| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.39 $, $Date: 2006/01/08 14:27:07 $) |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This section of the FAQ answers questions about where to find |
| 8 | source and documentation for Perl, support, and |
| 9 | related matters. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | =head2 What machines support perl? Where do I get it? |
| 12 | |
| 13 | The standard release of perl (the one maintained by the perl |
| 14 | development team) is distributed only in source code form. You |
| 15 | can find this at http://www.cpan.org/src/latest.tar.gz , which |
| 16 | is in a standard Internet format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format). |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually |
| 19 | all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (perl's native |
| 20 | platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, |
| 21 | QNX, BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including |
| 24 | Apple systems, can be found http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. |
| 25 | Because these are not part of the standard distribution, they may |
| 26 | and in fact do differ from the base perl port in a variety of ways. |
| 27 | You'll have to check their respective release notes to see just |
| 28 | what the differences are. These differences can be either positive |
| 29 | (e.g. extensions for the features of the particular platform that |
| 30 | are not supported in the source release of perl) or negative (e.g. |
| 31 | might be based upon a less current source release of perl). |
| 32 | |
| 33 | =head2 How can I get a binary version of perl? |
| 34 | |
| 35 | If you don't have a C compiler because your vendor for whatever |
| 36 | reasons did not include one with your system, the best thing to do is |
| 37 | grab a binary version of gcc from the net and use that to compile perl |
| 38 | with. CPAN only has binaries for systems that are terribly hard to |
| 39 | get free compilers for, not for Unix systems. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | Some URLs that might help you are: |
| 42 | |
| 43 | http://www.cpan.org/ports/ |
| 44 | http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html |
| 45 | |
| 46 | Someone looking for a perl for Win16 might look to Laszlo Molnar's djgpp |
| 47 | port in http://www.cpan.org/ports/#msdos , which comes with clear |
| 48 | installation instructions. A simple installation guide for MS-DOS using |
| 49 | Ilya Zakharevich's OS/2 port is available at |
| 50 | http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perl5dos.html |
| 51 | and similarly for Windows 3.1 at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/%7Epiet/perlwin3.html . |
| 52 | |
| 53 | =head2 I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl interpreter? |
| 54 | |
| 55 | Since you don't have a C compiler, you're doomed and your vendor |
| 56 | should be sacrificed to the Sun gods. But that doesn't help you. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | What you need to do is get a binary version of gcc for your system |
| 59 | first. Consult the Usenet FAQs for your operating system for |
| 60 | information on where to get such a binary version. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | =head2 I copied the perl binary from one machine to another, but scripts don't work. |
| 63 | |
| 64 | That's probably because you forgot libraries, or library paths differ. |
| 65 | You really should build the whole distribution on the machine it will |
| 66 | eventually live on, and then type C<make install>. Most other |
| 67 | approaches are doomed to failure. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | One simple way to check that things are in the right place is to print out |
| 70 | the hard-coded @INC that perl looks through for libraries: |
| 71 | |
| 72 | % perl -le 'print for @INC' |
| 73 | |
| 74 | If this command lists any paths that don't exist on your system, then you |
| 75 | may need to move the appropriate libraries to these locations, or create |
| 76 | symbolic links, aliases, or shortcuts appropriately. @INC is also printed as |
| 77 | part of the output of |
| 78 | |
| 79 | % perl -V |
| 80 | |
| 81 | You might also want to check out |
| 82 | L<perlfaq8/"How do I keep my own module/library directory?">. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | =head2 I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How do I make it work? |
| 85 | |
| 86 | Read the F<INSTALL> file, which is part of the source distribution. |
| 87 | It describes in detail how to cope with most idiosyncrasies that the |
| 88 | Configure script can't work around for any given system or |
| 89 | architecture. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | =head2 What modules and extensions are available for Perl? What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean? |
| 92 | |
| 93 | CPAN stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a ~1.2Gb archive |
| 94 | replicated on nearly 200 machines all over the world. CPAN contains |
| 95 | source code, non-native ports, documentation, scripts, and many |
| 96 | third-party modules and extensions, designed for everything from |
| 97 | commercial database interfaces to keyboard/screen control to web |
