Subject: Perl FAQ part 2 of 0..9: Obtaining and Learning about Perl [Periodic Posting]
From: Tom Christiansen <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Mar 1997 23:15:07 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc,comp.lang.perl.announce

NAME
    perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.13 $)

DESCRIPTION
    This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find
    source and documentation for Perl, support and training, and
    related matters.

  What machines support Perl?  Where do I get it?

    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 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz,
    which is a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format. This source
    builds with no porting whatsoever on most Unix systems (Perl's
    native environment), as well as Plan 9, VMS, QNX, OS/2, and
    the Amiga.

    Although it's rumored that the (imminent) 5.004 release may
    build on Windows NT, this is yet to be proven. Binary
    distributions for 32-bit Microsoft systems and for Apple
    systems can be found http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/
    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).

    A useful FAQ for Win32 Perl users is
    http://www.endcontsw.com/people/evangelo/Perl_for_Win32_FAQ.html

  How can I get a binary version of Perl?

    If you don't have a C compiler because for whatever reasons
    your vendor 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 get free compilers for, not
    for Unix systems.

  I copied the Perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work.

    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 `make
    install'. Most other approaches are doomed to failure.

    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.

            perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC)'

    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 symlinks, aliases, or shortcuts
    appropriately.

  I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed.  How do I make it work?

    Read the INSTALL file, which is part of the source
    distribution. It describes in detail how to cope with most
    idiosyncracies that the Configure script can't work around for
    any given system or architecture.

  What modules and extensions are available for Perl?  What is CPAN?  What does CPAN/src/... mean?

    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
    ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/, but you can use
    the address http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html to fetch a copy
    from a "site near you". See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without
    a slash at the end) for how this process works.

    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
    ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN as your CPAN site,
    the file CPAN/misc/japh file is downloadable as
    ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh .

    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.

  Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?

    Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before
    Perl is.

  Where can I get information on Perl?

    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 `man perl' if
    you're on a system resembling Unix. This will lead you to
    other important man pages. 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.

    You might also try `perldoc perl' 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.

    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
    http://www.perl.com/perl/info/documentation.html that might
    help.

    It's also worth noting that there's a PDF version of the
    complete documentation for perl available in the
    CPAN/authors/id/BMIDD directory.

    Many good books have been written about Perl -- see the
    section below for more details.

  What are the Perl newsgroups on USENET?  Where do I post questions?

    The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded
    by the following groups:

        comp.lang.perl.announce             Moderated announcement group
        comp.lang.perl.misc                 Very busy group about Perl in general
        comp.lang.perl.modules              Use and development of Perl modules
        comp.lang.perl.tk                   Using Tk (and X) from Perl

        comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi  Writing CGI scripts for the Web.

    There is also USENET gateway to the mailing list used by the
    crack Perl development team (perl5-porters) at
    news://genetics.upenn.edu/perl.porters-gw/ .

  Where should I post source code?

    You should post source code to whichever group is most
    appropriate, but feel free to cross-post to
    comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post to alt.sources,
    please make sure it follows their posting standards, including
    setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include
    alt.sources; see their FAQ for details.

  Perl Books

    A number books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A
    few of these are good, some are ok, but many aren't worth your
    money. Tom Christiansen maintains a list of these books, some
    with extensive reviews, at
    http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html.

    The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written
    by the creator of Perl and his apostles, is now in its second
    edition and fourth printing.

        Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"):
            Authors: Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz
            ISBN 1-56592-149-6      (English)
            ISBN 4-89052-384-7      (Japanese)
            (French and German translations in progress)

    Note that O'Reilly books are color-coded: turquoise (some
    would call it teal) covers indicate perl5 coverage, while
    magenta (some would call it pink) covers indicate perl4 only.
    Check the cover color before you buy!

    What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found
    personally useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably
    won't) vary.

