Manual Pages for UNIX Darwin command on man perlport

PERLPORT(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLPORT(1)

NAME

perlport - Writing portable Perl

DESCRIPTION

Perl runs on numerous operating systems. While most of them share much in common, they also have their own unique features.

This document is meant to help you to find out what constitutes porta-

ble Perl code. That way once you make a decision to write portably, you know where the lines are drawn, and you can stay within them. There is a tradeoff between taking full advantage of one particular

type of computer and taking advantage of a full range of them. Natu-

rally, as you broaden your range and become more diverse, the common factors drop, and you are left with an increasingly smaller area of common ground in which you can operate to accomplish a particular task. Thus, when you begin attacking a problem, it is important to consider

under which part of the tradeoff curve you want to operate. Specifi-

cally, you must decide whether it is important that the task that you are coding have the full generality of being portable, or whether to just get the job done right now. This is the hardest choice to be made. The rest is easy, because Perl provides many choices, whichever way you want to approach your problem.

Looking at it another way, writing portable code is usually about will-

fully limiting your available choices. Naturally, it takes discipline and sacrifice to do that. The product of portability and convenience may be a constant. You have been warned. Be aware of two important points: Not all Perl programs have to be portable There is no reason you should not use Perl as a language to glue Unix tools together, or to prototype a Macintosh application, or to manage the Windows registry. If it makes no sense to aim for portability for one reason or another in a given program, then don't bother. Nearly all of Perl already is portable Don't be fooled into thinking that it is hard to create portable

Perl code. It isn't. Perl tries its level-best to bridge the gaps

between what's available on different platforms, and all the means available to use those features. Thus almost all Perl code runs on any machine without modification. But there are some significant issues in writing portable code, and this document is entirely about those issues. Here's the general rule: When you approach a task commonly done using a whole range of platforms, think about writing portable code. That way, you don't sacrifice much by way of the implementation choices you can avail yourself of, and at the same time you can give your users lots of platform choices. On the other hand, when you have to take advantage of some unique feature of a particular platform, as is often the case with systems programming (whether for Unix, Windows, Mac OS, VMS,

etc.), consider writing platform-specific code.

When the code will run on only two or three operating systems, you may need to consider only the differences of those particular systems. The

important thing is to decide where the code will run and to be deliber-

ate in your decision. The material below is separated into three main sections: main issues

of portability ("ISSUES", platform-specific issues ("PLATFORMS", and

built-in perl functions that behave differently on various ports

("FUNCTION IMPLEMENTATIONS".

This information should not be considered complete; it includes possi-

bly transient information about idiosyncrasies of some of the ports, almost all of which are in a state of constant evolution. Thus, this material should be considered a perpetual work in progress (" Under Construction

"). IISSSSUUEESS NNeewwlliinneess In most operating systems, lines in files are terminated by newlines.

Just what is used as a newline may vary from OS to OS. Unix tradition-

ally uses "\012", one type of DOSish I/O uses "\015\012", and Mac OS uses "\015".

Perl uses "\n" to represent the "logical" newline, where what is logi-

cal may depend on the platform in use. In MacPerl, "\n" always means "\015". In DOSish perls, "\n" usually means "\012", but when accessing a file in "text" mode, STDIO translates it to (or from) "\015\012", depending on whether you're reading or writing. Unix does the same thing on ttys in canonical mode. "\015\012" is commonly referred to as CRLF. A common cause of unportable programs is the misuse of chop() to trim newlines:

# XXX UNPORTABLE!

while() { chop; @array = split(/:/);

#...

}

You can get away with this on Unix and Mac OS (they have a single char-

acter end-of-line), but the same program will break under DOSish perls

because you're only chop()ing half the end-of-line. Instead, chomp()

should be used to trim newlines. The Dunce::Files module can help audit your code for misuses of chop(). When dealing with binary files (or text files in binary mode) be sure

to explicitly set $/ to the appropriate value for your file format

before using chomp(). Because of the "text" mode translation, DOSish perls have limitations in using "seek" and "tell" on a file accessed in "text" mode. Stick to

"seek"-ing to locations you got from "tell" (and no others), and you

are usually free to use "seek" and "tell" even in "text" mode. Using

"seek" or "tell" or other file operations may be non-portable. If you

use "binmode" on a file, however, you can usually "seek" and "tell" with arbitrary values in safety. A common misconception in socket programming is that "\n" eq "\012" everywhere. When using protocols such as common Internet protocols, "\012" and "\015" are called for specifically, and the values of the logical "\n" and "\r" (carriage return) are not reliable.

print SOCKET "Hi there, client!\r\n"; # WRONG

print SOCKET "Hi there, client!\015\012"; # RIGHT

However, using "\015\012" (or "\cM\cJ", or "\x0D\x0A") can be tedious and unsightly, as well as confusing to those maintaining the code. As such, the Socket module supplies the Right Thing for those who want it. use Socket qw(:DEFAULT :crlf);

print SOCKET "Hi there, client!$CRLF" # RIGHT

When reading from a socket, remember that the default input record sep-

arator $/ is "\n", but robust socket code will recognize as either

"\012" or "\015\012" as end of line: while () {

# ...

} Because both CRLF and LF end in LF, the input record separator can be set to LF and any CR stripped later. Better to write: use Socket qw(:DEFAULT :crlf);

local($/) = LF; # not needed if $/ is already \012

while () {

s/$CR?$LF/\n/; # not sure if socket uses LF or CRLF, OK

# s/\015?\012/\n/; # same thing

}

This example is preferred over the previous one-even for Unix plat-

forms-because now any "\015"'s ("\cM"'s) are stripped out (and there

was much rejoicing).

Similarly, functions that return text data-such as a function that

fetches a web page-should sometimes translate newlines before return-

ing the data, if they've not yet been translated to the local newline representation. A single line of code will often suffice:

$data =~ s/\015?\012/\n/g;

return $data;

Some of this may be confusing. Here's a handy reference to the ASCII

CR and LF characters. You can print it out and stick it in your wal-

let. LF eq \012 eq \x0A eq \cJ eq chr(10) eq ASCII 10 CR eq \015 eq \x0D eq \cM eq chr(13) eq ASCII 13 | Unix | DOS | Mac |

--------------

\n | LF | LF | CR | \r | CR | CR | LF | \n * | LF | CRLF | CR | \r * | CR | CR | LF |

--------------

* text-mode STDIO

The Unix column assumes that you are not accessing a serial line (like a tty) in canonical mode. If you are, then CR on input becomes "\n", and "\n" on output becomes CRLF. These are just the most common definitions of "\n" and "\r" in Perl. There may well be others. For example, on an EBCDIC implementation such as z/OS (OS/390) or OS/400 (using the ILE, the PASE is

ASCII-based) the above material is similar to "Unix" but the code num-

bers change:

LF eq \025 eq \x15 eq \cU eq chr(21) eq CP-1047 21

LF eq \045 eq \x25 eq chr(37) eq CP-0037 37

CR eq \015 eq \x0D eq \cM eq chr(13) eq CP-1047 13

CR eq \015 eq \x0D eq \cM eq chr(13) eq CP-0037 13

| z/OS | OS/400 |

-----------

\n | LF | LF | \r | CR | CR | \n * | LF | LF | \r * | CR | CR |

-----------

* text-mode STDIO

NNuummbbeerrss eennddiiaannnneessss aanndd WWiiddtthh Different CPUs store integers and floating point numbers in different

orders (called endianness) and widths (32-bit and 64-bit being the most

common today). This affects your programs when they attempt to trans-

fer numbers in binary format from one CPU architecture to another, usu-

ally either "live" via network connection, or by storing the numbers to secondary storage such as a disk file or tape. Conflicting storage orders make utter mess out of the numbers. If a

little-endian host (Intel, VAX) stores 0x12345678 (305419896 in deci-

mal), a big-endian host (Motorola, Sparc, PA) reads it as 0x78563412

(2018915346 in decimal). Alpha and MIPS can be either: Digital/Compaq

used/uses them in little-endian mode; SGI/Cray uses them in big-endian

mode. To avoid this problem in network (socket) connections use the "pack" and "unpack" formats "n" and "N", the "network" orders. These are guaranteed to be portable. You can explore the endianness of your platform by unpacking a data structure packed in native format such as: print unpack("h*", pack("s2", 1, 2)), "\n";

# '10002000' on e.g. Intel x86 or Alpha 21064 in little-endian mode

# '00100020' on e.g. Motorola 68040

If you need to distinguish between endian architectures you could use either of the variables set like so:

$isbigendian = unpack("h*", pack("s", 1)) =~ /01/;

$islittleendian = unpack("h*", pack("s", 1)) =~ /^1/;

Differing widths can cause truncation even between platforms of equal endianness. The platform of shorter width loses the upper parts of the number. There is no good solution for this problem except to avoid transferring or storing raw binary numbers.

