl‐
201 monks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list
202 http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners .
203 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
205 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,
206 but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool.
207 Where should I post source code?
209 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
211 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-
212 post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting stan‐
213 dards, including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include
214 alt.sources; see their FAQ (
215 http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details.
216 If you're just looking for software, first use Google (
218 http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface (
219 http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org
220 ). This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
221 Perl Books
223 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few
225 of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money.
226 There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at
227 http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you
228 can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org .
229 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by the
231 creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:
232 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
234 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
235 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
236 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
237 (English, translations to several languages are also available)
238 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands of real-world
240 examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
241 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
243 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
244 with Foreword by Larry Wall
245 ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003]
246 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/
247 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might suf‐
249 fice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the Llama book:
250 Learning Perl
252 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
253 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
254 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
255 And for more advanced information on writing larger programs, presented
257 in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education with the
258 Alpaca book:
259 Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules (the "Alpaca Book")
261 by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
262 ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003]
263 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
264 If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and possibly
266 even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much hand-holding
267 as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the delightful book
268 Perl: The Programmer's Companion
270 by Nigel Chapman
271 ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998]
272 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm
273 http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc)
274 If you are more at home in Windows the following is available (though
276 unfortunately rather dated).
277 Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book")
279 by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen,
280 with foreword by Larry Wall
281 ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997]
282 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/
283 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning (
285 http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
286 such as Object Oriented Programming with Perl by Damian Conway and Net‐
287 work Programming with Perl by Lincoln Stein.
288 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
290 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
291 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found person‐
293 ally useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary.
294 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
296 References
298 Programming Perl
299 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
300 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
301 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
302 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
304 by Johan Vromans
305 ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000]
306 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/
307 Tutorials
309 Beginning Perl
310 by James Lee
311 ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004]
312 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344
313 Elements of Programming with Perl
315 by Andrew L. Johnson
316 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
317 http://www.manning.com/Johnson/
318 Learning Perl
320 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
321 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
322 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
323 Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules
325 by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
326 ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003]
327 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
328 Task-Oriented
330 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
331 by Sam Tregar
332 ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002]
333 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14
334 The Perl Cookbook
336 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
337 with foreword by Larry Wall
338 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
339 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
340 Effective Perl Programming
342 by Joseph Hall
343 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
344 http://www.awl.com/
345 Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
347 by Linchi Shea
348 ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
349 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171
350 Special Topics
352 Perl Best Practices
353 by Damian Conway
354 ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005]
355 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/
356 Higher Order Perl
358 by Mark-Jason Dominus
359 ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005]
360 http://hop.perl.plover.com/
361 Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5
363 by Scott Walters
364 ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004]
365 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
366 Mastering Regular Expressions
368 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
369 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002]
370 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/
371 Network Programming with Perl
373 by Lincoln Stein
374 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
375 http://www.awlonline.com/
376 Object Oriented Perl
378 Damian Conway
379 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
380 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
381 http://www.manning.com/Conway/
382 Data Munging with Perl
384 Dave Cross
385 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
386 http://www.manning.com/cross
387 Mastering Perl/Tk
389 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
390 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
391 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
392 Extending and Embedding Perl
394 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
395 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
396 http://www.manning.com/jenness
397 Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
399 by Richard Foley
400 ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004]
401 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/
402 Which magazines have Perl content?
404 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things
406 Perl, The Perl Journal contains tutorials, demonstrations, case stud‐
407 ies, announcements, contests, and much more. TPJ has columns on web
408 development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
409 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
410 and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ moved to
411 a reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers can down‐
412 load issues as PDF documents. For more details on TPJ, see
413 http://www.tpj.com/
414 Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on Perl
416 are The Perl Review ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), Unix Review (
417 http://www.unixreview.com/ ), Linux Magazine ( http://www.linux‐
418 magazine.com/ ), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members,
419 login: ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
420 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
422 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ , http://www.stone‐
423 henge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and http://www.stonehenge.com/mer‐
424 lyn/LinuxMag/ .
425 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
427 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own mailing
429 lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for sub‐
430 scription information.
431 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
433 http://lists.perl.org/
435 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc?
437 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
439 content.
440 http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc
442 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
444 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and
445 patience to sift through all the content but often you will find the
446 answer you seek.
447 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
449 In a real sense, perl already is commercial software: it has a license
451 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
452 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
453 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
454 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to
455 your questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been sup‐
456 ported by Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myr‐
457 iad programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make
458 life better for everyone.
459 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a pur‐
461 chase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry.
462 Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obliga‐
463 tions. Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several
464 sources if that will help. For example, many Perl books include a dis‐
465 tribution of perl, as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the
466 Unix flavor and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix
467 distributions also all come with perl.
468 Where do I send bug reports?
470 If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules
472 shipped with Perl, use the perlbug program in the Perl distribution or
473 mail your report to perlbug@perl.org or at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/
474 .
475 For Perl modules, you can submit bug reports to the Request Tracker set
477 up at http://rt.cpan.org .
478 If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to
480 "What platforms is perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a
481 non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the docu‐
482 mentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post
483 bugs.
484 Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information.
486 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
488 Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a
490 subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.
491 The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language
493 which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy
494 site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide general sup‐
495 port services to the Perl community, including the hosting of mailing
496 lists, web sites, and other services. The web site
497 http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language,
498 and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as
499 http://learn.perl.org/
501 http://use.perl.org/
502 http://jobs.perl.org/
503 http://lists.perl.org/
504 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
506 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
507 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information
508 about joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
509 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a
511 replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see the What is CPAN?
512 question earlier in this document.
513
515 Copyright (c) 1997-2006 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and other
516 authors as noted. All rights reserved.
517 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
519 under the same terms as Perl itself.
520 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the
522 public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and
523 any derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as
524 you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ
525 would be courteous but is not required.
526perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLFAQ2(1)