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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

  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 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.

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