One can circumnavigate both these problems in two ways. Either trans-

fer and store numbers always in text format, instead of raw binary, or else consider using modules like Data::Dumper (included in the standard distribution as of Perl 5.005) and Storable (included as of perl 5.8). Keeping all data as text significantly simplifies matters.

The v-strings are portable only up to v2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF), that's

how far EBCDIC, or more precisely UTF-EBCDIC will go.

FFiilleess aanndd FFiilleessyysstteemmss Most platforms these days structure files in a hierarchical fashion. So, it is reasonably safe to assume that all platforms support the notion of a "path" to uniquely identify a file on the system. How that path is really written, though, differs considerably.

Although similar, file path specifications differ between Unix, Win-

dows, Mac OS, OS/2, VMS, VOS, RISC OS, and probably others. Unix, for example, is one of the few OSes that has the elegant idea of a single root directory. DOS, OS/2, VMS, VOS, and Windows can work similarly to Unix with "/" as

path separator, or in their own idiosyncratic ways (such as having sev-

eral root directories and various "unrooted" device files such NIL: and LPT:). Mac OS uses ":" as a path separator instead of "/". The filesystem may support neither hard links ("link") nor symbolic links ("symlink", "readlink", "lstat").

The filesystem may support neither access timestamp nor change time-

stamp (meaning that about the only portable timestamp is the modifica-

tion timestamp), or one second granularity of any timestamps (e.g. the FAT filesystem limits the time granularity to two seconds).

The "inode change timestamp" (the "-C" filetest) may really be the

"creation timestamp" (which it is not in UNIX). VOS perl can emulate Unix filenames with "/" as path separator. The

native pathname characters greater-than, less-than, number-sign, and

percent-sign are always accepted.

RISC OS perl can emulate Unix filenames with "/" as path separator, or go native and use "." for path separator and ":" to signal filesystems and disk names. Don't assume UNIX filesystem access semantics: that read, write, and execute are all the permissions there are, and even if they exist, that their semantics (for example what do r, w, and x mean on a directory) are the UNIX ones. The various UNIX/POSIX compatibility layers usually try to make interfaces like chmod() work, but sometimes there simply is no good mapping. If all this is intimidating, have no (well, maybe only a little) fear.

There are modules that can help. The File::Spec modules provide meth-

ods to do the Right Thing on whatever platform happens to be running the program. use File::Spec::Functions;

chdir(updir()); # go up one directory

$file = catfile(curdir(), 'temp', 'file.txt');

# on Unix and Win32, './temp/file.txt'

# on Mac OS, ':temp:file.txt'

# on VMS, '[.temp]file.txt'

File::Spec is available in the standard distribution as of version 5.00405. File::Spec::Functions is only in File::Spec 0.7 and later, and some versions of perl come with version 0.6. If File::Spec is not

updated to 0.7 or later, you must use the object-oriented interface

from File::Spec (or upgrade File::Spec).

In general, production code should not have file paths hardcoded. Mak-

ing them user-supplied or read from a configuration file is better,

keeping in mind that file path syntax varies on different machines. This is especially noticeable in scripts like Makefiles and test suites, which often assume "/" as a path separator for subdirectories. Also of use is File::Basename from the standard distribution, which splits a pathname into pieces (base filename, full path to directory, and file suffix).

Even when on a single platform (if you can call Unix a single plat-

form), remember not to count on the existence or the contents of par-

ticular system-specific files or directories, like /etc/passwd,

/etc/sendmail.conf, /etc/resolv.conf, or even /tmp/. For example, /etc/passwd may exist but not contain the encrypted passwords, because

the system is using some form of enhanced security. Or it may not con-

tain all the accounts, because the system is using NIS. If code does need to rely on such a file, include a description of the file and its format in the code's documentation, then make it easy for the user to override the default location of the file. Don't assume a text file will end with a newline. They should, but people forget. Do not have two files or directories of the same name with different

case, like test.pl and Test.pl, as many platforms have case-insensitive

(or at least case-forgiving) filenames. Also, try not to have non-word

characters (except for ".") in the names, and keep them to the 8.3 con-

vention, for maximum portability, onerous a burden though this may appear. Likewise, when using the AutoSplit module, try to keep your functions

to 8.3 naming and case-insensitive conventions; or, at the least, make

it so the resulting files have a unique (case-insensitively) first 8

characters. Whitespace in filenames is tolerated on most systems, but not all, and even on systems where it might be tolerated, some utilities might become confused by such whitespace.

Many systems (DOS, VMS) cannot have more than one "." in their file-

names. Don't assume ">" won't be the first character of a filename. Always use "<" explicitly to open a file for reading, or even better, use the

three-arg version of open, unless you want the user to be able to spec-

ify a pipe open.

open(FILE, '<', $existingfile) or die $!;

If filenames might use strange characters, it is safest to open it with

"sysopen" instead of "open". "open" is magic and can translate charac-

ters like ">", "<", and "|", which may be the wrong thing to do.

(Sometimes, though, it's the right thing.) Three-arg open can also

help protect against this translation in cases where it is undesirable. Don't use ":" as a part of a filename since many systems use that for their own semantics (Mac OS Classic for separating pathname components, many networking schemes and utilities for separating the nodename and the pathname, and so on). For the same reasons, avoid "@", ";" and "|". Don't assume that in pathnames you can collapse two leading slashes "//" into one: some networking and clustering filesystems have special semantics for that. Let the operating system to sort it out. The portable filename characters as defined by ANSI C are a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r t u v w x y z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R T U V W X Y Z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

. -

and the "-" shouldn't be the first character. If you want to be hyper-

correct, stay case-insensitive and within the 8.3 naming convention

(all the files and directories have to be unique within one directory if their names are lowercased and truncated to eight characters before the ".", if any, and to three characters after the ".", if any). (And do not use "."s in directory names.) SSyysstteemm IInntteerraaccttiioonn Not all platforms provide a command line. These are usually platforms

that rely primarily on a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for user inter-

action. A program requiring a command line interface might not work everywhere. This is probably for the user of the program to deal with, so don't stay up late worrying about it. Some platforms can't delete or rename files held open by the system, this limitation may also apply to changing filesystem metainformation like file permissions or owners. Remember to "close" files when you are done with them. Don't "unlink" or "rename" an open file. Don't "tie" or "open" a file already tied or opened; "untie" or "close" it first. Don't open the same file more than once at a time for writing, as some operating systems put mandatory locks on such files. Don't assume that write/modify permission on a directory gives the right to add or delete files/directories in that directory. That is

filesystem specific: in some filesystems you need write/modify permis-

sion also (or even just) in the file/directory itself. In some filesystems (AFS, DFS) the permission to add/delete directory entries is a completely separate permission. Don't assume that a single "unlink" completely gets rid of the file:

some filesystems (most notably the ones in VMS) have versioned filesys-

tems, and unlink() removes only the most recent one (it doesn't remove all the versions because by default the native tools on those platforms remove just the most recent version, too). The portable idiom to remove all the versions of a file is 1 while unlink "file";

This will terminate if the file is undeleteable for some reason (pro-

tected, not there, and so on).

Don't count on a specific environment variable existing in %ENV. Don't

count on %ENV entries being case-sensitive, or even case-preserving.

Don't try to clear %ENV by saying "%ENV = ();", or, if you really have

to, make it conditional on "$^O ne 'VMS'" since in VMS the %ENV table

is much more than a per-process key-value string table.

Don't count on signals or %SIG for anything.

Don't count on filename globbing. Use "opendir", "readdir", and "closedir" instead.

Don't count on per-program environment variables, or per-program cur-

rent directories.

Don't count on specific values of $!, neither numeric nor especially

the strings values- users may switch their locales causing error mes-

sages to be translated into their languages. If you can trust a POSIX-

ish environment, you can portably use the symbols defined by the Errno

module, like ENOENT. And don't trust on the values of $! at all

except immediately after a failed system call. CCoommmmaanndd nnaammeess vveerrssuuss ffiillee ppaatthhnnaammeess Don't assume that the name used to invoke a command or program with "system" or "exec" can also be used to test for the existence of the file that holds the executable code for that command or program.

First, many systems have "internal" commands that are built-in to the

shell or OS and while these commands can be invoked, there is no corre-

sponding file. Second, some operating systems (e.g., Cygwin, DJGPP,

OS/2, and VOS) have required suffixes for executable files; these suf-

fixes are generally permitted on the command name but are not required. Thus, a command like "perl" might exist in a file named "perl",

"perl.exe", or "perl.pm", depending on the operating system. The vari-

able "exe" in the Config module holds the executable suffix, if any.

Third, the VMS port carefully sets up $^X and $Config{perlpath} so that

no further processing is required. This is just as well, because the matching regular expression used below would then have to deal with a possible trailing version number in the VMS file name.

