1PERLFAQ2(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLFAQ2(1)
2
6 perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl
7
9 This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find source
10 and documentation for Perl, support, and related matters.
11 What machines support perl? Where do I get it?
13 The standard release of perl (the one maintained by the perl
14 development team) is distributed only in source code form. You can
15 find the latest releases at http://www.cpan.org/src/README.html .
16 Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually
18 all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (perl's native
19 platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, QNX,
20 BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga.
21 Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms can be found
23 http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. Because these are not part of the
24 standard distribution, they may and in fact do differ from the base
25 perl port in a variety of ways. You'll have to check their respective
26 release notes to see just what the differences are. These differences
27 can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the features of the
28 particular platform that are not supported in the source release of
29 perl) or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current source
30 release of perl).
31 How can I get a binary version of perl?
33 (contributed by brian d foy)
34 ActiveState: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX
36 http://www.activestate.com/
38 Sunfreeware.com: Solaris 2.5 to Solaris 10 (SPARC and x86)
40 http://www.sunfreeware.com/
42 Strawberry Perl: Windows, Perl 5.8.8 and 5.10.0
44 http://www.strawberryperl.com
46 IndigoPerl: Windows
48 http://indigostar.com/
50 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter?
52 Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor should
53 be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.
54 What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
56 first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
57 information on where to get such a binary version.
58 You might look around the net for a pre-built binary of Perl (or a C
60 compiler!) that meets your needs, though:
61 For Windows, Vanilla Perl ( http://vanillaperl.com/ ) and Strawberry
63 Perl ( http://strawberryperl.com/ ) come with a bundled C compiler.
64 ActivePerl is a pre-compiled version of Perl ready-to-use.
65 For Sun systems, SunFreeware.com provides binaries of most popular
67 applications, including compilers and Perl.
68 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't
70 work.
71 That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
72 You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
73 eventually live on, and then type "make install". Most other
74 approaches are doomed to failure.
75 One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print
77 out the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries:
78 % perl -le 'print for @INC'
80 If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then
82 you may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or
83 create symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is
84 also printed as part of the output of
85 % perl -V
87 You might also want to check out "How do I keep my own module/library
89 directory?" in perlfaq8.
90 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic
92 loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?
93 Read the INSTALL file, which is part of the source distribution. It
94 describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
95 Configure script can't work around for any given system or
96 architecture.
97 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What
99 does CPAN/src/... mean?
100 CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a multi-gigabyte
101 archive replicated on hundreds of machines all over the world. CPAN
102 contains source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and
103 many third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
104 commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
105 walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is
106 http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at
107 http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you via
108 DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the end) for how
109 this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ has a nice interface
110 to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY mirror directory.
111 See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for answers
113 to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN including how to
114 become a mirror.
115 CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN sites.
117 CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the rest of the
118 path is the path from that directory to the file. For instance, if
119 you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN as your CPAN
120 site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as
121 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .
122 Considering that, as of 2006, there are over ten thousand existing
124 modules in the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you
125 can think of. Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/
126 include Perl core modules; development support; operating system
127 interfaces; networking, devices, and interprocess communication; data
128 type utilities; database interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to
129 other languages; filenames, file systems, and file locking;
130 internationalization and locale; world wide web support; server and
131 daemon utilities; archiving and compression; image manipulation; mail
132 and news; control flow utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows
133 modules; and miscellaneous modules.
134 See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or
136 http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by
137 category.
138 CPAN is a free service and is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media.
140 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
142 Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.
143 Where can I get information on Perl?
145 The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl
146 distribution. If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have
147 the documentation installed as well: type "man perl" if you're on a
148 system resembling Unix. This will lead you to other important man
149 pages, including how to set your $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix
150 system, access to the documentation will be different; for example,
151 documentation might only be in HTML format. All proper perl
152 installations have fully-accessible documentation.
153 You might also try "perldoc perl" in case your system doesn't have a
155 proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't work,
156 try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.
157 If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the
159 complete documentation in HTML and PDF format.
160 Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section later in
162 perlfaq2 for more details.