| 98 | walking and CGI scripts. The master web site for CPAN is |
| 99 | http://www.cpan.org/ and there is the CPAN Multiplexer at |
| 100 | http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html which will choose a mirror near you |
| 101 | via DNS. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without a slash at the |
| 102 | end) for how this process works. Also, http://mirror.cpan.org/ |
| 103 | has a nice interface to the http://www.cpan.org/MIRRORED.BY |
| 104 | mirror directory. |
| 105 | |
| 106 | See the CPAN FAQ at http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html for |
| 107 | answers to the most frequently asked questions about CPAN |
| 108 | including how to become a mirror. |
| 109 | |
| 110 | CPAN/path/... is a naming convention for files available on CPAN |
| 111 | sites. CPAN indicates the base directory of a CPAN mirror, and the |
| 112 | rest of the path is the path from that directory to the file. For |
| 113 | instance, if you're using ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN |
| 114 | as your CPAN site, the file CPAN/misc/japh is downloadable as |
| 115 | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/misc/japh . |
| 116 | |
| 117 | Considering that there are close to two thousand existing modules in |
| 118 | the archive, one probably exists to do nearly anything you can think of. |
| 119 | Current categories under CPAN/modules/by-category/ include Perl core |
| 120 | modules; development support; operating system interfaces; networking, |
| 121 | devices, and interprocess communication; data type utilities; database |
| 122 | interfaces; user interfaces; interfaces to other languages; filenames, |
| 123 | file systems, and file locking; internationalization and locale; world |
| 124 | wide web support; server and daemon utilities; archiving and |
| 125 | compression; image manipulation; mail and news; control flow |
| 126 | utilities; filehandle and I/O; Microsoft Windows modules; and |
| 127 | miscellaneous modules. |
| 128 | |
| 129 | See http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html or |
| 130 | http://search.cpan.org/ for a more complete list of modules by category. |
| 131 | |
| 132 | CPAN is not affiliated with O'Reilly Media. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | =head2 Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl? |
| 135 | |
| 136 | Certainly not. Larry expects that he'll be certified before Perl is. |
| 137 | |
| 138 | =head2 Where can I get information on Perl? |
| 139 | |
| 140 | The complete Perl documentation is available with the Perl distribution. |
| 141 | If you have Perl installed locally, you probably have the documentation |
| 142 | installed as well: type C<man perl> if you're on a system resembling Unix. |
| 143 | This will lead you to other important man pages, including how to set your |
| 144 | $MANPATH. If you're not on a Unix system, access to the documentation |
| 145 | will be different; for example, documentation might only be in HTML format. All |
| 146 | proper perl installations have fully-accessible documentation. |
| 147 | |
| 148 | You might also try C<perldoc perl> in case your system doesn't |
| 149 | have a proper man command, or it's been misinstalled. If that doesn't |
| 150 | work, try looking in /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod for documentation. |
| 151 | |
| 152 | If all else fails, consult http://perldoc.perl.org/ which has the |
| 153 | complete documentation in HTML and PDF format. |
| 154 | |
| 155 | Many good books have been written about Perl--see the section below |
| 156 | for more details. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | Tutorial documents are included in current or upcoming Perl releases |
| 159 | include L<perltoot> for objects or L<perlboot> for a beginner's |
| 160 | approach to objects, L<perlopentut> for file opening semantics, |
| 161 | L<perlreftut> for managing references, L<perlretut> for regular |
| 162 | expressions, L<perlthrtut> for threads, L<perldebtut> for debugging, |
| 163 | and L<perlxstut> for linking C and Perl together. There may be more |
| 164 | by the time you read this. These URLs might also be useful: |
| 165 | |
| 166 | http://perldoc.perl.org/ |
| 167 | http://bookmarks.cpan.org/search.cgi?cat=Training%2FTutorials |
| 168 | |
| 169 | =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions? |
| 170 | |
| 171 | Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet: |
| 172 | |
| 173 | comp.lang.perl.announce Moderated announcement group |
| 174 | comp.lang.perl.misc High traffic general Perl discussion |
| 175 | comp.lang.perl.moderated Moderated discussion group |
| 176 | comp.lang.perl.modules Use and development of Perl modules |
| 177 | comp.lang.perl.tk Using Tk (and X) from Perl |
| 178 | |
| 179 | comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Writing CGI scripts for the Web. |
| 180 | |
| 181 | Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and |
| 182 | comp.lang.perl itself officially removed. While that group may still |
| 183 | be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because |
| 184 | postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the |
| 185 | official list of group names. Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics |
| 186 | which do not have a more-appropriate specific group. |
| 187 | |
| 188 | There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by |
| 189 | perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists |
| 190 | at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available |
| 191 | under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other |
| 192 | groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as |
| 193 | http://lists.cpan.org/ ). |
| 194 | |
| 195 | A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site, |
| 196 | http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list |
| 197 | http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners . |
| 198 | |
| 199 | Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you: |
| 200 | asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine, |
| 201 | but asking someone to write your code for free is not very cool. |
| 202 | |
| 203 | =head2 Where should I post source code? |
| 204 | |
| 205 | You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate, but |
| 206 | feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to cross-post |
| 207 | to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their posting standards, |
| 208 | including setting the Followup-To header line to NOT include alt.sources; |
| 209 | see their FAQ ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sources-intro/ ) for details. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | If you're just looking for software, first use Google |
| 212 | ( http://www.google.com ), Google's usenet search interface |
| 213 | ( http://groups.google.com ), and CPAN Search ( http://search.cpan.org ). |
| 214 | This is faster and more productive than just posting a request. |
| 215 | |
| 216 | =head2 Perl Books |
| 217 | |
| 218 | A number of books on Perl and/or CGI programming are available. A few |
| 219 | of these are good, some are OK, but many aren't worth your money. |
| 220 | There is a list of these books, some with extensive reviews, at |
| 221 | http://books.perl.org/ . If you don't see your book listed here, you |
| 222 | can write to perlfaq-workers@perl.org . |
| 223 | |
| 224 | The incontestably definitive reference book on Perl, written by |
| 225 | the creator of Perl, is Programming Perl: |
| 226 | |
| 227 | Programming Perl (the "Camel Book"): |
| 228 | by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant |
| 229 | ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] |
| 230 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ |
| 231 | (English, translations to several languages are also available) |
| 232 | |
| 233 | The companion volume to the Camel containing thousands |
| 234 | of real-world examples, mini-tutorials, and complete programs is: |
| 235 | |
| 236 | The Perl Cookbook (the "Ram Book"): |
| 237 | by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, |
| 238 | with Foreword by Larry Wall |
| 239 | ISBN 0-596-00313-7 [2nd Edition August 2003] |
| 240 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlckbk2/ |
| 241 | |
| 242 | If you're already a seasoned programmer, then the Camel Book might |
| 243 | suffice for you to learn Perl. If you're not, check out the |
| 244 | Llama book: |
| 245 | |
| 246 | Learning Perl |
| 247 | by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and brian d foy |
| 248 | ISBN 0-596-10105-8 [4th edition July 2005] |
| 249 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/ |
| 250 | |
| 251 | And for more advanced information on writing larger programs, |
| 252 | presented in the same style as the Llama book, continue your education |
| 253 | with the Alpaca book: |
| 254 | |
| 255 | Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules (the "Alpaca Book") |
| 256 | by Randal L. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix (foreword by Damian Conway) |
| 257 | ISBN 0-596-00478-8 [1st edition June 2003] |
| 258 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/ |
| 259 | |
| 260 | If you're not an accidental programmer, but a more serious and |
| 261 | possibly even degreed computer scientist who doesn't need as much |
| 262 | hand-holding as we try to provide in the Llama, please check out the |
| 263 | delightful book |
| 264 | |
| 265 | Perl: The Programmer's Companion |
| 266 | by Nigel Chapman |
| 267 | ISBN 0-471-97563-X [1997, 3rd printing Spring 1998] |
| 268 | http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/catalog/97563-X.htm |
| 269 | http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/chapman/perl/perltpc.html (errata etc) |
| 270 | |
| 271 | If you are more at home in Windows the following is available |
| 272 | (though unfortunately rather dated). |
| 273 | |
| 274 | Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the "Gecko Book") |
| 275 | by Randal L. Schwartz, Erik Olson, and Tom Christiansen, |
| 276 | with foreword by Larry Wall |
| 277 | ISBN 1-56592-324-3 [1st edition August 1997] |
| 278 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperlwin/ |
| 279 | |
| 280 | Addison-Wesley ( http://www.awlonline.com/ ) and Manning |
| 281 | ( http://www.manning.com/ ) are also publishers of some fine Perl books |
| 282 | such as I<Object Oriented Programming with Perl> by Damian Conway and |