To convert $^X to a file pathname, taking account of the requirements

of the various operating system possibilities, say: use Config;

$thisperl = $^X;

if ($^O ne 'VMS')

{$thisperl .= $Config{exe} unless $thisperl =~ m/$Con-

fig{exe}$/i;}

To convert $Config{perlpath} to a file pathname, say:

use Config;

$thisperl = $Config{perlpath};

if ($^O ne 'VMS')

{$thisperl .= $Config{exe} unless $thisperl =~ m/$Con-

fig{exe}$/i;}

NNeettwwoorrkkiinngg Don't assume that you can reach the public Internet. Don't assume that there is only one way to get through firewalls to the public Internet. Don't assume that you can reach outside world through any other port than 80, or some web proxy. ftp is blocked by many firewalls. Don't assume that you can send email by connecting to the local SMTP port. Don't assume that you can reach yourself or any node by the name 'localhost'. The same goes for '127.0.0.1'. You will have to try both. Don't assume that the host has only one network card, or that it can't bind to many virtual IP addresses. Don't assume a particular network device name. Don't assume a particular set of ioctl()s will work. Don't assume that you can ping hosts and get replies. Don't assume that any particular port (service) will respond. Don't assume that Sys::Hostname() (or any other API or command) returns

either a fully qualified hostname or a non-qualified hostname: it all

depends on how the system had been configured. Also remember things

like DHCP and NAT- the hostname you get back might not be very useful.

All the above "don't":s may look daunting, and they are - but the key

is to degrade gracefully if one cannot reach the particular network service one wants. Croaking or hanging do not look very professional. IInntteerrpprroocceessss CCoommmmuunniiccaattiioonn ((IIPPCC))

In general, don't directly access the system in code meant to be porta-

ble. That means, no "system", "exec", "fork", "pipe", ``, "qx//", "open" with a "|", nor any of the other things that makes being a perl hacker worth being. Commands that launch external processes are generally supported on most platforms (though many of them do not support any type of forking). The problem with using them arises from what you invoke them on. External tools are often named differently on different platforms, may

not be available in the same location, might accept different argu-

ments, can behave differently, and often present their results in a

platform-dependent way. Thus, you should seldom depend on them to pro-

duce consistent results. (Then again, if you're calling netstat -a, you

probably don't expect it to run on both Unix and CP/M.) One especially common bit of Perl code is opening a pipe to sseennddmmaaiill:

open(MAIL, '|/usr/lib/sendmail -t')

or die "cannot fork sendmail: $!";

This is fine for systems programming when sendmail is known to be

available. But it is not fine for many non-Unix systems, and even some

Unix systems that may not have sendmail installed. If a portable solu-

tion is needed, see the various distributions on CPAN that deal with

it. Mail::Mailer and Mail::Send in the MailTools distribution are com-

monly used, and provide several mailing methods, including mail, send-

mail, and direct SMTP (via Net::SMTP) if a mail transfer agent is not available. Mail::Sendmail is a standalone module that provides simple,

platform-independent mailing.

The Unix System V IPC ("msg*(), sem*(), shm*()") is not available even on all Unix platforms. Do not use either the bare result of "pack("N", 10, 20, 30, 40)" or

bare v-strings (such as "v10.20.30.40") to represent IPv4 addresses:

both forms just pack the four bytes into network order. That this would be equal to the C language "inaddr" struct (which is what the socket code internally uses) is not guaranteed. To be portable use the routines of the Socket extension, such as "inetaton()", "inetntoa()", and "sockaddrin()". The rule of thumb for portable code is: Do it all in portable Perl, or

use a module (that may internally implement it with platform-specific

code, but expose a common interface). EExxtteerrnnaall SSuubbrroouuttiinneess ((XXSS)) XS code can usually be made to work with any platform, but dependent

libraries, header files, etc., might not be readily available or porta-

ble, or the XS code itself might be platform-specific, just as Perl

code might be. If the libraries and headers are portable, then it is normally reasonable to make sure the XS code is portable, too. A different type of portability issue arises when writing XS code:

availability of a C compiler on the end-user's system. C brings with

it its own portability issues, and writing XS code will expose you to some of those. Writing purely in Perl is an easier way to achieve portability. SSttaannddaarrdd MMoodduulleess

In general, the standard modules work across platforms. Notable excep-

tions are the CPAN module (which currently makes connections to exter-

nal programs that may not be available), platform-specific modules

(like ExtUtils::MMVMS), and DBM modules. There is no one DBM module available on all platforms. SDBMFile and the others are generally available on all Unix and DOSish ports, but not in MacPerl, where only NBDMFile and DBFile are available. The good news is that at least some DBM module should be available, and AnyDBMFile will use whichever module it can find. Of course, then the code needs to be fairly strict, dropping to the greatest common factor (e.g., not exceeding 1K for each record), so that it will work with any DBM module. See AnyDBMFile for more details. TTiimmee aanndd DDaattee The system's notion of time of day and calendar date is controlled in widely different ways. Don't assume the timezone is stored in

$ENV{TZ}, and even if it is, don't assume that you can control the

timezone through that variable. Don't assume anything about the three-

letter timezone abbreviations (for example that MST would be the Moun-

tain Standard Time, it's been known to stand for Moscow Standard Time). If you need to use timezones, express them in some unambiguous format like the exact number of minutes offset from UTC, or the POSIX timezone format. Don't assume that the epoch starts at 00:00:00, January 1, 1970,

because that is OS- and implementation-specific. It is better to store

a date in an unambiguous representation. The ISO 8601 standard defines

YYYY-MM-DD as the date format, or YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SS (that's a literal

"T" separating the date from the time). Please do use the ISO 8601 instead of making us to guess what date 02/03/04 might be. ISO 8601

even sorts nicely as-is. A text representation (like "1987-12-18") can

be easily converted into an OS-specific value using a module like

Date::Parse. An array of values, such as those returned by "local-

time", can be converted to an OS-specific representation using

Time::Local.

When calculating specific times, such as for tests in time or date mod-

ules, it may be appropriate to calculate an offset for the epoch. require Time::Local;

$offset = Time::Local::timegm(0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 70);

The value for $offset in Unix will be 0, but in Mac OS will be some

large number. $offset can then be added to a Unix time value to get

what should be the proper value on any system. On Windows (at least), you shouldn't pass a negative value to "gmtime" or "localtime". CChhaarraacctteerr sseettss aanndd cchhaarraacctteerr eennccooddiinngg Assume very little about character sets. Assume nothing about numerical values ("ord", "chr") of characters. Do

not use explicit code point ranges (like \xHH-\xHH); use for example

symbolic character classes like "[:print:]". Do not assume that the alphabetic characters are encoded contiguously (in the numeric sense). There may be gaps.

Do not assume anything about the ordering of the characters. The low-

ercase letters may come before or after the uppercase letters; the low-

ercase and uppercase may be interlaced so that both `a' and `A' come before `b'; the accented and other international characters may be interlaced so that ae comes before `b'. IInntteerrnnaattiioonnaalliissaattiioonn If you may assume POSIX (a rather large assumption), you may read more about the POSIX locale system from perllocale. The locale system at least attempts to make things a little bit more portable, or at least

more convenient and native-friendly for non-English users. The system

affects character sets and encoding, and date and time format-

ting-amongst other things.

If you really want to be international, you should consider Unicode. See perluniintro and perlunicode for more information.

If you want to use non-ASCII bytes (outside the bytes 0x00..0x7f) in

the "source code" of your code, to be portable you have to be explicit about what bytes they are. Someone might for example be using your

code under a UTF-8 locale, in which case random native bytes might be

illegal ("Malformed UTF-8 ...") This means that for example embedding

ISO 8859-1 bytes beyond 0x7f into your strings might cause trouble

later. If the bytes are native 8-bit bytes, you can use the "bytes"

pragma. If the bytes are in a string (regular expression being a curi-

ous string), you can often also use the "\xHH" notation instead of

embedding the bytes as-is. If they are in some particular legacy

encoding (ether single-byte or something more complicated), you can use

the "encoding" pragma. (If you want to write your code in UTF-8, you

can use either the "utf8" pragma, or the "encoding" pragma.) The "bytes" and "utf8" pragmata are available since Perl 5.6.0, and the "encoding" pragma since Perl 5.8.0. SSyysstteemm RReessoouurrcceess If your code is destined for systems with severely constrained (or missing!) virtual memory systems then you want to be especially mindful of avoiding wasteful constructs such as:

# NOTE: this is no longer "bad" in perl5.005

for (0..10000000) {} # bad

for (my $x = 0; $x <= 10000000; ++$x) {} # good

@lines = ; # bad

while () {$file .= $} # sometimes bad

$file = join('', ); # better

The last two constructs may appear unintuitive to most people. The first repeatedly grows a string, whereas the second allocates a large

chunk of memory in one go. On some systems, the second is more effi-

cient that the first. SSeeccuurriittyy

Most multi-user platforms provide basic levels of security, usually

implemented at the filesystem level. Some, however, do not- unfortu-

nately. Thus the notion of user id, or "home" directory, or even the

state of being logged-in, may be unrecognizable on many platforms. If

you write programs that are security-conscious, it is usually best to

know what type of system you will be running under so that you can write code explicitly for that platform (or class of platforms). Don't assume the UNIX filesystem access semantics: the operating system

or the filesystem may be using some ACL systems, which are richer lan-

guages than the usual rwx. Even if the rwx exist, their semantics might be different. (From security viewpoint testing for permissions before attempting to do something is silly anyway: if one tries this, there is potential for

race conditions- someone or something might change the permissions

between the permissions check and the actual operation. Just try the operation.) Don't assume the UNIX user and group semantics: especially, don't

expect the $< and $> (or the $( and $)) to work for switching identi-

ties (or memberships).