163 Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
165 include perltoot for objects or perlboot for a beginner's approach to
166 objects, perlopentut for file opening semantics, perlreftut for
167 managing references, perlretut for regular expressions, perlthrtut for
168 threads, perldebtut for debugging, and perlxstut for linking C and Perl
169 together. There may be more by the time you read this. These URLs
170 might also be useful:
171 http://perldoc.perl.org/
173 http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials
174 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?
176 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 Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and
185 comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still
186 be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because postings
187 there will not appear on news servers which honour the official list of
188 group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics which do not have a
189 more-appropriate specific group.
190 There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
192 perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists at
193 http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available under
194 the "perl.*" hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other groups are
195 listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as http://lists.cpan.org/
196 ).
197 A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site,
199 http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list
200 http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners .
201 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
203 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,
204 but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool.
205 Where should I post source code?
207 You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but
208 feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-
209 post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting
210 standards, including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include
211 alt.sources; see their FAQ (
212 http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details.
213 If 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
217 ). This is faster and more productive than just posting a request.
218 Perl Books
220 A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few
221 of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money.
222 There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at
223 http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you
224 can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org .
225 The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by the
227 creator of Perl, is Programming Perl:
228 Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
230 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
231 ISBN 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 The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands of real-world
236 examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is:
237 The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"):
239 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington,
240 with Foreword by Larry Wall
241 ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003]
242 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/
243 If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might
245 suffice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the Llama
246 book:
247 Learning Perl
249 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
250 ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005]
251 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
252 And for more advanced information on writing larger programs, presented
254 in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education with the
255 Alpaca book:
256 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
258 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
259 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
260 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/
261 Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning (
263 http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books
264 such as Object Oriented Programming with Perl by Damian Conway and
265 Network Programming with Perl by Lincoln Stein.
266 An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at
268 http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual.
269 What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found
271 personally useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't)
272 vary.
273 Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow.
275 References
277 Programming Perl
278 by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant
279 ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000]
280 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/
281 Perl 5 Pocket Reference
283 by Johan Vromans
284 ISBN 0-596-00374-9 [4th edition July 2002]
285 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr4/
286 Tutorials
288 Beginning Perl
289 by James Lee
290 ISBN 1-59059-391-X [2nd edition August 2004]
291 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=344
292 Elements of Programming with Perl
294 by Andrew L. Johnson
295 ISBN 1-884777-80-5 [1st edition October 1999]
296 http://www.manning.com/johnson/
297 Learning Perl
299 by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy
300 ISBN 0-596-52010-7 [5th edition June 2008]
301 http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106/
302 Intermediate Perl (the "Alpaca Book")
304 by Randal L. Schwartz and brian d foy, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway)
305 ISBN 0-596-10206-2 [1st edition March 2006]
306 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/intermediateperl/
307 Mastering Perl
309 by brian d foy
310 ISBN 0-596-52724-1 [1st edition July 2007]
311 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527242/
312 Task-Oriented
314 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
315 by Sam Tregar
316 ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002]
317 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14
318 The Perl Cookbook
320 by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
321 with foreword by Larry Wall
322 ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998]
323 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/
324 Effective Perl Programming
326 by Joseph Hall
327 ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998]
328 http://www.awl.com/
329 Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl
331 by Linchi Shea
332 ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003]
333 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171
334 Special Topics
336 Perl Best Practices
337 by Damian Conway
338 ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005]
339 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/
340 Higher Order Perl
342 by Mark-Jason Dominus
343 ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005]
344 http://hop.perl.plover.com/
345 Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5
347 by Scott Walters
348 ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004]
349 http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
350 Mastering Regular Expressions
352 by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
353 ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002]
354 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/
355 Network Programming with Perl
357 by Lincoln Stein
358 ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001]
359 http://www.awlonline.com/
360 Object Oriented Perl
362 Damian Conway
363 with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz
364 ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999]
365 http://www.manning.com/conway/
366 Data Munging with Perl
368 Dave Cross
369 ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001]
370 http://www.manning.com/cross
371 Mastering Perl/Tk
373 by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh
374 ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002]
375 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/
376 Extending and Embedding Perl
378 by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens
379 ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002]
380 http://www.manning.com/jenness
381 Perl Debugger Pocket Reference
383 by Richard Foley
384 ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004]