    If you're already a hard-core systems programmer, then the
    Camel Book just might suffice for you to learn Perl from. But
    if you're not, check out the "Llama Book". It currently
    doesn't cover perl5, but the 2nd edition is nearly done and
    should be out by summer 97:

        Learning Perl (the Llama Book):
            Author: Randal Schwartz, with intro by Larry Wall
            ISBN 1-56592-042-2      (English)
            ISBN 4-89502-678-1      (Japanese)
            ISBN 2-84177-005-2      (French)
            ISBN 3-930673-08-8      (German)

    Another stand-out book in the turquoise O'Reilly Perl line is
    the "Hip Owls" book. It covers regular expressions inside and
    out, with quite a bit devoted exclusively to Perl:

        Mastering Regular Expressions (the Cute Owls Book):
            Author: Jeffrey Friedl
            ISBN 1-56592-257-3

    You can order any of these books from O'Reilly & Associates,
    1-800-998-9938. Local/overseas is 1-707-829-0515. If you can
    locate an O'Reilly order form, you can also fax to 1-707-829-
    0104. See http://www.ora.com/ on the Web.

    Recommended Perl books that are not from O'Reilly are the
    following:

       Cross-Platform Perl, (for Unix and Windows NT)
           Author: Eric F. Johnson
           ISBN: 1-55851-483-X

       How to Set up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site, (2nd edition)
            Author: Lincoln Stein, M.D., Ph.D.
            ISBN: 0-201-63462-7

       CGI Programming in C & Perl,
            Author: Thomas Boutell
            ISBN: 0-201-42219-0

    Note that some of these address specific application areas
    (e.g. the Web) and are not general-purpose programming books.

  Perl in Magazines

    The Perl Journal is the first and only magazine dedicated to
    Perl. It is published (on paper, not online) quarterly by Jon
    Orwant ([email-masked]), editor. Subscription information is
    at http://tpj.com or via email to [email-masked].

    Beyond this, two other magazines that frequently carry high-
    quality articles on Perl are Web Techniques (see
    http://www.webtechniques.com/) and Unix Review
    (http://www.unixreview.com/).

  Perl on the Net: FTP and WWW Access

    To get the best (and possibly cheapest) performance, pick a
    site from the list below and use it to grab the complete list
    of mirror sites. From there you can find the quickest site for
    you. Remember, the following list is *not* the complete list
    of CPAN mirrors.

      http://www.perl.com/CPAN      (redirects to another mirror)
      http://www.perl.org/CPAN
      ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/
      http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
      ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/

  What mailing lists are there for perl?

    Most of the major modules (tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their
    own mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with
    the module for subscription information. The following are a
    list of mailing lists related to perl itself.

    If you subscribe to a mailing list, it behooves you to know
    how to unsubscribe from it. Strident pleas to the list itself
    to get you off will not be favorably received.

    MacPerl
        There is a mailing list for discussing Macintosh Perl.
        Contact "[email-masked]".

        Also see Matthias Neeracher's (the creator and maintainer
        of MacPerl) webpage at
        http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri/macintosh/perl.html for
        many links to interesting MacPerl sites, and the
        applications/MPW tools, precompiled.

    Perl5-Porters
        The core development team have a mailing list for
        discussing fixes and changes to the language. Send mail to
        "[email-masked]" with help in the body of
        the message for information on subscribing.

    NTPerl
        This list is used to discuss issues involving Win32 Perl 5
        (Windows NT and Win95). Subscribe by emailing
        [email-masked] with the message body:

            subscribe Perl-Win32-Users

        The list software, also written in perl, will
        automatically determine your address, and subscribe you
        automatically. To unsubscribe, email the following in the
        message body to the same address like so:

            unsubscribe Perl-Win32-Users

        You can also check http://www.activeware.com/ and select
        "Mailing Lists" to join or leave this list.

    Perl-Packrats
        Discussion related to archiving of perl materials,
        particularly the Comprehensive PerlArchive Network (CPAN).
        Subscribe by emailing [email-masked]:

            subscribe perl-packrats

        The list software, also written in perl, will
        automatically determine your address, and subscribe you
        automatically. To unsubscribe, simple prepend the same
        command with an "un", and mail to the same address like
        so:

            unsubscribe perl-packrats

  Archives of comp.lang.perl.misc

    Have you tried Deja News or Alta Vista?

    ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has an
    almost complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91
    through 12/93). They are kept as one large file for each
    month.

    You'll probably want more a sophisticated query and retrieval
    mechanism than a file listing, preferably one that allows you
    to retrieve articles using a fast-access indices, keyed on at
    least author, date, subject, thread (as in "trn") and probably
    keywords. The best solution the FAQ authors know of is the MH
    pick command, but it is very slow to select on 18000 articles.