Don't assume set-uid and set-gid semantics. (And even if you do, think

twice: set-uid and set-gid are a known can of security worms.)

SSttyyllee

For those times when it is necessary to have platform-specific code,

consider keeping the platform-specific code in one place, making port-

ing to other platforms easier. Use the Config module and the special

variable $^O to differentiate platforms, as described in "PLATFORMS".

Be careful in the tests you supply with your module or programs. Mod-

ule code may be fully portable, but its tests might not be. This often happens when tests spawn off other processes or call external programs

to aid in the testing, or when (as noted above) the tests assume cer-

tain things about the filesystem and paths. Be careful not to depend

on a specific output style for errors, such as when checking $! after a

failed system call. Using $! for anything else than displaying it as

output is doubtful (though see the Errno module for testing reasonably

portably for error value). Some platforms expect a certain output for-

mat, and Perl on those platforms may have been adjusted accordingly. Most specifically, don't anchor a regex when testing an error value. CCPPAANN TTeesstteerrss

Modules uploaded to CPAN are tested by a variety of volunteers on dif-

ferent platforms. These CPAN testers are notified by mail of each new upload, and reply to the list with PASS, FAIL, NA (not applicable to

this platform), or UNKNOWN (unknown), along with any relevant nota-

tions. The purpose of the testing is twofold: one, to help developers fix any problems in their code that crop up because of lack of testing on other platforms; two, to provide users with information about whether a given module works on a given platform.

Mailing list: cpan-testers@perl.org

Testing results: http://testers.cpan.org/ PPLLAATTFFOORRMMSS

As of version 5.002, Perl is built with a $^O variable that indicates

the operating system it was built on. This was implemented to help speed up code that would otherwise have to "use Config" and use the

value of $Config{osname}. Of course, to get more detailed information

about the system, looking into %Config is certainly recommended.

%Config cannot always be trusted, however, because it was built at com-

pile time. If perl was built in one place, then transferred elsewhere, some values may be wrong. The values may even have been edited after the fact. UUnniixx

Perl works on a bewildering variety of Unix and Unix-like platforms

(see e.g. most of the files in the hints/ directory in the source code

kit). On most of these systems, the value of $^O (hence $Con-

fig{'osname'}, too) is determined either by lowercasing and stripping punctuation from the first field of the string returned by typing

"uname -a" (or a similar command) at the shell prompt or by testing the

file system for the presence of uniquely named files such as a kernel or header file. Here, for example, are a few of the more popular Unix flavors:

uname $^O $Config{'archname'}

----------------------

AIX aix aix

BSD/OS bsdos i386-bsdos

Darwin darwin darwin

dgux dgux AViiON-dgux

DYNIX/ptx dynixptx i386-dynixptx

FreeBSD freebsd freebsd-i386

Linux linux arm-linux

Linux linux i386-linux

Linux linux i586-linux

Linux linux ppc-linux

HP-UX hpux PA-RISC1.1

IRIX irix irix Mac OS X darwin darwin

MachTen PPC machten powerpc-machten

NeXT 3 next next-fat

NeXT 4 next OPENSTEP-Mach

openbsd openbsd i386-openbsd

OSF1 decosf alpha-decosf

reliantunix-n svr4 RM400-svr4

SCOSV scosv i386-scosv

SINIX-N svr4 RM400-svr4

sn4609 unicos CRAYC90-unicos

sn6521 unicosmk t3e-unicosmk

sn9617 unicos CRAYJ90-unicos

SunOS solaris sun4-solaris

SunOS solaris i86pc-solaris

SunOS4 sunos sun4-sunos

Because the value of $Config{archname} may depend on the hardware

architecture, it can vary more than the value of $^O.

DDOOSS aanndd DDeerriivvaattiivveess

Perl has long been ported to Intel-style microcomputers running under

systems like PC-DOS, MS-DOS, OS/2, and most Windows platforms you can

bring yourself to mention (except for Windows CE, if you count that). Users familiar with COMMAND.COM or CMD.EXE style shells should be aware that each of these file specifications may have subtle differences:

$filespec0 = "c:/foo/bar/file.txt";

$filespec1 = "c:\\foo\\bar\\file.txt";

$filespec2 = 'c:\foo\bar\file.txt';

$filespec3 = 'c:\\foo\\bar\\file.txt';

System calls accept either "/" or "\" as the path separator. However,

many command-line utilities of DOS vintage treat "/" as the option pre-

fix, so may get confused by filenames containing "/". Aside from call-

ing any external programs, "/" will work just fine, and probably bet-

ter, as it is more consistent with popular usage, and avoids the prob-

lem of remembering what to backwhack and what not to. The DOS FAT filesystem can accommodate only "8.3" style filenames.

Under the "case-insensitive, but case-preserving" HPFS (OS/2) and NTFS

(NT) filesystems you may have to be careful about case returned with functions like "readdir" or used with functions like "open" or "opendir". DOS also treats several filenames as special, such as AUX, PRN, NUL, CON, COM1, LPT1, LPT2, etc. Unfortunately, sometimes these filenames won't even work if you include an explicit directory prefix. It is best to avoid such filenames, if you want your code to be portable to

DOS and its derivatives. It's hard to know what these all are, unfor-

tunately. Users of these operating systems may also wish to make use of scripts such as pl2bat.bat or pl2cmd to put wrappers around your scripts. Newline ("\n") is translated as "\015\012" by STDIO when reading from and writing to files (see "Newlines"). "binmode(FILEHANDLE)" will keep

"\n" translated as "\012" for that filehandle. Since it is a no-op on

other systems, "binmode" should be used for cross-platform code that

deals with binary data. That's assuming you realize in advance that

your data is in binary. General-purpose programs should often assume

nothing about their data.

The $^O variable and the $Config{archname} values for various DOSish

perls are as follows:

OS $^O $Config{archname} ID Version

----------------------------

MS-DOS dos ?

PC-DOS dos ?

OS/2 os2 ? Windows 3.1 ? ? 0 3 01

Windows 95 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 1 4 00

Windows 98 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 1 4 10

Windows ME MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 1 ?

Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 4 xx

Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-ALPHA 2 4 xx

Windows NT MSWin32 MSWin32-ppc 2 4 xx

Windows 2000 MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 5 xx

Windows XP MSWin32 MSWin32-x86 2 ?

Windows CE MSWin32 ? 3 Cygwin cygwin ? The various MSWin32 Perl's can distinguish the OS they are running on via the value of the fifth element of the list returned from Win32::GetOSVersion(). For example:

if ($^O eq 'MSWin32') {

my @osversioninfo = Win32::GetOSVersion();

print +('3.1','95','NT')[$osversioninfo[4]],"\n";

} There are also Win32::IsWinNT() and Win32::IsWin95(), try "perldoc

Win32", and as of libwin32 0.19 (not part of the core Perl distribu-

tion) Win32::GetOSName(). The very portable POSIX::uname() will work too:

c:\> perl -MPOSIX -we "print join '|', uname"

Windows NT|moonru|5.0|Build 2195 (Service Pack 2)|x86 Also see: +o The djgpp environment for DOS, http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ and perldos. +o The EMX environment for DOS, OS/2, etc. emx@iaehv.nl, http://www.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu/emx+gcc/index.html or ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/dev/emx/ Also perlos2. +o Build instructions for Win32 in perlwin32, or under the Cygnus environment in perlcygwin. +o The "Win32::*" modules in Win32. +o The ActiveState Pages, http://www.activestate.com/

+o The Cygwin environment for Win32; README.cygwin (installed as perl-

cygwin), http://www.cygwin.com/ +o The U/WIN environment for Win32, http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/ +o Build instructions for OS/2, perlos2 MMaacc OOSS Any module requiring XS compilation is right out for most people,

because MacPerl is built using non-free (and non-cheap!) compilers.

