PERLPLAN9(1) 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.

       IInnvvookkiinngg PPeerrll

       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-con-
       figuring 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.

       WWhhaatt''ss iinn PPllaann 99 PPeerrll

       Although Plan 9 Perl currently only  provides static loading, it is
       built with a number of useful extensions.  These include Opcode, File-
       Handle, Fcntl, and POSIX. Expect to see others (and DynaLoading!) in
       the future.

       WWhhaatt''ss nnoott iinn PPllaann 99 PPeerrll

       As mentioned previously, dynamic loading isn't currently available nor
       is MakeMaker. Both are high-priority items.

       PPeerrll55 FFuunnccttiioonnss nnoott ccuurrrreennttllyy ssuuppppoorrtteedd iinn PPllaann 99 PPeerrll

       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

       There may be several other functions that have undefined behavior so
       this list shouldn't be considered complete.

       SSiiggnnaallss iinn PPllaann 99 PPeerrll

       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

CCOOMMPPIILLIINNGG AANNDD IINNSSTTAALLLLIINNGG PPEERRLL OONN PPLLAANN 99
       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 boot-
       straps itself. A 75MHz Pentium, 16MB RAM machine takes roughly 30 min-
       utes to build the distribution from scratch.

       IInnssttaalllliinngg PPeerrll DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn oonn PPllaann 99

       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 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

RReevviissiioonn ddaattee
       This document was revised 09-October-1996 for Perl 5.0037.

AUTHOR       Direct questions, comments, and the unlikely bug report (ahem) direct
       comments toward:

       Luther Huffman, lutherh@stratcom.com, Strategic Computer Solutions,
       Inc.



perl v5.8.6                       2004-11-05                      PERLPLAN9(1)