| 283 | I<Network Programming with Perl> by Lincoln Stein. |
| 284 | |
| 285 | An excellent technical book discounter is Bookpool at |
| 286 | http://www.bookpool.com/ where a 30% discount or more is not unusual. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | What follows is a list of the books that the FAQ authors found personally |
| 289 | useful. Your mileage may (but, we hope, probably won't) vary. |
| 290 | |
| 291 | Recommended books on (or mostly on) Perl follow. |
| 292 | |
| 293 | =over 4 |
| 294 | |
| 295 | =item References |
| 296 | |
| 297 | Programming Perl |
| 298 | by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant |
| 299 | ISBN 0-596-00027-8 [3rd edition July 2000] |
| 300 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/ |
| 301 | |
| 302 | Perl 5 Pocket Reference |
| 303 | by Johan Vromans |
| 304 | ISBN 0-596-00032-4 [3rd edition May 2000] |
| 305 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlpr3/ |
| 306 | |
| 307 | =item Tutorials |
| 308 | |
| 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 | |
| 314 | 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 | |
| 319 | 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 | |
| 324 | 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 | |
| 329 | =item Task-Oriented |
| 330 | |
| 331 | Writing Perl Modules for CPAN |
| 332 | by Sam Tregar |
| 333 | ISBN 1-59059-018-X [1st edition Aug 2002] |
| 334 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=14 |
| 335 | |
| 336 | The Perl Cookbook |
| 337 | by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington |
| 338 | with foreword by Larry Wall |
| 339 | ISBN 1-56592-243-3 [1st edition August 1998] |
| 340 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cookbook/ |
| 341 | |
| 342 | Effective Perl Programming |
| 343 | by Joseph Hall |
| 344 | ISBN 0-201-41975-0 [1st edition 1998] |
| 345 | http://www.awl.com/ |
| 346 | |
| 347 | Real World SQL Server Administration with Perl |
| 348 | by Linchi Shea |
| 349 | ISBN 1-59059-097-X [1st edition July 2003] |
| 350 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=171 |
| 351 | |
| 352 | =item Special Topics |
| 353 | |
| 354 | Perl Best Practices |
| 355 | by Damian Conway |
| 356 | ISBN: 0-596-00173-8 [1st edition July 2005] |
| 357 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/ |
| 358 | |
| 359 | Higher Order Perl |
| 360 | by Mark-Jason Dominus |
| 361 | ISBN: 1558607013 [1st edition March 2005] |
| 362 | http://hop.perl.plover.com/ |
| 363 | |
| 364 | Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5 |
| 365 | by Scott Walters |
| 366 | ISBN 1-59059-395-2 [1st edition December 2004] |
| 367 | http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355 |
| 368 | |
| 369 | Mastering Regular Expressions |
| 370 | by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl |
| 371 | ISBN 0-596-00289-0 [2nd edition July 2002] |
| 372 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/ |
| 373 | |
| 374 | Network Programming with Perl |
| 375 | by Lincoln Stein |
| 376 | ISBN 0-201-61571-1 [1st edition 2001] |
| 377 | http://www.awlonline.com/ |
| 378 | |
| 379 | Object Oriented Perl |
| 380 | Damian Conway |
| 381 | with foreword by Randal L. Schwartz |
| 382 | ISBN 1-884777-79-1 [1st edition August 1999] |
| 383 | http://www.manning.com/Conway/ |
| 384 | |
| 385 | Data Munging with Perl |
| 386 | Dave Cross |
| 387 | ISBN 1-930110-00-6 [1st edition 2001] |
| 388 | http://www.manning.com/cross |
| 389 | |
| 390 | Mastering Perl/Tk |
| 391 | by Steve Lidie and Nancy Walsh |
| 392 | ISBN 1-56592-716-8 [1st edition January 2002] |
| 393 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/ |
| 394 | |
| 395 | Extending and Embedding Perl |
| 396 | by Tim Jenness and Simon Cozens |
| 397 | ISBN 1-930110-82-0 [1st edition August 2002] |
| 398 | http://www.manning.com/jenness |
| 399 | |
| 400 | Perl Debugger Pocket Reference |
| 401 | by Richard Foley |
| 402 | ISBN 0-596-00503-2 [1st edition January 2004] |
| 403 | http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldebugpr/ |
| 404 | |
| 405 | =back |
| 406 | |
| 407 | =head2 Which magazines have Perl content? |
| 408 | |
| 409 | The first (and for a long time, only) periodical devoted to All Things Perl, |
| 410 | I<The Perl Journal> contains tutorials, demonstrations, case studies, |
| 411 | announcements, contests, and much more. I<TPJ> has columns on web |
| 412 | 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 a |
| 415 | reader-supported monthly e-zine format in which subscribers can download |
| 416 | issues as PDF documents. For more details on TPJ, see http://www.tpj.com/ |
| 417 | |
| 418 | Beyond this, magazines that frequently carry quality articles on |
| 419 | Perl are I<The Perl Review> ( http://www.theperlreview.com ), |
| 420 | I<Unix Review> ( http://www.unixreview.com/ ), |
| 421 | I<Linux Magazine> ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ), |
| 422 | and Usenix's newsletter/magazine to its members, I<login:> |
| 423 | ( http://www.usenix.org/ ) |
| 424 | |
| 425 | The Perl columns of Randal L. Schwartz are available on the web at |
| 426 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/ , |
| 427 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/ , and |