Some XS modules that can work with MacPerl are built and distributed in binary form on CPAN. Directories are specified as: volume:folder:file for absolute pathnames volume:folder: for absolute pathnames :folder:file for relative pathnames :folder: for relative pathnames :file for relative pathnames file for relative pathnames Files are stored in the directory in alphabetical order. Filenames are limited to 31 characters, and may include any character except for null and ":", which is reserved as the path separator. Instead of "flock", see "FSpSetFLock" and "FSpRstFLock" in the Mac::Files module, or "chmod(0444, ...)" and "chmod(0666, ...)". In the MacPerl application, you can't run a program from the command line; programs that expect @ARGV to be populated can be edited with something like the following, which brings up a dialog box asking for the command line arguments. if (!@ARGV) { @ARGV = split /\s+/, MacPerl::Ask('Arguments?'); } A MacPerl script saved as a "droplet" will populate @ARGV with the full pathnames of the files dropped onto the script. Mac users can run programs under a type of command line interface under MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, a free development environment from Apple). MacPerl was first introduced as an MPW tool, and MPW can be used like a shell: perl myscript.plx some arguments ToolServer is another app from Apple that provides access to MPW tools from MPW and the MacPerl app, which allows MacPerl programs to use "system", backticks, and piped "open". "Mac OS" is the proper name for the operating system, but the value in

$^O is "MacOS". To determine architecture, version, or whether the

application or MPW tool version is running, check:

$isapp = $MacPerl::Version =~ /App/;

$istool = $MacPerl::Version =~ /MPW/;

($version) = $MacPerl::Version =~ /^(\S+)/;

$isppc = $MacPerl::Architecture eq 'MacPPC';

$is68k = $MacPerl::Architecture eq 'Mac68K';

Mac OS X, based on NeXT's OpenStep OS, runs MacPerl natively, under the "Classic" environment. There is no "Carbon" version of MacPerl to run under the primary Mac OS X environment. Mac OS X and its Open Source version, Darwin, both run Unix perl natively. Also see: +o MacPerl Development, http://dev.macperl.org/ . +o The MacPerl Pages, http://www.macperl.com/ . +o The MacPerl mailing lists, http://lists.perl.org/ . VVMMSS Perl on VMS is discussed in perlvms in the perl distribution. Perl on

VMS can accept either VMS- or Unix-style file specifications as in

either of the following:

$ perl -ne "print if /perlsetup/i" SYS$LOGIN:LOGIN.COM

$ perl -ne "print if /perlsetup/i" /sys$login/login.com

but not a mixture of both as in:

$ perl -ne "print if /perlsetup/i" sys$login:/login.com

Can't open sys$login:/login.com: file specification syntax error

Interacting with Perl from the Digital Command Language (DCL) shell often requires a different set of quotation marks than Unix shells do. For example:

$ perl -e "print ""Hello, world.\n"""

Hello, world. There are several ways to wrap your perl scripts in DCL .COM files, if you are so inclined. For example:

$ write sys$output "Hello from DCL!"

$ if p1 .eqs. ""

$ then perl -x 'f$environment("PROCEDURE")

$ else perl -x - 'p1 'p2 'p3 'p4 'p5 'p6 'p7 'p8

$ deck/dollars="END"

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello from Perl!\n"; END

$ endif

Do take care with "$ ASSIGN/nolog/user SYS$COMMAND: SYS$INPUT" if your

perl-in-DCL script expects to do things like "$read = ;".

Filenames are in the format "name.extension;version". The maximum length for filenames is 39 characters, and the maximum length for extensions is also 39 characters. Version is a number from 1 to 32767.

Valid characters are "/[A-Z0-9$-]/".

VMS's RMS filesystem is case-insensitive and does not preserve case.

"readdir" returns lowercased filenames, but specifying a file for open-

ing remains case-insensitive. Files without extensions have a trailing

period on them, so doing a "readdir" with a file named A.;5 will return a. (though that file could be opened with "open(FH, 'A')").

RMS had an eight level limit on directory depths from any rooted logi-

cal (allowing 16 levels overall) prior to VMS 7.2. Hence "PERLROOT:[LIB.2.3.4.5.6.7.8]" is a valid directory specification but "PERLROOT:[LIB.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9]" is not. Makefile.PL authors might

have to take this into account, but at least they can refer to the for-

mer as "/PERLROOT/lib/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/". The VMS::Filespec module, which gets installed as part of the build process on VMS, is a pure Perl module that can easily be installed on

non-VMS platforms and can be helpful for conversions to and from RMS

native formats. What "\n" represents depends on the type of file opened. It usually represents "\012" but it could also be "\015", "\012", "\015\012", "\000", "\040", or nothing depending on the file organization and record format. The VMS::Stdio module provides access to the special fopen() requirements of files with unusual attributes on VMS. TCP/IP stacks are optional on VMS, so socket routines might not be implemented. UDP sockets may not be supported.

The value of $^O on OpenVMS is "VMS". To determine the architecture

that you are running on without resorting to loading all of %Config you

can examine the content of the @INC array like so: if (grep(/VMSAXP/, @INC)) { print "I'm on Alpha!\n"; } elsif (grep(/VMSVAX/, @INC)) { print "I'm on VAX!\n"; } else {

print "I'm not so sure about where $^O is...\n";

}

On VMS, perl determines the UTC offset from the "SYS$TIMEZONEDIFFEREN-

TIAL" logical name. Although the VMS epoch began at 17-NOV-1858

00:00:00.00, calls to "localtime" are adjusted to count offsets from

01-JAN-1970 00:00:00.00, just like Unix.

Also see: +o README.vms (installed as READMEvms), perlvms +o vmsperl list, majordomo@perl.org (Put the words "subscribe vmsperl" in message body.) +o vmsperl on the web, http://www.sidhe.org/vmsperl/index.html VVOOSS Perl on VOS is discussed in README.vos in the perl distribution

(installed as perlvos). Perl on VOS can accept either VOS- or Unix-

style file specifications as in either of the following:

C<< $ perl -ne "print if /perlsetup/i" >system>notices >>

C<< $ perl -ne "print if /perlsetup/i" /system/notices >>

or even a mixture of both as in:

C<< $ perl -ne "print if /perlsetup/i" >system/notices >>

Even though VOS allows the slash character to appear in object names, because the VOS port of Perl interprets it as a pathname delimiting character, VOS files, directories, or links whose names contain a slash character cannot be processed. Such files must be renamed before they can be processed by Perl. Note that VOS limits file names to 32 or fewer characters.

Perl on VOS can be built using two different compilers and two differ-

ent versions of the POSIX runtime. The recommended method for building

full Perl is with the GNU C compiler and the generally-available ver-

sion of VOS POSIX support. See README.vos (installed as perlvos) for restrictions that apply when Perl is built using the VOS Standard C compiler or the alpha version of VOS POSIX support.

The value of $^O on VOS is "VOS". To determine the architecture that

you are running on without resorting to loading all of %Config you can

examine the content of the @INC array like so:

if ($^O =~ /VOS/) {

print "I'm on a Stratus box!\n"; } else { print "I'm not on a Stratus box!\n"; die; } if (grep(/860/, @INC)) { print "This box is a Stratus XA/R!\n"; } elsif (grep(/7100/, @INC)) { print "This box is a Stratus HP 7100 or 8xxx!\n"; } elsif (grep(/8000/, @INC)) { print "This box is a Stratus HP 8xxx!\n"; } else { print "This box is a Stratus 68K!\n"; } Also see: +o README.vos (installed as perlvos) +o The VOS mailing list. There is no specific mailing list for Perl on VOS. You can post comments to the comp.sys.stratus newsgroup, or subscribe to the general Stratus mailing list. Send a letter with "subscribe

Info-Stratus" in the message body to majordomo@list.stratagy.com.

+o VOS Perl on the web at http://ftp.stra-

tus.com/pub/vos/posix/posix.html EEBBCCDDIICC PPllaattffoorrmmss Recent versions of Perl have been ported to platforms such as OS/400 on AS/400 minicomputers as well as OS/390, VM/ESA, and BS2000 for S/390

Mainframes. Such computers use EBCDIC character sets internally (usu-

ally Character Code Set ID 0037 for OS/400 and either 1047 or POSIX-BC

for S/390 systems). On the mainframe perl currently works under the "Unix system services for OS/390" (formerly known as OpenEdition),

VM/ESA OpenEdition, or the BS200 POSIX-BC system (BS2000 is supported

in perl 5.6 and greater). See perlos390 for details. Note that for OS/400 there is also a port of Perl 5.8.1/5.9.0 or later to the PASE

which is ASCII-based (as opposed to ILE which is EBCDIC-based), see

perlos400.

