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Subject: comp.lang.perl.* FAQ 2/5 - Information Sources
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Archive-name: perl-faq/part2
Version: $Id: part2,v 2.9 1995/05/15 15:44:29 spp Exp spp $
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Last Edited: Tue May 23 22:41:38 1995 by spp (Stephen Potter) on squid

This posting contains answers to general information questions, mostly of
about information sources.

2.1) Is there a USENET group for Perl?

Yes there is: comp.lang.perl. This group, which currently can get up
to 100 messages per day, contains all kinds of discussions about Perl;
everything from bug reports to new features to the history to humour
and trivia. This is the best source of information about anything Perl
related, especially what's new with Perl5. Because of its vast array
of topics, it functions as both a comp.lang.* style newsgroup
(providing technical information) and also as a rec.* style newsgroup,
kind of a support group for Perl addicts (PerlAnon?).

Larry is a frequent poster to this group as well as most (all?) of the
seasoned Perl programmers. Questions will be answered by some of the
most knowledgable Perl Hackers, often within minutes of a question
being posted (give or take distribution times).

2.2) Have any books or magazine articles been published about Perl?

There have been quite a few books and articles. The most well known
and most useful book for 4.036 and earlier is _Programming Perl_
(affectionately known as ``the Camel Book''), written by Larry and
Randal Schwartz*, published by O'Reilly & Associates as part of their
Nutshell Handbook Series (ISBN: 0-937175-64-1). Besides serving as a
reference guide for Perl, it also contains tutorial material and is a
great source of examples and cookbook procedures, as well as wit and
wisdom, tricks and traps, pranks and pitfalls. The code examples
contained therein are available via anonymous FTP from ftp.ora.com in
/pub/examples/nutshell/programming_perl/perl.tar.Z or at
ftp.cis.ufl.edu in /pub/perl/ora/programming_perl. Corrections and
additions to the book can be found in the Perl4 man page right before
the BUGS section under the heading ERRATA AND ADDENDA.

A new version of the Camel book, revised and updated for Perl5 is due
out sometime "in the next few quarters". Until then, the man pages
distributed with the perl 5.001 source contain a wealth of information
on the new features and old incompatibilities with perl4.036.

Also available is ``the Llama Book'', _Learning Perl_ by Randal
Schwartz, another Nutshell book. This book is a smaller, gentler
introduction to perl and is based off of Randal's perl classes. While
in general this is a good book for learning perl (like it's title), it
does contain many typos and doesn't cover some of the more interesting
features of perl. Please check the errata sheet at ftp.ora.com, as
well as the on-line examples. (ISBN: 1-56592-042-2)

At this point, the "writing committee" (Larry, Randal, and Tom; aka
<[email protected]>) is looking at:

o A heavy rewrite of the Camel to update it to Perl5. Expect the
tutorial section to be cut in deference to the Llama.
o A light update of the Llama to eliminate the "I think perl5 will
do ..." and a change to "Perl5 will do ..."
o A new book, "Learning More Perl" (working title), a sequel to the
Llama, covering what wasn't covered in the Llama including Perl5.

If you can't find these books in your local technical bookstore, they
may be ordered directly from O'Reilly by calling 1-800-998-9938 if in
North America and 1-707-829-0515 otherwise.

Johan Vromans* created a beautiful reference guide. The reference
guide comes with the Camel book in a nice, glossy format. The LaTeX
(source) and PostScript (ready to print) versions are available for FTP
from ftp.cs.ruu.nl:/pub/DOC/perlref-4.036.1.tar.Z in Europe or from
ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/doc/perlref-4.036.tar.gz in the United
States. Obsolete versions in TeX or troff may still be available, but
these versions don't print as nicely. See also:

[] ftp://ftp.uu.net/languages/perl/perlref-4.036.1.tar.gz
[] ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/DOC/perlref-4.036.1.tar.gz
[] ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/perlref-4.036.1.tar.gz

Johan has also updated and released a reference guide based on version
5.000. This is available from the same places as the 4.036 guide.
This version is also available from prep.gnu.ai.mit.edu in the /pub/gnu
section along with the perl5 source. It may be added to the standard
perl5 distribution sometime after 5.002. If you are using version
5.000, you will want to get this version rather than the 4.036 version.

