1PERLPLAN9(1)           Perl Programmers Reference Guide           PERLPLAN9(1)
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NAME

6       perlplan9 - Plan 9-specific documentation for Perl
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DESCRIPTION

9       These are a few notes describing features peculiar to Plan 9 Perl. As
10       such, it is not intended to be a replacement for the rest of the Perl 5
11       documentation (which is both copious and excellent). If you have any
12       questions to which you can't find answers in these man pages, contact
13       Luther Huffman at lutherh@stratcom.com and we'll try to answer them.
14
15   Invoking Perl
16       Perl is invoked from the command line as described in perl. Most perl
17       scripts, however, do have a first line such as "#!/usr/local/bin/perl".
18       This is known as a shebang (shell-bang) statement and tells the OS
19       shell where to find the perl interpreter. In Plan 9 Perl this statement
20       should be "#!/bin/perl" if you wish to be able to directly invoke the
21       script by its name.
22            Alternatively, you may invoke perl with the command "Perl" instead
23       of "perl". This will produce Acme-friendly error messages of the form
24       "filename:18".
25
26       Some scripts, usually identified with a *.PL extension, are self-
27       configuring and are able to correctly create their own shebang path
28       from config information located in Plan 9 Perl. These you won't need to
29       be worried about.
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31   What's in Plan 9 Perl
32       Although Plan 9 Perl currently only  provides static loading, it is
33       built with a number of useful extensions.  These include Opcode,
34       FileHandle, Fcntl, and POSIX. Expect to see others (and DynaLoading!)
35       in the future.
36
37   What's not in Plan 9 Perl
38       As mentioned previously, dynamic loading isn't currently available nor
39       is MakeMaker. Both are high-priority items.
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41   Perl5 Functions not currently supported in Plan 9 Perl
42       Some, such as "chown" and "umask" aren't provided because the concept
43       does not exist within Plan 9. Others, such as some of the socket-
44       related functions, simply haven't been written yet. Many in the latter
45       category may be supported in the future.
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47       The functions not currently implemented include:
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49           chown, chroot, dbmclose, dbmopen, getsockopt,
50           setsockopt, recvmsg, sendmsg, getnetbyname,
51           getnetbyaddr, getnetent, getprotoent, getservent,
52           sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent,
53           endservent, endnetent, endprotoent, umask
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55       There may be several other functions that have undefined behavior so
56       this list shouldn't be considered complete.
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58   Signals in Plan 9 Perl
59       For compatibility with perl scripts written for the Unix environment,
60       Plan 9 Perl uses the POSIX signal emulation provided in Plan 9's ANSI
61       POSIX Environment (APE). Signal stacking isn't supported. The signals
62       provided are:
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64           SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGILL, SIGABRT,
65           SIGFPE, SIGKILL, SIGSEGV, SIGPIPE, SIGPIPE, SIGALRM,
66           SIGTERM, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2, SIGCHLD, SIGCONT,
67           SIGSTOP, SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU
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COMPILING AND INSTALLING PERL ON PLAN 9

70       WELCOME to Plan 9 Perl, brave soul!
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72          This is a preliminary alpha version of Plan 9 Perl. Still to be
73       implemented are MakeMaker and DynaLoader. Many perl commands are
74       missing or currently behave in an inscrutable manner. These gaps will,
75       with perseverance and a modicum of luck, be remedied in the near
76       future.To install this software:
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78       1. Create the source directories and libraries for perl by running the
79       plan9/setup.rc command (i.e., located in the plan9 subdirectory).
80       Note: the setup routine assumes that you haven't dearchived these files
81       into /sys/src/cmd/perl. After running setup.rc you may delete the copy
82       of the source you originally detarred, as source code has now been
83       installed in /sys/src/cmd/perl. If you plan on installing perl binaries
84       for all architectures, run "setup.rc -a".
85
86       2. After making sure that you have adequate privileges to build system
87       software, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust version appropriately)
88       run:
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90               mk install
91
92       If you wish to install perl versions for all architectures (68020,
93       mips, sparc and 386) run:
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95               mk installall
96
97       3. Wait. The build process will take a *long* time because perl
98       bootstraps itself. A 75MHz Pentium, 16MB RAM machine takes roughly 30
99       minutes to build the distribution from scratch.
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101   Installing Perl Documentation on Plan 9
102       This perl distribution comes with a tremendous amount of documentation.
103       To add these to the built-in manuals that come with Plan 9, from
104       /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust version appropriately) run:
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106               mk man
107
108       To begin your reading, start with:
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110               man perl
111
112       This is a good introduction and will direct you towards other man pages
113       that may interest you.
114
115       (Note: "mk man" may produce some extraneous noise. Fear not.)
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BUGS

118       "As many as there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world .
119       . ." - Carl Sagan
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Revision date

122       This document was revised 09-October-1996 for Perl 5.003_7.
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AUTHOR

125       Direct questions, comments, and the unlikely bug report (ahem) direct
126       comments toward:
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128       Luther Huffman, lutherh@stratcom.com, Strategic Computer Solutions,
129       Inc.
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133perl v5.10.1                      2009-02-12                      PERLPLAN9(1)
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