As of R2.5 of USS for OS/390 and Version 2.3 of VM/ESA these Unix sub-

systems do not support the "#!" shebang trick for script invocation.

Hence, on OS/390 and VM/ESA perl scripts can be executed with a header similar to the following simple script:

: # use perl

eval 'exec /usr/local/bin/perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'

if 0;

#!/usr/local/bin/perl # just a comment really

print "Hello from perl!\n";

OS/390 will support the "#!" shebang trick in release 2.8 and beyond.

Calls to "system" and backticks can use POSIX shell syntax on all S/390 systems. On the AS/400, if PERL5 is in your library list, you may need to wrap your perl scripts in a CL procedure to invoke them like so: BEGIN CALL PGM(PERL5/PERL) PARM('/QOpenSys/hello.pl') ENDPGM This will invoke the perl script hello.pl in the root of the QOpenSys file system. On the AS/400 calls to "system" or backticks must use CL syntax. On these platforms, bear in mind that the EBCDIC character set may have an effect on what happens with some perl functions (such as "chr", "pack", "print", "printf", "ord", "sort", "sprintf", "unpack"), as well

as bit-fiddling with ASCII constants using operators like "^", "&" and

"|", not to mention dealing with socket interfaces to ASCII computers (see "Newlines").

Fortunately, most web servers for the mainframe will correctly trans-

late the "\n" in the following statement to its ASCII equivalent ("\r" is the same under both Unix and OS/390 & VM/ESA):

print "Content-type: text/html\r\n\r\n";

The values of $^O on some of these platforms includes:

uname $^O $Config{'archname'}

----------------------

OS/390 os390 os390 OS400 os400 os400

POSIX-BC posix-bc BS2000-posix-bc

VM/ESA vmesa vmesa Some simple tricks for determining if you are running on an EBCDIC platform could include any of the following (perhaps all): if ("\t" eq "\05") { print "EBCDIC may be spoken here!\n"; } if (ord('A') == 193) { print "EBCDIC may be spoken here!\n"; } if (chr(169) eq 'z') { print "EBCDIC may be spoken here!\n"; }

One thing you may not want to rely on is the EBCDIC encoding of punctu-

ation characters since these may differ from code page to code page (and once your module or script is rumoured to work with EBCDIC, folks will want it to work with all EBCDIC character sets). Also see: +o * perlos390, README.os390, perlbs2000, README.vmesa, perlebcdic.

+o The perl-mvs@perl.org list is for discussion of porting issues as

well as general usage issues for all EBCDIC Perls. Send a message

body of "subscribe perl-mvs" to majordomo@perl.org.

+o AS/400 Perl information at http://as400.rochester.ibm.com/ as well as on CPAN in the ports/ directory. AAccoorrnn RRIISSCC OOSS Because Acorns use ASCII with newlines ("\n") in text files as "\012" like Unix, and because Unix filename emulation is turned on by default, most simple scripts will probably work "out of the box". The native

filesystem is modular, and individual filesystems are free to be case-

sensitive or insensitive, and are usually case-preserving. Some native

filesystems have name length limits, which file and directory names are silently truncated to fit. Scripts should be aware that the standard filesystem currently has a name length limit of 1100 characters, with up to 77 items in a directory, but other filesystems may not impose such limitations. Native filenames are of the form

Filesystem#SpecialField::DiskName.$.Directory.Directory.File

where

SpecialField is not usually present, but may contain . and $ .

Filesystem =~ m|[A-Za-z0-9]|

DsicName =~ m|[A-Za-z0-9/]|

$ represents the root directory

. is the path separator @ is the current directory (per filesystem but machine global) ^ is the parent directory

Directory and File =~ m|[^\0- "\.\$\%\&:\@\\^\|\177]+|

The default filename translation is roughly "tr|/.|./|;"

Note that ""ADFS::HardDisk.$.File" ne 'ADFS::HardDisk.$.File'" and that

the second stage of "$" interpolation in regular expressions will fall

foul of the $. if scripts are not careful.

Logical paths specified by system variables containing comma-separated

search lists are also allowed; hence "System:Modules" is a valid file-

name, and the filesystem will prefix "Modules" with each section of

"System$Path" until a name is made that points to an object on disk.

Writing to a new file "System:Modules" would be allowed only if "Sys-

tem$Path" contains a single item list. The filesystem will also expand

system variables in filenames if enclosed in angle brackets, so "

tem$Dir>.Modules" would look for the file "$ENV{'System$Dir'} . 'Mod-

ules'". The obvious implication of this is that ffuullllyy qquuaalliiffiieedd ffiillee-

nnaammeess ccaann ssttaarrtt wwiitthh ""<<>>"" and should be protected when "open" is used for input. Because "." was in use as a directory separator and filenames could not be assumed to be unique after 10 characters, Acorn implemented the C compiler to strip the trailing ".c" ".h" ".s" and ".o" suffix from filenames specified in source code and store the respective files in subdirectories named after the suffix. Hence files are translated: foo.h h.foo C:foo.h C:h.foo (logical path variable)

sys/os.h sys.h.os (C compiler groks Unix-speak)

10charname.c c.10charname 10charname.o o.10charname 11charname.c c.11charname (assuming filesystem truncates at 10) The Unix emulation library's translation of filenames to native assumes

that this sort of translation is required, and it allows a user-defined

list of known suffixes that it will transpose in this fashion. This may seem transparent, but consider that with these rules "foo/bar/baz.h" and "foo/bar/h/baz" both map to "foo.bar.h.baz", and that "readdir" and "glob" cannot and do not attempt to emulate the reverse mapping. Other "."'s in filenames are translated to "/".

As implied above, the environment accessed through %ENV is global, and

the convention is that program specific environment variables are of

the form "Program$Name". Each filesystem maintains a current direc-

tory, and the current filesystem's current directory is the gglloobbaall cur-

rent directory. Consequently, sociable programs don't change the cur-

rent directory but rely on full pathnames, and programs (and Makefiles) cannot assume that they can spawn a child process which can change the current directory without affecting its parent (and everyone else for that matter).

Because native operating system filehandles are global and are cur-

rently allocated down from 255, with 0 being a reserved value, the Unix emulation library emulates Unix filehandles. Consequently, you can't rely on passing "STDIN", "STDOUT", or "STDERR" to your children.

The desire of users to express filenames of the form ".Bar" on

the command line unquoted causes problems, too: `` command output cap-

ture has to perform a guessing game. It assumes that a string

"<[^<>]+\$[^<>]>" is a reference to an environment variable, whereas

anything else involving "<" or ">" is redirection, and generally man-

ages to be 99% right. Of course, the problem remains that scripts can-

not rely on any Unix tools being available, or that any tools found

have Unix-like command line arguments.

Extensions and XS are, in theory, buildable by anyone using free tools. In practice, many don't, as users of the Acorn platform are used to

binary distributions. MakeMaker does run, but no available make cur-

rently copes with MakeMaker's makefiles; even if and when this should

be fixed, the lack of a Unix-like shell will cause problems with make-

file rules, especially lines of the form "cd sdbm && make all", and anything using quoting. "RISC OS" is the proper name for the operating system, but the value in

$^O is "riscos" (because we don't like shouting).

OOtthheerr ppeerrllss Perl has been ported to many platforms that do not fit into any of the categories listed above. Some, such as AmigaOS, Atari MiNT, BeOS, HP

MPE/iX, QNX, Plan 9, and VOS, have been well-integrated into the stan-

dard Perl source code kit. You may need to see the ports/ directory on CPAN for information, and possibly binaries, for the likes of: aos, Atari ST, lynxos, riscos, Novell Netware, Tandem Guardian, etc. (Yes, we know that some of these OSes may fall under the Unix category, but we are not a standards body.)

Some approximate operating system names and their $^O values in the

"OTHER" category include:

OS $^O $Config{'archname'}

---------------------

Amiga DOS amigaos m68k-amigos

BeOS beos

MPE/iX mpeix PA-RISC1.1

See also: +o Amiga, README.amiga (installed as perlamiga). +o Atari, README.mint and Guido Flohr's web page

http://stud.uni-sb.de/~gufl0000/

+o Be OS, README.beos +o HP 300 MPE/iX, README.mpeix and Mark Bixby's web page http://www.bixby.org/mark/perlix.html

+o A free perl5-based PERL.NLM for Novell Netware is available in pre-

compiled binary and source code form from http://www.novell.com/ as well as from CPAN. +o Plan 9, README.plan9 FFUUNNCCTTIIOONN IIMMPPLLEEMMEENNTTAATTIIOONNSS Listed below are functions that are either completely unimplemented or else have been implemented differently on various platforms. Following each description will be, in parentheses, a list of platforms that the description applies to. The list may well be incomplete, or even wrong in some places. When in

doubt, consult the platform-specific README files in the Perl source

distribution, and any other documentation resources accompanying a given port.