385 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/
386 Pro Perl Debugging
388 by Richard Foley with Andy Lester
389 ISBN 1-59059-454-1 [1st edition July 2005]
390 http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590594541
391 Which magazines have Perl content?
393 The Perl Review ( http://www.theperlreview.com ) focuses on Perl almost
394 completely (although it sometimes sneaks in an article about another
395 language). There's also $foo Magazin, a german magazine dedicated to
396 Perl, at ( http://www.foo-magazin.de ).
397 Magazines that frequently carry quality articles on Perl include The
399 Perl Review ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), Unix Review (
400 http://www.unixreview.com/ ), Linux Magazine (
401 http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to
402 its members, login: ( http://www.usenix.org/ )
403 The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at
405 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ ,
406 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and
407 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ .
408 The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things
410 Perl, The Perl Journal contains tutorials, demonstrations, case
411 studies, announcements, contests, and much more. TPJ has columns on
412 web development, databases, Win32 Perl, graphical programming, regular
413 expressions, and networking, and sponsors the Obfuscated Perl Contest
414 and the Perl Poetry Contests. Beginning in November 2002, TPJ moved to
415 a reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers can
416 download issues as PDF documents. In 2006, TPJ merged with Dr. Dobbs
417 Journal (online edition). To read old TPJ articles, see
418 http://www.ddj.com/ .
419 What mailing lists are there for Perl?
421 Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own mailing
422 lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for
423 subscription information.
424 A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at:
426 http://lists.perl.org/
428 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc?
430 The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup
431 content.
432 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.perl.misc/topics
434 If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the
436 same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and
437 patience to sift through all the content but often you will find the
438 answer you seek.
439 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
441 In a real sense, perl already is commercial software: it has a license
442 that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed
443 in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large
444 user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.*
445 newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to
446 your questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been
447 supported by Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and
448 myriad programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to
449 make life better for everyone.
450 However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a
452 purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go
453 awry. Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual
454 obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from
455 several sources if that will help. For example, many Perl books
456 include a distribution of perl, as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits
457 (in both the Unix flavor and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the
458 free Unix distributions also all come with perl.
459 Where do I send bug reports?
461 (contributed by brian d foy)
462 First, ensure that you've found an actual bug. Second, ensure you've
464 found an actual bug.
465 If you've found a bug with the perl interpreter or one of the modules
467 in the standard library (those that come with Perl), you can use the
468 "perlbug" utility that comes with Perl (>= 5.004). It collects
469 information about your installation to include with your message, then
470 sends the message to the right place.
471 To determine if a module came with your version of Perl, you can use
473 the "Module::CoreList" module. It has the information about the modules
474 (with their versions) included with each release of Perl.
475 Every CPAN module has a bug tracker set up in RT, http://rt.cpan.org .
477 You can submit bugs to RT either through its web interface or by email.
478 To email a bug report, send it to bug-<distribution-name>@rt.cpan.org .
479 For example, if you wanted to report a bug in "Business::ISBN", you
480 could send a message to bug-Business-ISBN@rt.cpan.org .
481 Some modules might have special reporting requirements, such as a
483 Sourceforge or Google Code tracking system, so you should check the
484 module documentation too.
485 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org?
487 Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a
488 subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.
489 The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language
491 which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general advocacy
492 site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide general
493 support services to the Perl community, including the hosting of
494 mailing lists, web sites, and other services. There are also many
495 other sub-domains for special topics like learning Perl, Perl news,
496 jobs in Perl, such as:
497 http://learn.perl.org/
499 http://use.perl.org/
500 http://jobs.perl.org/
501 http://lists.perl.org/
502 Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user
504 groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the
505 Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information
506 about joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group.
507 http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a
509 replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see the What is CPAN?
510 question earlier in this document.
511
513 Revision: $Revision$
514 Date: $Date$
516 See perlfaq for source control details and availability.
518
520 Copyright (c) 1997-2009 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and other
521 authors as noted. All rights reserved.
522 This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
524 under the same terms as Perl itself.
525 Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the
527 public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and
528 any derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as
529 you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ
530 would be courteous but is not required.
531perl v5.10.1 2009-08-15 PERLFAQ2(1)