Larry routinely carries around a camel stamp to use when autographing
copies of his book. If you can catch him at a conference you can
usually get him to sign your book for you.

Prentice Hall also has two perl books, either on the shelves or in the
works. The first is ``Perl by Example'' by Ellie Quigley. (385 pages,
$26.96, ISBN 0-13-122839-0) A perl tutorial (perl4); every feature is
presented via an annotated example and sample output.

The second book is called ``Software Engineering with Perl'' by Carl
Dichter and Mark Pease. Randal Schwartz has reviewed the second book
(SEwP) and has this to say about it:

SWwP is not meant as instruction in the Perl language, but rather
as an example of how Perl may be used to assist in the semi-formal
software engineering development cycles. There's a lot of Perl
code that's fairly well commented, but most of the book describes
software engineering methodologies. For the perl-challenged,
there's a *light* treatment of the language as well, but they refer
to the llama and the camel for the real meat.

A new book has recently been released by SAMS Publishing. It is part
of their "Teach Yourself [Foo] in 21 Days" series, and is called "Teach
Yourself Perl in 21 Days". ISBN 0-672-30586-0 Price: $29.95, 841
Pages. This book is the first book to have a section devoted to
version 5.000, although it was written during an alpha stage and may
not necessarily reflect current reality.

Please note that none of the above books are perfect, all have some
inaccurances and typos. The two which Larry is directly associated
with (the O'Reilly books) are probably the most technically correct,
but also the most dated.

Starting in the March, 1995 edition of ``Unix Review''. Randal
Schwartz* has been authoring a bi-monthly Perl column. This has so
far been an introductory tutorial.

Larry Wall has published a 3-part article on perl in Unix World
(August through October of 1991), and Rob Kolstad also had a 3-parter
in Unix Review (May through July of 1990). Tom Christiansen also has
a brief overview article in the trade newsletter Unix Technology
Advisor from November of 1989. You might also investigate "The Wisdom
of Perl" by Gordon Galligher from SunExpert magazine; April 1991
Volume 2 Number 4. The Dec 92 Computer Language magazine also
contains a cover article on Perl, "Perl: the Programmers Toolbox".

Many other articles on Perl have been recently published. If you
have references, especially on-line copies, please mail them to
the FAQ maintainer for inclusion is this notice.

The USENIX LISA (Large Installations Systems Administration) Conference
have for several years now included many papers of tools written in
Perl. Old proceedings of these conferences are available; look in
your current issue of ";login:" or send mail to [email protected]
for further information.

Japan seems to be jumping with Perl books. If you can read japanese
here are a few you might be interested in. Thanks to Jeffrey Friedl*
and Ken Lunde* for this list (NOTE: my screen cannot handle japanese
characters, so this is all in English for the moment NOTE2: These
books are written in Japanese, these titles are just translations):

Title: Welcome to Perl Country (Perl-no Kuni-he Youkoso)
Authors: Kaoru Maeda, Hiroshi Koyama, Yasushi Saito and Arihito
Fuse
Pages: 268+9 Publisher: Science Company
Pub. Date: April 25, 1993 ISBN: 4-7819-0697-4
Price: 2472Y Author Email: [email protected]
Comments: Written during the time the Camel book was being
translated. A useful introduction, but uses jperl (Japanese Perl)
which is not necessarily compatible.

Title: How to Write Perl (Perl Shohou)
Author: Toshiyuki Masui
Pages: 352 Publisher: ASCII Corporation
Pub. Date: July 1, 1993 ISBN: 4-7561-0281-6
Price: 3200Y Author Email: [email protected]
Comments: More advanced than "Welcome.." and not meant as an
introduction. Uses the standard perl and has examples for handling
Japanese text.