Be aware, moreover, that even among Unix-ish systems there are varia-

tions.

For many functions, you can also query %Config, exported by default

from the Config module. For example, to check whether the platform has

the "lstat" call, check $Config{dlstat}. See Config for a full

description of available variables. AAllpphhaabbeettiiccaall LLiissttiinngg ooff PPeerrll FFuunnccttiioonnss

-X FILEHANDLE

-X EXPR

-X "-r", "-w", and "-x" have a limited meaning only; directories

and applications are executable, and there are no uid/gid con-

siderations. "-o" is not supported. (Mac OS)

"-r", "-w", "-x", and "-o" tell whether the file is accessible,

which may not reflect UIC-based file protections. (VMS)

"-s" returns the size of the data fork, not the total size of

data fork plus resource fork. (Mac OS).

"-s" by name on an open file will return the space reserved on

disk, rather than the current extent. "-s" on an open filehan-

dle returns the current size. (RISC OS)

"-R", "-W", "-X", "-O" are indistinguishable from "-r", "-w",

"-x", "-o". (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS)

"-b", "-c", "-k", "-g", "-p", "-u", "-A" are not implemented.

(Mac OS)

"-g", "-k", "-l", "-p", "-u", "-A" are not particularly mean-

ingful. (Win32, VMS, RISC OS)

"-d" is true if passed a device spec without an explicit direc-

tory. (VMS)

"-T" and "-B" are implemented, but might misclassify Mac text

files with foreign characters; this is the case will all plat-

forms, but may affect Mac OS often. (Mac OS)

"-x" (or "-X") determine if a file ends in one of the exe-

cutable suffixes. "-S" is meaningless. (Win32)

"-x" (or "-X") determine if a file has an executable file type.

(RISC OS) binmode FILEHANDLE Meaningless. (Mac OS, RISC OS)

Reopens file and restores pointer; if function fails, underly-

ing filehandle may be closed, or pointer may be in a different position. (VMS) The value returned by "tell" may be affected after the call, and the filehandle may be flushed. (Win32) chmod LIST Only limited meaning. Disabling/enabling write permission is mapped to locking/unlocking the file. (Mac OS)

Only good for changing "owner" read-write access, "group", and

"other" bits are meaningless. (Win32)

Only good for changing "owner" and "other" read-write access.

(RISC OS)

Access permissions are mapped onto VOS access-control list

changes. (VOS) The actual permissions set depend on the value of the "CYGWIN" in the SYSTEM environment settings. (Cygwin) chown LIST Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9, RISC OS, VOS) Does nothing, but won't fail. (Win32)

chroot FILENAME

chroot Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, Plan 9, RISC OS, VOS, VM/ESA) crypt PLAINTEXT,SALT May not be available if library or source was not provided when building perl. (Win32) Not implemented. (VOS) dbmclose HASH Not implemented. (VMS, Plan 9, VOS)

dbmopen HASH,DBNAME,MODE

Not implemented. (VMS, Plan 9, VOS) dump LABEL Not useful. (Mac OS, RISC OS) Not implemented. (Win32) Invokes VMS debugger. (VMS) exec LIST Not implemented. (Mac OS) Implemented via Spawn. (VM/ESA) Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.

(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)

exit EXPR exit Emulates UNIX exit() (which considers "exit 1" to indicate an

error) by mapping the 1 to SS$ABORT (44). This behavior may

be overridden with the pragma "use vmsish 'exit'". As with the

CRTL's exit() function, "exit 0" is also mapped to an exit sta-

tus of SS$NORMAL (1); this mapping cannot be overridden. Any

other argument to exit() is used directly as Perl's exit sta-

tus. (VMS) fcntl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR Not implemented. (Win32, VMS) flock FILEHANDLE,OPERATION Not implemented (Mac OS, VMS, RISC OS, VOS). Available only on Windows NT (not on Windows 95). (Win32) fork Not implemented. (Mac OS, AmigaOS, RISC OS, VOS, VM/ESA, VMS) Emulated using multiple interpreters. See perlfork. (Win32) Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.

(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)

getlogin Not implemented. (Mac OS, RISC OS) getpgrp PID Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS) getppid Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, RISC OS) getpriority WHICH,WHO Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS, VM/ESA)

getpwnam NAME

Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32) Not useful. (RISC OS)

getgrnam NAME

Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS)

getnetbyname NAME

Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9) getpwuid UID Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32) Not useful. (RISC OS) getgrgid GID Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS) getnetbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9) getprotobynumber NUMBER Not implemented. (Mac OS) getservbyport PORT,PROTO Not implemented. (Mac OS) getpwent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VM/ESA) getgrent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, VM/ESA) gethostbyname "gethostbyname('localhost')" does not work everywhere: you may have to use "gethostbyname('127.0.0.1')". (Mac OS, Irix 5) gethostent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32) getnetent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9) getprotoent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9) getservent Not implemented. (Win32, Plan 9) sethostent STAYOPEN Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9, RISC OS) setnetent STAYOPEN Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9, RISC OS) setprotoent STAYOPEN Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9, RISC OS) setservent STAYOPEN Not implemented. (Plan 9, Win32, RISC OS) endpwent Not implemented. (Mac OS, MPE/iX, VM/ESA, Win32) endgrent Not implemented. (Mac OS, MPE/iX, RISC OS, VM/ESA, VMS, Win32) endhostent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32) endnetent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9) endprotoent Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, Plan 9) endservent Not implemented. (Plan 9, Win32)

getsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME

Not implemented. (Plan 9) glob EXPR glob This operator is implemented via the File::Glob extension on most platforms. See File::Glob for portability information. ioctl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR Not implemented. (VMS)

Available only for socket handles, and it does what the ioctl-

socket() call in the Winsock API does. (Win32) Available only for socket handles. (RISC OS) kill SIGNAL, LIST "kill(0, LIST)" is implemented for the sake of taint checking; use with other signals is unimplemented. (Mac OS) Not implemented, hence not useful for taint checking. (RISC OS) "kill()" doesn't have the semantics of "raise()", i.e. it doesn't send a signal to the identified process like it does on

Unix platforms. Instead "kill($sig, $pid)" terminates the

process identified by $pid, and makes it exit immediately with

exit status $sig. As in Unix, if $sig is 0 and the specified

process exists, it returns true without actually terminating it. (Win32) link OLDFILE,NEWFILE Not implemented. (Mac OS, MPE/iX, VMS, RISC OS) Link count not updated because hard links are not quite that

hard (They are sort of half-way between hard and soft links).

(AmigaOS) Hard links are implemented on Win32 (Windows NT and Windows 2000) under NTFS only. lstat FILEHANDLE lstat EXPR lstat Not implemented. (VMS, RISC OS) Return values (especially for device and inode) may be bogus. (Win32) msgctl ID,CMD,ARG msgget KEY,FLAGS msgsnd ID,MSG,FLAGS msgrcv ID,VAR,SIZE,TYPE,FLAGS Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, Plan 9, RISC OS, VOS) open FILEHANDLE,EXPR open FILEHANDLE The "|" variants are supported only if ToolServer is installed. (Mac OS)

open to "|-" and "-|" are unsupported. (Mac OS, Win32, RISC OS)

Opening a process does not automatically flush output handles

on some platforms. (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)

pipe READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE Very limited functionality. (MiNT) readlink EXPR readlink Not implemented. (Win32, VMS, RISC OS) select RBITS,WBITS,EBITS,TIMEOUT Only implemented on sockets. (Win32, VMS) Only reliable on sockets. (RISC OS) Note that the "select FILEHANDLE" form is generally portable. semctl ID,SEMNUM,CMD,ARG semget KEY,NSEMS,FLAGS semop KEY,OPSTRING Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS) setgrent Not implemented. (Mac OS, MPE/iX, VMS, Win32, RISC OS) setpgrp PID,PGRP Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS) setpriority WHICH,WHO,PRIORITY Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS) setpwent Not implemented. (Mac OS, MPE/iX, Win32, RISC OS)

setsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME,OPTVAL

Not implemented. (Plan 9) shmctl ID,CMD,ARG shmget KEY,SIZE,FLAGS shmread ID,VAR,POS,SIZE shmwrite ID,STRING,POS,SIZE Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS) sockatmark SOCKET A relatively recent addition to socket functions, may not be implemented even in UNIX platforms. socketpair SOCKET1,SOCKET2,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL Not implemented. (Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS, VM/ESA) stat FILEHANDLE stat EXPR stat Platforms that do not have rdev, blksize, or blocks will return these as '', so numeric comparison or manipulation of these fields may cause 'not numeric' warnings. mtime and atime are the same thing, and ctime is creation time instead of inode change time. (Mac OS). ctime not supported on UFS (Mac OS X). ctime is creation time instead of inode change time (Win32). device and inode are not meaningful. (Win32) device and inode are not necessarily reliable. (VMS) mtime, atime and ctime all return the last modification time. Device and inode are not necessarily reliable. (RISC OS) dev, rdev, blksize, and blocks are not available. inode is not meaningful and will differ between stat calls on the same file. (os2) some versions of cygwin when doing a stat("foo") and if not finding it may then attempt to stat("foo.exe") (Cygwin) symlink OLDFILE,NEWFILE Not implemented. (Win32, VMS, RISC OS) syscall LIST Not implemented. (Mac OS, Win32, VMS, RISC OS, VOS, VM/ESA)

sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS

The traditional "0", "1", and "2" MODEs are implemented with different numeric values on some systems. The flags exported by "Fcntl" (ORDONLY, OWRONLY, ORDWR) should work everywhere though. (Mac OS, OS/390, VM/ESA) system LIST In general, do not assume the UNIX/POSIX semantics that you can

shift $? right by eight to get the exit value, or that "$? &

127" would give you the number of the signal that terminated

the program, or that "$? & 128" would test true if the program

was terminated by a coredump. Instead, use the POSIX W*()

interfaces: for example, use WIFEXITED($?) and WEXITVALUE($?)

