Getting Perl

UNIX

Of course, before you can write Perl programs, you'll need Perl itself. You may already have access to Perl depending on the type of system on which you develop.

If you develop on a Unix system, such as Solaris, SunOS, Linux, any BSD variant, or the many others, the chances are good that Perl is already installed. You can test this hypothesis quite simply -- login to your shell account (usually by telnet) and type:

perl -v

The output will look something like:

This is perl, version 5.004_04 built for i386-linux 
(with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail) 
Copyright 1987-1998, Larry Wall

As you can see, this sample machine has Perl 5.004-04 installed. You do want to be sure that your UNIX system has at least a Perl version of 5.x; the previous version of Perl, 4.x, may still be installed on many systems. You don't want to use Perl 4 because it is old and unfashionable. A number of UNIX systems have both Perl 4 and Perl 5 installed. You may find that "perl" leads to Perl 4 but the command "perl5" leads to Perl 5. Thus, if "perl -v" failed you with a 4.x version, you might try:

perl5 -v

And see if that reports a 5.x version of Perl. If yes, then you should remember that your system refers to Perl 5 as "perl5" rather than simply "perl" -- this will be necessary to know later on.

If, for some odd reason, your UNIX system does not already have Perl installed, you will have to acquire Perl and have it installed. The installation would be done by the system administrator, if that is not yourself. If that is yourself, you can sometimes obtain ready-made binaries for various UNIX systems from your vendor (for instance, users of RedHat Linux can install the Perl RPM available on either the RedHat CD or Web site). The brave and courageous can also compile Perl from the source code, available from the Perl.com web site.

WINDOWS

Perl happily runs on other systems besides UNIX! If you develop in Windows, or would like to develop Perl programs in both Windows and UNIX environments, you can easily install the latest version of Perl. ActiveState maintains a Windows version of Perl which is quite easy to install, named ActivePerl.

MACOS

Despite its command-line heritage, Perl has even made it ashore on the Macintosh. Not that there's anything wrong with that. A variety of resources for the MacPerl project can be found the MacPerl 5 site.

Who's Afraid of Perl?
The Perl You Need to Know
Running Perl Programs