Title: Introduction to Perl (Nyuumon Perl)
Author: Shinji Kono
Pages: 203 Publisher: ASCII Corporation
Date: July 11, 1994 ISBN: 4-7561-0292-1
Price: 1800Y Author Email: [email protected]
Comments: Uses the interactive Perl debugger to explain how things
work.

Title: Perl Programming
Authors: L Wall & R Schwartz Translator: Yoshiyuki Kondo
Pages: 637+32 Publisher: Softbank Corporation
Pub. Date: February 28, 1993 ISBN: 4-89052-384-7
Price: 4500Y Author Email: [email protected]
Comments: Official Japanese translation of the Camel book,
"Programming Perl". Somewhat laced with translator notes to
explain the humour. The most useful book. Also includes the Perl
Quick Reference -- in Japanese!

There is also a German translation of Programming Perl. It is available
from Hanser Verlag:

Title: Programmieren in Perl
ISBN: 3-446-17257-2

2.3) When will the Camel and Llama books be updated?

When they do. :-) Actually, we're looking at having them in print
about 6 months from now (for floating values of now :-). Send the
writing committee mail ([email protected]) mail if you have suggestions.

2.4) What FTP resources are available?

Since 1993, several ftp sites have sprung up for Perl and Perl related
items. The site with the biggest repository of Perl scripts right now
seems to be ftp.cis.ufl.edu [128.227.100.198] in /pub/perl. The
scripts directory has an INDEX with over 400 lines in it, each
describing what the script does. The src directory has sources and/or
binaries for a number of different perl ports, including MS-Dos,
Macintosh and Windows/NT. This is maintained by the Computing Staff at
UF*.

Note: European users please use the site src.doc.ic.ac.uk
[149.169.2.1] in /pub/computing/programming/languages/perl/
The link speed would be a lot better for all. Contact
[email protected] for more information. It is updated
daily.

There are also a number of other sites. I'll add more of them as I get
information on them.
[site maintainers: if you want to add a blurb here, especially if you
have something unique, please let me know. -spp]

2.5) What WWW/gopher resources are available?

The World Wide Web is exploding with new Perl sites all the time. Some
of the more notable ones are:
http://www.cis.ufl.edu/perl
http://www.metronet.com/1h/perlinfo, which has a great section on
Perl5.
http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/perl/perl.html
http://web.nexor.co.uk/perl/perl.html, a great site for European
and UK users.

2.6) Can people who don't have access to USENET get comp.lang.perl?

"Perl-Users" is the mailing list version of the comp.lang.perl
newsgroup. If you're not lucky enough to be on USENET you can post to
comp.lang.perl by sending to one of the following addresses. Which one
will work best for you depends on which nets your site is hooked into.
Ask your local network guru if you're not certain.

Internet: [email protected]
[email protected]

BitNet: Perl@Virginia

uucp: ...!uunet!virginia!perl-users

The Perl-Users list is bidirectionally gatewayed with the USENET
newsgroup comp.lang.perl. This means that VIRGINIA functions as a
reflector. All traffic coming in from the non-USENET side is
immediately posted to the newsgroup. Postings from the USENET side are
periodically digested and mailed out to the Perl-Users mailing list. A
digest is created and distributed at least once per day, more often if
traffic warrants.

All requests to be added to or deleted from this list, problems,
questions, etc., should be sent to:

Internet: [email protected]
[email protected]

BitNet: Perl-Req@Virginia

uucp: ...!uunet!virginia!perl-users-request

Coordinator: Marc Rouleau <[email protected]>

2.7) Are archives of comp.lang.perl available?

Yes, there are. 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.

A more sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism is desirable.
Preferably one that allows you to retrieve article using a fast-access
indices, keyed on at least author, date, subject, thread (as in "trn")
and probably keywords. Right now, the MH pick command works for this,
but it is very slow to select on 18000 articles.

If you have, or know where I can find, the missing sections, please let
[email protected] know.

2.8) Is there a WAIS server for comp.lang.perl?

