perlplan9
(1)
Name
perlplan9 - specific documentation for Perl
Synopsis
Please see following description for synopsis
Description
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLPLAN9(1)
NAME
perlplan9 - Plan 9-specific documentation for Perl
DESCRIPTION
These are a few notes describing features peculiar to Plan 9
Perl. As such, it is not intended to be a replacement for
the rest of the Perl 5 documentation (which is both copious
and excellent). If you have any questions to which you can't
find answers in these man pages, contact Luther Huffman at
lutherh@stratcom.com and we'll try to answer them.
Invoking Perl
Perl is invoked from the command line as described in perl.
Most perl scripts, however, do have a first line such as
"#!/usr/local/bin/perl". This is known as a shebang (shell-
bang) statement and tells the OS shell where to find the
perl interpreter. In Plan 9 Perl this statement should be
"#!/bin/perl" if you wish to be able to directly invoke the
script by its name.
Alternatively, you may invoke perl with the command
"Perl" instead of "perl". This will produce Acme-friendly
error messages of the form "filename:18".
Some scripts, usually identified with a *.PL extension, are
self-configuring and are able to correctly create their own
shebang path from config information located in Plan 9 Perl.
These you won't need to be worried about.
What's in Plan 9 Perl
Although Plan 9 Perl currently only provides static
loading, it is built with a number of useful extensions.
These include Opcode, FileHandle, Fcntl, and POSIX. Expect
to see others (and DynaLoading!) in the future.
What's not in Plan 9 Perl
As mentioned previously, dynamic loading isn't currently
available nor is MakeMaker. Both are high-priority items.
Perl5 Functions not currently supported in Plan 9 Perl
Some, such as "chown" and "umask" aren't provided because
the concept does not exist within Plan 9. Others, such as
some of the socket-related functions, simply haven't been
written yet. Many in the latter category may be supported in
the future.
The functions not currently implemented include:
chown, chroot, dbmclose, dbmopen, getsockopt,
setsockopt, recvmsg, sendmsg, getnetbyname,
getnetbyaddr, getnetent, getprotoent, getservent,
sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent,
endservent, endnetent, endprotoent, umask
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Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLPLAN9(1)
There may be several other functions that have undefined
behavior so this list shouldn't be considered complete.
Signals in Plan 9 Perl
For compatibility with perl scripts written for the Unix
environment, Plan 9 Perl uses the POSIX signal emulation
provided in Plan 9's ANSI POSIX Environment (APE). Signal
stacking isn't supported. The signals provided are:
SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGILL, SIGABRT,
SIGFPE, SIGKILL, SIGSEGV, SIGPIPE, SIGPIPE, SIGALRM,
SIGTERM, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2, SIGCHLD, SIGCONT,
SIGSTOP, SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU
COMPILING AND INSTALLING PERL ON PLAN 9
WELCOME to Plan 9 Perl, brave soul!
This is a preliminary alpha version of Plan 9 Perl. Still to be
implemented are MakeMaker and DynaLoader. Many perl commands are
missing or currently behave in an inscrutable manner. These gaps will,
with perseverance and a modicum of luck, be remedied in the near
future.To install this software:
1. Create the source directories and libraries for perl by
running the plan9/setup.rc command (i.e., located in the
plan9 subdirectory). Note: the setup routine assumes that
you haven't dearchived these files into /sys/src/cmd/perl.
After running setup.rc you may delete the copy of the source
you originally detarred, as source code has now been
installed in /sys/src/cmd/perl. If you plan on installing
perl binaries for all architectures, run "setup.rc -a".
2. After making sure that you have adequate privileges to
build system software, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301
(adjust version appropriately) run:
mk install
If you wish to install perl versions for all architectures
(68020, mips, sparc and 386) run:
mk installall
3. Wait. The build process will take a *long* time because
perl bootstraps itself. A 75MHz Pentium, 16MB RAM machine
takes roughly 30 minutes to build the distribution from
scratch.
Installing Perl Documentation on Plan 9
This perl distribution comes with a tremendous amount of
documentation. To add these to the built-in manuals that
come with Plan 9, from /sys/src/cmd/perl/5.00301 (adjust
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Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLPLAN9(1)
version appropriately) run:
mk man
To begin your reading, start with:
man perl
This is a good introduction and will direct you towards
other man pages that may interest you.
(Note: "mk man" may produce some extraneous noise. Fear
not.)
BUGS
"As many as there are grains of sand on all the beaches of
the world . . ." - Carl Sagan
Revision date
This document was revised 09-October-1996 for Perl 5.003_7.
AUTHOR
Direct questions, comments, and the unlikely bug report
(ahem) direct comments toward:
Luther Huffman, lutherh@stratcom.com, Strategic Computer
Solutions, Inc.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/perl-512 |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.12.5.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.perl.org/.
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