<STRONG><P CLASS=block> perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl</P></STRONG>
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
<A NAME="__index__"></A>
<!-- INDEX BEGIN -->
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#name">NAME</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#description">DESCRIPTION</A></LI>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#what machines support perl where do i get it">What machines support Perl? Where do I get it?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#how can i get a binary version of perl">How can I get a binary version of Perl?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#i don't have a c compiler on my system. how can i compile perl">I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#i copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.">I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#i grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. how do i make it work">I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#what modules and extensions are available for perl what is cpan what does cpan/src/... mean">What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#is there an iso or ansi certified version of perl">Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#where can i get information on perl">Where can I get information on Perl?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#what are the perl newsgroups on usenet where do i post questions">What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#where should i post source code">Where should I post source code?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#perl books">Perl Books</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#perl in magazines">Perl in Magazines</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#perl on the net: ftp and www access">Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#what mailing lists are there for perl">What mailing lists are there for Perl?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#archives of comp.lang.perl.misc">Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#where can i buy a commercial version of perl">Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#where do i send bug reports">Where do I send bug reports?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#what is perl.com perl mongers pm.org perl.org">What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?</A></LI>
</UL>
<LI><A HREF="#author and copyright">AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT</A></LI>
</UL>
<!-- INDEX END -->
<HR>
<P>
<H1><A NAME="name">NAME</A></H1>
<P>perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.32 $, $Date: 1999/10/14 18:46:09 $)</P>
<P>
<HR>
<H1><A NAME="description">DESCRIPTION</A></H1>
<P>This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find
source and documentation for Perl, support, and
related matters.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="what machines support perl where do i get it">What machines support Perl? Where do I get it?</A></H2>
<P>The standard release of Perl (the one maintained by the perl
development team) is distributed only in source code form. You
can find this at <A HREF="http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz">http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz</A> , which
in standard Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format).</P>
<P>Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually
all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native
platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows,
QNX, BeOS, and the Amiga. There are also the beginnings of support
for MPE/iX.</P>
<P>Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including
Apple systems, can be found <A HREF="http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/">http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/</A> directory.
Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may
and in fact do differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways.
You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just
what the differences are. These differences can be either positive
(e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that
are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g.
might be based upon a less current source release of perl).</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="how can i get a binary version of perl">How can I get a binary version of Perl?</A></H2>
<P>If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever
reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is
grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl
with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to
and similarly for Windows 3.1 at <A HREF="http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html">http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html</A> .</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="i don't have a c compiler on my system. how can i compile perl">I don't have a C compiler on my system. How can I compile perl?</A></H2>
<P>Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor
should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you.</P>
<P>What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system
first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for
information on where to get such a binary version.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="i copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.">I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.</A></H2>
<P>That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ.
You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will
eventually live on, and then type <CODE>make install</CODE>. Most other
approaches are doomed to failure.</P>
<P>One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out
the hard-coded @INC which perl is looking for.</P>
<PRE>
% perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'</PRE>
<P>If this command lists any paths which don't exist on your system, then you
may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create
symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as
part of the output of</P>
<PRE>
% perl -V</PRE>
<P>You might also want to check out <A HREF="../../lib/Pod/perlfaq8.html#how do i keep my own module/library directory">How do I keep my own module/library directory? in the perlfaq8 manpage</A>.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="i grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. how do i make it work">I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work?</A></H2>
<P>Read the <EM>INSTALL</EM> file, which is part of the source distribution.
It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the
Configure script can't work around for any given system or
architecture.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="what modules and extensions are available for perl what is cpan what does cpan/src/... mean">What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?</A></H2>
<P>CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a huge archive
replicated on dozens of machines all over the world. CPAN contains
source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many
third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from
commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web
walking and CGI scripts. The master machine for CPAN is
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/,">ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/,</A> but you can use the
address <A HREF="http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html">http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html</A> to fetch a copy from a
``site near you''. See <A HREF="http://www.perl.com/CPAN">http://www.perl.com/CPAN</A> (without a slash at the
end) for how this process works.</P>
<P>CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN
sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the
rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For
instance, if you're using <A HREF="ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN">ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN</A>
as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as
<P>Considering that there are hundreds of existing modules in the
archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of.
Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core
modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking,
devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database
interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames,
file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world
wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and
compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow
utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and
miscellaneous modules.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="is there an iso or ansi certified version of perl">Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?</A></H2>
<P>Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="where can i get information on perl">Where can I get information on Perl?</A></H2>
<P>The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution.
If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation
installed as well: type <CODE>man perl</CODE> if you're on a system resembling Unix.
This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your
$MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation
will be different; for example, it might be only in HTML format. But all
proper Perl installations have fully-accessible documentation.</P>
<P>You might also try <CODE>perldoc perl</CODE> in case your system doesn't
have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't
work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation.</P>
<P>If all else fails, consult the CPAN/doc directory, which contains the
complete documentation in various formats, including native pod,
troff, html, and plain text. There's also a web page at
<A HREF="http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html">http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html</A> that might help.</P>
<P>Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the section below
for more details.</P>
<P>Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases
include <A HREF="../../lib/Pod/perltoot.html">the perltoot manpage</A> for objects, <A HREF="../../lib/Pod/perlopentut.html">the perlopentut manpage</A> for file opening
semantics, <A HREF="../../lib/Pod/perlreftut.html">the perlreftut manpage</A> for managing references, and <A HREF="../../lib/Pod/perlxstut.html">the perlxstut manpage</A>
for linking C and Perl together. There may be more by the
time you read this. The following URLs might also be of
<H2><A NAME="what are the perl newsgroups on usenet where do i post questions">What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?</A></H2>
<P>The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
following groups:</P>
<PRE>
comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group
comp.lang.perl.misc Very busy group about Perl in general
comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group
comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules
comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl</PRE>
<PRE>
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web.</PRE>
<P>There is also Usenet gateway to the mailing list used by the crack