Yes there is. Set your WAIS client to
archive.orst.edu:9000/comp.lang.perl. According to their introduction,
they have a complete selection from 1989 on.

Bill Middleton <[email protected]> offers this:

"I have setup a perl script retrieval service and WaisSearch here at
feenix. To check it out, just point your gopher at us, and select the
appropriate menu option. The WaisSearch is of the iubio type, which
means you can do boolean searching. Thus you might try something
like:

caller
ioctl and fcntl
grep and socket not curses

and other things to see examples of how other folks have done this
or that. This service is still under construction, but I'd like to
get feedback, if you have some time.

There's also a WaisSearch into all the RFC's and some other fairly
nifty stuff."

2.9) What other sources of information about Perl or training are available?

There is a #Perl channel on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where Tom and
Randal have been known to hang out. Here you can get immediate answers
to questions from some of the most well-known Perl Hackers.

The perl5-porters ([email protected]) mailing list was created to
aid in communication among the people working on perl5. However, it
has overgrown this function and now also handles a good deal of traffic
about perl internals.

2.10) Where can I get training classes on Perl?

USENIX, LISA, SUG, WCSAS, AUUG, FedUnix and Europen sponsor tutorials
of varying lengths on Perl at the System Administration and General
Conferences. These public classes are typically taught by Tom
Christiansen*.

In part, Tom and Randal teach Perl to help keep bread on their tables
long enough while they continue their pro bono efforts of documenting
perl (Tom keeps writing more man pages for it :-) and expanding the
perl toolkit through extension libraries, work which they enjoy doing
as it's fun and helps out the whole world, but which really doesn't
pay the bills. Such is the nature of free(ly available) software.
Send mail to <[email protected]> for details and availability.

Tom is also available to teach on-site classes, included courses on
advanced perl and perl5. Classes run anywhere from one day to week
long sessions and cover a wide range of subject matter. Classes can
include lab time with exercises, a generally beneficial aspect. If you
would like more information regarding Perl classes or when the next
public appearances are, please contact Tom directly at 1.303.444.3212.

Randal Schwartz* provides a 2-day lecture-only and a 4-5 day lecture-lab
course based on his popular book "Learning Perl". For details, contact
Randal directly via email or at 1.503.777.0095.

Internet One provides a 2 day "Introduction to Perl" and 2 day
"Advanced Perl" workshop. The 50% hands-on and 50% lecture format
allow attendees to write several programs themselves. Supplied
are the user manuals, reference copies of Larry Wall's "Program-
ming Perl", and a UNIX directory of all training examples and
labs. To obtain outlines, pricing, or scheduling information, use
the following:

o Phone: 1.303.444.1993
o Email: [email protected]
o See our Ad in the "SysAdmin" magazine
o View the outlines via the Web: http://www.InternetOne.COM/

2.11) What companies use or ship Perl?

At this time, the known list of companies that ship Perl includes at
least the following, although some have snuck it into /usr/contrib or
its moral equivalent:

BSDI
Comdisco Systems
CONVEX Computer Corporation
Crosspoint Solutions
Data General
Dell
DRD Corporation
IBM (SP systems)
Intergraph
Kubota Pacific
Netlabs
SGI (without taintperl)
Univel

Some companies ship it on their "User Contributed Software Tape",
such as DEC and HP. Apple Computer has shipped the MPW version of
Macintosh Perl on one of their Developer CDs (Essentials*Tools*Objects
#11) (and they included it under "Essentials" :-)

Many other companies use Perl internally for purposes of tools
development, systems administration, installation scripts, and test
suites. Rumor has it that the large workstation vendors (the TLA set)
are seriously looking into shipping Perl with their standard systems
"soon".

People with support contracts with their vendors are actively
encouraged to submit enhancement requests that Perl be shipped
as part of their standard system. It would, at the very least,
reduce the FTP load on the Internet. :-)

If you know of any others, please send them in.

2.12) Is there commercial, third-party support for Perl?