| 428 | http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/ . |
| 429 | |
| 430 | =head2 What mailing lists are there for Perl? |
| 431 | |
| 432 | Most of the major modules (Tk, CGI, libwww-perl) have their own |
| 433 | mailing lists. Consult the documentation that came with the module for |
| 434 | subscription information. |
| 435 | |
| 436 | A comprehensive list of Perl related mailing lists can be found at: |
| 437 | |
| 438 | http://lists.perl.org/ |
| 439 | |
| 440 | =head2 Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc? |
| 441 | |
| 442 | The Google search engine now carries archived and searchable newsgroup |
| 443 | content. |
| 444 | |
| 445 | http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.perl.misc |
| 446 | |
| 447 | If you have a question, you can be sure someone has already asked the |
| 448 | same question at some point on c.l.p.m. It requires some time and patience |
| 449 | to sift through all the content but often you will find the answer you |
| 450 | seek. |
| 451 | |
| 452 | =head2 Where can I buy a commercial version of perl? |
| 453 | |
| 454 | In a real sense, perl already I<is> commercial software: it has a license |
| 455 | that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed |
| 456 | in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large |
| 457 | user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.* |
| 458 | newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your |
| 459 | questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by |
| 460 | Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad |
| 461 | programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life |
| 462 | better for everyone. |
| 463 | |
| 464 | However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a |
| 465 | purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry. |
| 466 | Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations. |
| 467 | Shrink-wrapped CDs with perl on them are available from several sources if |
| 468 | that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of perl, |
| 469 | as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor |
| 470 | and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions |
| 471 | also all come with perl. |
| 472 | |
| 473 | =head2 Where do I send bug reports? |
| 474 | |
| 475 | If you are reporting a bug in the perl interpreter or the modules |
| 476 | shipped with Perl, use the I<perlbug> program in the Perl distribution or |
| 477 | mail your report to perlbug@perl.org or at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . |
| 478 | |
| 479 | For Perl modules, you can submit bug reports to the Request Tracker set |
| 480 | up at http://rt.cpan.org . |
| 481 | |
| 482 | If you are posting a bug with a non-standard port (see the answer to |
| 483 | "What platforms is perl available for?"), a binary distribution, or a |
| 484 | non-standard module (such as Tk, CGI, etc), then please see the |
| 485 | documentation that came with it to determine the correct place to post |
| 486 | bugs. |
| 487 | |
| 488 | Read the perlbug(1) man page (perl5.004 or later) for more information. |
| 489 | |
| 490 | =head2 What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org? cpan.org? |
| 491 | |
| 492 | Perl.com at http://www.perl.com/ is part of the O'Reilly Network, a |
| 493 | subsidiary of O'Reilly Media. |
| 494 | |
| 495 | The Perl Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Perl language |
| 496 | which maintains the web site http://www.perl.org/ as a general |
| 497 | advocacy site for the Perl language. It uses the domain to provide |
| 498 | general support services to the Perl community, including the hosting |
| 499 | of mailing lists, web sites, and other services. The web site |
| 500 | http://www.perl.org/ is a general advocacy site for the Perl language, |
| 501 | and there are many other sub-domains for special topics, such as |
| 502 | |
| 503 | http://learn.perl.org/ |
| 504 | http://use.perl.org/ |
| 505 | http://jobs.perl.org/ |
| 506 | http://lists.perl.org/ |
| 507 | |
| 508 | Perl Mongers uses the pm.org domain for services related to Perl user |
| 509 | groups, including the hosting of mailing lists and web sites. See the |
| 510 | Perl user group web site at http://www.pm.org/ for more information about |
| 511 | joining, starting, or requesting services for a Perl user group. |
| 512 | |
| 513 | http://www.cpan.org/ is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, |
| 514 | a replicated worldwide repository of Perl software, see |
| 515 | the I<What is CPAN?> question earlier in this document. |
| 516 | |
| 517 | =head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT |
| 518 | |
| 519 | Copyright (c) 1997-2006 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and |
| 520 | other authors as noted. All rights reserved. |
| 521 | |
| 522 | This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it |
| 523 | under the same terms as Perl itself. |
| 524 | |
| 525 | Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public |
| 526 | domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any |
| 527 | derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you |
| 528 | see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would |
| 529 | be courteous but is not required. |