Re: PERL Editors

On Fri, Mar 27, 1998 at 08:01:07PM -0600, Jim Tom Polk wrote:
[Speaking of Perl and Perl editors]
> 
> It's a very simple language that can get very complex in what it can do. Like
> all programming languages, the syntax has to be exact, but other than that,
> it's pretty easy. There are some good books out there and some good tutorials
> available to get you started.

[Not really directed at J.T. Polk, just using his comment as a useful
starting point for a Perl rant.] :-)

The canonical source for all things Perl is http://www.perl.com/

I highly recommend _Learning Perl_ by Randal Schwartz as an
introductory text to the language of Perl (keeping and mind that 
Perl != CGI, though Perl is very useful for CGI programming).  

Do be careful of tutorials and books claiming to teach Perl5 and
dealing only with perl4 (dead flea bitten camel carcass).  For a
review of Perl books written by one of Perl's foremost coders, see:

http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/index.html

Keep in mind that Perl programming IS programming.  It is not a 
"plug 'n pray" solution and trying to do that with scripts found on
the net at large may result in vast security holes. :-(

In general, books and tutorials that say something on the order of:

To open a file use:

    #!/path/to/perl
    open(FILE, "myfile);

are to be avoided in favor of books and tutorials saying:

To open a file, discounting for the moment the issue of file locking,
use:

    #!/path/to/perl -w
    use strict;
    open(FILE, "myfile") or die "Cannot open myfile: $!\n";

:-)

In addition there are many CGI related modules for perl that will save
a lot of time.  The FAQs on Perl/CGI issues are also important and
will save you from asking, "my Perl program runs fine from the command
line but when I try to open it with my browser...", or the ubiquitous,
"how do I run myfile.pl? Everytime I click it in Win95 it opens as a
text file." :-)


For Win95/NT users there are also links to the better distributions of
Perl for those platforms.  You probably want Gurusamy Sarathy's
distribution and not ActiveState's version as it is based on the
current version of Perl and is complete including some modules.

Mac users will also find information on MacPerl at www.perl.com.

In general, if it doesn't come with the complete documentation, it's
not perl.

Only perl can parse Perl! 

-- 
rfh harrison(at)pixi.com

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