Not really. Although perl is included in the GNU distribution, at last
check, Cygnus does not offer support for it. However, it's unclear
whether they've ever been offered sufficient financial incentive to do
so. Feel free to try.

On the other hand, you do have comp.lang.perl as a totally gratis
support mechanism. As long as you ask "interesting" questions, you'll
probably get plenty of help. :-)

While some vendors do ship Perl with their platforms, that doesn't mean
they support it on arbitrary other platforms. And in fact, all they'll
probably do is forward any bug reports on to Larry. In practice, this
is far better support than you could hope for from nearly any vendor.

If you purchase a product from Netlabs (the company Larry works for),
you actually can get a support contract that includes Perl.

The companies who won't use something unless they can pay money for it
will be left out. Often they're motivated by wanting someone whom they
could sue. If all they want is someone to help them out with Perl
problems, there's always the net. And if they really want to pay
someone for that help, well, Tom and Randal are always looking for a
job. :-)

If companies want "commercial support" for it badly enough, speak up --
something might be able to be arranged.

2.13) What is a JAPH? What does "Will hack perl for ..." mean?

These are the "just another perl hacker" signatures that some people
sign their postings with. About 100 of the of the earlier ones are
available from the various FTP sites.

When people started running out of tricky and interesting JAPHs, some
of them turned to writing "Will hack perl for ..." quotes. While
sometimes humourous, they just didn't have the flair of the JAPHs and
have since almost completely vanished.

2.14) Where can I get a list of Larry Wall witticisms?

Over a hundred quips by Larry, from postings of his or source code,
can be found in many of the FTP sites or through the World Wide Web at
"ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/misc/lwall-quotes"

2.15) What are the known bugs?

5.001:
op.c: Inconsistent parameter definition for pad_findlex - fixed
in 5.001a, get development patches a-l.

walk.c: redeclaration of emit_split - fixed in perl5.001a, get
development patches a-l.

On linux systems "make test" fails on "op/exec Failed test 5". This
is a known bug with bash, not perl. You can get a new version
of bash.

Also on linux systems, "make test" hangs on lib/anydbm if you include
NDBM in the extentions. Do not include NDBM.

Another linux problem is getting Dynamic Loading to work. You must use
dld-2.3.6 (the newest version at the time of writing) to use Dynamic
Loading.

- All versions of h2ph previous to the one supplied with perl5.001 tended
to generate improper header files. Something such as:

#if __GNUC__

was incorrectly translated into

if ( &__GNUC__ ) {

instead of

if ( defined(&__GNUC__) ? &__GNUC__ : 0 ) {

Perl5 binaries compiled on SunOS4 exhibit strange behaviour on SunOS5.
For example, backticks do not work in the scripts. You need to
compile perl for both architectures, even with Binary Compatibility.

2.16) Where should I post bugs?

Before posting about a bug, please make sure that you are using the
most recent versions of perl (currently 4.036 and 5.001) available.
Please also check at the major archive sites to see if there are any
development patches available (usually named something like
perl5.001a.patch or patch5.001a - the patch itself, or
perl5.001a.tar.gz - a prepatched distribution). If you are not using
one of these versions, chances are you will be told to upgrade because
the bug has already been fixed.

If you are reporting a bug in perl5, the best place to send your bug
is <[email protected]>, which is currently just an alias for
<[email protected]>. In the past, there have been problems with
the perlbug address. If you have problems with it, please send your
bug directly to <[email protected]>. You may subscribe to the list
in the customary fashion via mail to <[email protected]>.
Feel free to post your bugs to the comp.lang.perl newsgroup as well,
but do make sure they still go to the mailing list.

If you are posting a bug with a non-Unix port, a non-standard Module
(such as Tk, Sx, etc) please see the documentation that came with it
to determine the correct place to post bugs.

To enhance your chances of getting any bug you report fixed:

1. Make sure you are using a production version of perl. Alpha and
Beta version problems have probably already been reported and
fixed.