    If you have, or know where can be found, the missing sections,
    please let [email-masked] know.

  Perl Training

    While some large training companies offer their own courses on
    Perl, you may prefer to contact individuals near and dear to
    the heart of Perl development. Two well-known members of the
    Perl development team who offer such things are Tom
    Christiansen <[email-masked]> and Randal Schwartz
    <[email-masked]>, plus their respective
    minions, who offer a variety of professional tutorials and
    seminars on Perl. These courses include large public seminars,
    private corporate training, and fly-ins to Colorado and
    Oregon. See http://www.perl.com/perl/info/training.html for
    more details.

  Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?

    In a sense, Perl already *is* commercial software: It has a
    licence that you can grab and carefully read to your manager.
    It is distributed in releases and comes in well-defined
    packages. There is a very large user community and an
    extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups and
    several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your
    questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been
    supported by Larry, dozens of software designers and
    developers, and thousands of programmers, all working for free
    to create a useful thing to make life better for everyone.

    However, these answers may not suffice for managers who
    require a purchase order from a company whom they can sue
    should anything go wrong. Or maybe they need very serious
    hand-holding and contractual obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs
    with perl on them are available from several sources if that
    will help.

    Or you can purchase a real support contract. Although Cygnus
    historically provided this service, they no longer sell
    support contracts for Perl. Instead, the Paul Ingram Group
    will be taking up the slack through The Perl Clinic. The
    following is a commercial from them:

    "Do you need professional support for Perl and/or Oraperl? Do
    you need a support contract with defined levels of service? Do
    you want to pay only for what you need?

    "The Paul Ingram Group has provided quality software
    development and support services to some of the world's
    largest corporations for ten years. We are now offering the
    same quality support services for Perl at The Perl Clinic.
    This service is led by Tim Bunce, an active perl porter since
    1994 and well known as the author and maintainer of the DBI,
    DBD::Oracle, and Oraperl modules and author/co-maintainer of
    The Perl 5 Module List. We also offer Oracle users support for
    Perl5 Oraperl and related modules (which Oracle is planning to
    ship as part of Oracle Web Server 3). 20% of the profit from
    our Perl support work will be donated to The Perl Institute."

    For more information, contact the The Perl Clinic:

        Tel:    +44 1483 424424
        Fax:    +44 1483 419419
        Web:    http://www.perl.co.uk/
        Email:  [email-masked] or [email-masked]

  Where do I send bug reports?

    If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the
    modules shipped with perl, use the perlbug program in the perl
    distribution or email your report to [email-masked].

    If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the
    answer to "What platforms is Perl available for?"), a binary
    distribution, or a non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc),
    then please see the documentation that came with it to
    determine the correct place to post bugs.

    Read the perlbug man page (perl5.004 or later) for more
    information.

  What is perl.com?  perl.org?  The Perl Institute?

    perl.org is the official vehicle for The Perl Institute. The
    motto of TPI is "helping people help Perl help people" (or
    something like that). It's a non-profit organization
    supporting development, documentation, and dissemination of
    perl. Current directors of TPI include Larry Wall, Tom
    Christiansen, and Randal Schwartz, whom you may have heard of
    somewhere else around here.

    The perl.com domain is Tom Christiansen's domain. He created
    it as a public service long before perl.org came about. It's
    the original PBS of the Perl world, a clearinghouse for
    information about all things Perlian, accepting no paid
    advertisements, glossy gifs, or (gasp!) java applets on its
    pages.

  How do I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?

    the perltoot manpage (distributed with 5.004 or later) is a
    good place to start. Also, the perlobj manpage, the perlref
    manpage, and the perlmod manpage are useful references, while
    the perlbot manpage has some excellent tips and tricks.

AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 1997 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington. All
    rights reserved. See the perlfaq manpage for distribution
    information.

-- 
	Tom Christiansen	[email-masked]
Why would you WANT to port C news to your PC?  Wouldn't it be smarter
and about as cost-effective to port your PC over to the trashcan and buy
a real computer that runs a real operating system like Unix? --Brian Kantor ([email-masked])