to test for a normal exit and the exit value, WIFSIGNALED($?)

and WTERMSIG($?) for a signal exit and the signal. Core dump-

ing is not a portable concept, so there's no portable way to test for that. Only implemented if ToolServer is installed. (Mac OS) As an optimization, may not call the command shell specified in

$ENV{PERL5SHELL}. "system(1, @args)" spawns an external

process and immediately returns its process designator, without

waiting for it to terminate. Return value may be used subse-

quently in "wait" or "waitpid". Failure to spawn() a subpro-

cess is indicated by setting $? to "255 << 8". $? is set in a

way compatible with Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the subprocess

is obtained by "$? >> 8", as described in the documentation).

(Win32) There is no shell to process metacharacters, and the native standard is to pass a command line terminated by "\n" "\r" or "\0" to the spawned program. Redirection such as "> foo" is performed (if at all) by the run time library of the spawned program. "system" list will call the Unix emulation library's "exec" emulation, which attempts to provide emulation of the stdin, stdout, stderr in force in the parent, providing the child program uses a compatible version of the emulation library. scalar will call the native command line direct and no such emulation of a child Unix program will exists. Mileage wwiillll vary. (RISC OS)

Far from being POSIX compliant. Because there may be no under-

lying /bin/sh tries to work around the problem by forking and execing the first token in its argument string. Handles basic redirection ("<" or ">") on its own behalf. (MiNT) Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.

(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)

The return value is POSIX-like (shifted up by 8 bits), which

only allows room for a made-up value derived from the severity

bits of the native 32-bit condition code (unless overridden by

"use vmsish 'status'"). For more details see "$?" in perlvms.

(VMS) times Only the first entry returned is nonzero. (Mac OS)

"cumulative" times will be bogus. On anything other than Win-

dows NT or Windows 2000, "system" time will be bogus, and

"user" time is actually the time returned by the clock() func-

tion in the C runtime library. (Win32) Not useful. (RISC OS) truncate FILEHANDLE,LENGTH truncate EXPR,LENGTH Not implemented. (Older versions of VMS)

Truncation to zero-length only. (VOS)

If a FILEHANDLE is supplied, it must be writable and opened in append mode (i.e., use "open(FH, '>>filename')" or "sysopen(FH,...,OAPPEND|ORDWR)". If a filename is supplied, it should not be held open elsewhere. (Win32) umask EXPR umask Returns undef where unavailable, as of version 5.005. "umask" works but the correct permissions are set only when the file is finally closed. (AmigaOS) utime LIST Only the modification time is updated. (BeOS, Mac OS, VMS, RISC OS) May not behave as expected. Behavior depends on the C runtime library's implementation of utime(), and the filesystem being used. The FAT filesystem typically does not support an "access time" field, and it may limit timestamps to a granularity of two seconds. (Win32) wait waitpid PID,FLAGS Not implemented. (Mac OS, VOS) Can only be applied to process handles returned for processes spawned using "system(1, ...)" or pseudo processes created with "fork()". (Win32) Not useful. (RISC OS) CCHHAANNGGEESS v1.48, 02 February 2001

Various updates from perl5-porters over the past year, supported

platforms update from Jarkko Hietaniemi. v1.47, 22 March 2000 Various cleanups from Tom Christiansen, including migration of long platform listings from perl. v1.46, 12 February 2000 Updates for VOS and MPE/iX. (Peter Prymmer) Other small changes. v1.45, 20 December 1999 Small changes from 5.00563 distribution, more changes to EBCDIC info. v1.44, 19 July 1999

A bunch of updates from Peter Prymmer for $^O values, endianness,

File::Spec, VMS, BS2000, OS/400. v1.43, 24 May 1999 Added a lot of cleaning up from Tom Christiansen. v1.42, 22 May 1999 Added notes about tests, sprintf/printf, and epoch offsets. v1.41, 19 May 1999 Lots more little changes to formatting and content.

Added a bunch of $^O and related values for various platforms;

fixed mail and web addresses, and added and changed miscellaneous notes. (Peter Prymmer) v1.40, 11 April 1999 Miscellaneous changes. v1.39, 11 February 1999 Changes from Jarkko and EMX URL fixes Michael Schwern. Additional note about newlines added. v1.38, 31 December 1998 More changes from Jarkko. v1.37, 19 December 1998 More minor changes. Merge two separate version 1.35 documents. v1.36, 9 September 1998 Updated for Stratus VOS. Also known as version 1.35. v1.35, 13 August 1998 Integrate more minor changes, plus addition of new sections under

"ISSUES": "Numbers endianness and Width", "Character sets and char-

acter encoding", "Internationalisation". v1.33, 06 August 1998 Integrate more minor changes. v1.32, 05 August 1998 Integrate more minor changes. v1.30, 03 August 1998 Major update for RISC OS, other minor changes. v1.23, 10 July 1998 First public release with perl5.005. SSuuppppoorrtteedd PPllaattffoorrmmss As of September 2003 (the Perl release 5.8.1), the following platforms are able to build Perl from the standard source code distribution available at http://www.cpan.org/src/index.html AIX BeOS BSD/OS (BSDi) Cygwin DG/UX DOS DJGPP 1) DYNIX/ptx EPOC R5 FreeBSD

HI-UXMPP (Hitachi) (5.8.0 worked but we didn't know it)

HP-UX

IRIX Linux LynxOS Mac OS Classic Mac OS X (Darwin) MPE/iX NetBSD NetWare

NonStop-UX

ReliantUNIX (formerly SINIX) OpenBSD OpenVMS (formerly VMS) Open UNIX (Unixware) (since Perl 5.8.1/5.9.0) OS/2 OS/400 (using the PASE) (since Perl 5.8.1/5.9.0) PowerUX

POSIX-BC (formerly BS2000)

QNX Solaris SunOS 4

SUPER-UX (NEC)

SVR4 Tru64 UNIX (formerly DEC OSF/1, Digital UNIX) UNICOS UNICOS/mk UTS VOS Win95/98/ME/2K/XP 2) WinCE z/OS (formerly OS/390) VM/ESA 1) in DOS mode either the DOS or OS/2 ports can be used 2) compilers: Borland, MinGW (GCC), VC6 The following platforms worked with the previous releases (5.6 and 5.7), but we did not manage either to fix or to test these in time for the 5.8.1 release. There is a very good chance that many of these will work fine with the 5.8.1. DomainOS Hurd MachTen PowerMAX SCO SV Unixware Windows 3.1 Known to be broken for 5.8.0 and 5.8.1 (but 5.6.1 and 5.7.2 can be used): AmigaOS The following platforms have been known to build Perl from source in the past (5.00503 and earlier), but we haven't been able to verify

their status for the current release, either because the hardware/soft-

ware platforms are rare or because we don't have an active champion on

these platforms-or both. They used to work, though, so go ahead and

try compiling them, and let perlbug@perl.org of any trouble. 3b1 A/UX ConvexOS CX/UX DC/OSx DDE SMES DOS EMX Dynix EP/IX ESIX FPS GENIX Greenhills ISC MachTen 68k MiNT MPC

NEWS-OS

NextSTEP OpenSTEP Opus Plan 9 RISC/os SCO ODT/OSR Stellar SVR2 TI1500 TitanOS Ultrix Unisys Dynix The following platforms have their own source code distributions and binaries available via http://www.cpan.org/ports/ Perl release OS/400 (ILE) 5.00502 Tandem Guardian 5.004 The following platforms have only binaries available via http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html : Perl release Acorn RISCOS 5.00502 AOS 5.002 LynxOS 5.00402 Although we do suggest that you always build your own Perl from the source code, both for maximal configurability and for security, in case you are in a hurry you can check http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html for binary distributions.