2. Try to narrow the problem down to as small a piece of code as
possible. If you can get it down to 1 line of Perl then so much
the better.

3. Include a copy of the output from the myconfig script from the
Perl source distribution in your posting.

2.17) 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. If you want to
cross-post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their
posting standards, including setting the Followups-To header
line to NOT include alt.sources; see their FAQ for details.

2.18) Where can I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?

The perlobj(1) man page is a good place to start, and then you can
check out the excellent perlbot(1) man page written by the dean of perl
o-o himself, Dean Roehrich. Areas covered include the following:

Idx Subsections in perlobj.1 Lines
1 NAME 2
2 DESCRIPTION 16
3 An Object is Simply a Reference 60
4 A Class is Simply a Package 31
5 A Method is Simply a Subroutine 34
6 Method Invocation 75
7 Destructors 14
8 Summary 7

Idx Subsections in perlbot.1 Lines
1 NAME 2
2 INTRODUCTION 9
3 Instance Variables 43
4 Scalar Instance Variables 21
5 Instance Variable Inheritance 35
6 Object Relationships 33
7 Overriding Superclass Methods 49
8 Using Relationship with Sdbm 45
9 Thinking of Code Reuse 111

The section on instance variables should prove very helpful to those
wondering how to get data inheritance in perl.

2.19) Where can I learn about linking C with Perl? [h2xs, xsubpp]

While it used to be deep magic, how to do this is now revealed in the
perlapi(1), perlguts(1), and perlcall(1) man pages, which treat with
this matter extensively. You should also check the many extensions
that people have written (see question 1.19), many of which do this
very thing.

2.20) What is perl.com?

Perl.com is just Tom's domain name, registered as dedicated to "Perl
training and consulting". While not a full ftp site (he hasn't got
the bandwidth (yet)), it does have some interesting bits, most of which
are replicated elsewhere. It serves as a clearinghouse for certain
perl related mailing lists. The following aliases work:

perl-packrats: The archivist list
perl-porters: The porters list
perlbook: The Camel/Llama/Alpaca writing committee
perlbugs: The bug list (perl-porters for now)
perlclasses: Info on Perl training
perlfaq: Submissions/Errata to the Perl FAQ
(Tom and Steve)
perlrefguide: Submissions/Errata to the Perl RefGuide
(Johan)

2.21) What do the asterisks (*) throughout the FAQ stand for?

To keep from cluttering up the FAQ and for easy reference all email
addresses have been collected in this location. For each person
listed, I offer my thanks for their input and help.

* Larry Wall <[email protected]>
* Tom Christiansen <[email protected]>
* Stephen P Potter <[email protected]>
* Andreas Koenig <[email protected]>
* Bill Eldridge <[email protected]>
* Buzz Moschetti <[email protected]>
* Casper H.S. Dik <[email protected]>
* David Muir Sharnoff <[email protected]>
* Dean Roehrich <[email protected]>
* Dominic Giampaolo <[email protected]>,
* Frederic Chauveau <[email protected]>
* Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
* Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>
* Henk P Penning <[email protected]>
* Jeff Friedl <[email protected]>
* Johan Vromans <[email protected]>
* John Dallman <[email protected]>
* John Lees <[email protected]>
* John Ousterhout <[email protected]>
* Jon Biggar <[email protected]>
* Ken Lunde <[email protected]>
* Malcolm Beattie <[email protected]>
* Matthias Neeracher <[email protected]>
* Michael D'Errico <[email protected]>
* Nick Ing-Simmons <[email protected]>
* Randal Schwartz <[email protected]>
* Roberto Salama <[email protected]>
* Steven L Kunz <[email protected]>
* Theodore C. Law <[email protected]>
* Thomas R. Kimpton <[email protected]>
* Timothy Murphy <[email protected]>
* UF Computer Staff <[email protected]>

--
Stephen P Potter Pencom Systems Administration AMP Incorporated
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Home: 717-540-0131 Pager: 1-800-759-8888, 547-9561 Work: 717-986-5401
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