a2p
accept
access
acct
addftinfo
addr2line
adjtime
afmtodit
after
aio_cancel
aio_error
aio_read
aio_return
aio_suspend
aio_waitcomplete
aio_write
alias
aliases
alloc
anvil
append
apply
apropos
ar
array
as
asa
asn1parse
at
atq
atrm
attemptckalloc
attemptckrealloc
authlib
authtest
autopoint
awk
b64decode
b64encode
basename
batch
bc
bdes
bell
bg
bgerror
biff
big5
binary
bind
bindkey
bindtags
bindtextdomain
bio
bitmap
blowfish
bn
bootparams
bootptab
bounce
brandelf
break
breaksw
brk
bsdiff
bsdtar
bsnmpd
bspatch
bthost
btsockstat
buffer
builtin
builtins
bunzip2
button
byacc
bzcat
bzegrep
bzfgrep
bzgrep
bzip2
c2ph
c89
c99
ca
cal
calendar
canvas
cap_mkdb
case
cat
catch
catman
cc
cd
cdcontrol
chdir
checkbutton
checknr
chflags
chfn
chgrp
chio
chkey
chmod
chown
chpass
chroot
chsh
ci
ciphers
ckalloc
ckdist
ckfree
ckrealloc
cksum
cleanup
clear
clipboard
clock
clock_getres
clock_gettime
clock_settime
close
cmp
co
col
colcrt
colldef
colors
colrm
column
comm
command
compile_et
complete
compress
concat
config
connect
console
continue
core
courierlogger
couriertcpd
cp
cpan
cpio
cpp
creat
crl
crontab
crunchgen
crunchide
crypt
crypto
csh
csplit
ctags
ctm
ctm_dequeue
ctm_rmail
ctm_smail
cu
cursor
cursors
cut
cvs
date
dbiprof
dbiproxy
dc
dcgettext
dcngettext
dd
dde
default
defer
deliverquota
des
destroy
devfs
df
dgettext
dgst
dh
dhparam
dialog
diff
diff3
dig
dir
dirent
dirname
dirs
discard
disktab
dngettext
do
domainname
done
dprofpp
dsa
dsaparam
dtmfdecode
du
dup
dup2
eaccess
ec
ecdsa
echo
echotc
ecparam
ed
edit
editrc
ee
egrep
elf
elfdump
elif
else
enc
enc2xs
encoding
end
endif
endsw
engine
enigma
entry
env
envsubst
eof
eqn
err
errno
error
errstr
esac
ethers
euc
eui64
eval
event
evp
ex
exec
execve
exit
expand
export
exports
expr
extattr
extattr_delete_fd
extattr_delete_file
extattr_get_fd
extattr_get_file
extattr_set_fd
extattr_set_file
f77
false
famm
famx
fblocked
fbtab
fc
fchdir
fchflags
fchmod
fchown
fcntl
fconfigure
fcopy
fdescfs
fdformat
fdread
fdwrite
fetch
fg
fgrep
fhopen
fhstat
fhstatfs
fi
file
file2c
fileevent
filename
filetest
find
find2perl
finger
flex
flock
flush
fmt
focus
fold
font
fontedit
for
foreach
fork
format
forward
fpathconf
frame
from
fs
fstab
fstat
fstatfs
fsync
ftp
ftpchroot
ftpusers
ftruncate
futimes
g711conv
gb2312
gb18030
gbk
gcc
gcore
gcov
gdb
gencat
gendsa
genrsa
gensnmptree
getconf
getdents
getdirentries
getdtablesize
getegid
geteuid
getfacl
getfh
getfsstat
getgid
getgroups
getitimer
getlogin
getopt
getopts
getpeername
getpgid
getpgrp
getpid
getppid
getpriority
getresgid
getresuid
getrlimit
getrusage
gets
getsid
getsockname
getsockopt
gettext
gettextize
gettimeofday
gettytab
getuid
glob
global
gmake
goto
gperf
gprof
grab
grep
grid
grn
grodvi
groff
groff_font
groff_out
groff_tmac
grog
grolbp
grolj4
grops
grotty
group
groups
gunzip
gzcat
gzexe
gzip
h2ph
h2xs
hash
hashstat
hd
head
help2man
hesinfo
hexdump
history
host
hostname
hosts
hosts_access
hosts_options
hpftodit
http
hup
i386_get_ioperm
i386_get_ldt
i386_set_ioperm
i386_set_ldt
i386_vm86
iconv
id
ident
idprio
if
ifnames253
ifnames259
image
imapd
incr
indent
indxbib
info
infokey
inode
install
instmodsh
interp
intro
introduction
ioctl
ipcrm
ipcs
ipf
ipftest
ipnat
ippool
ipresend
issetugid
jail
jail_attach
jobid
jobs
join
jot
kbdcontrol
kbdmap
kcon
kdestroy
kdump
kenv
kevent
keycap
keylogin
keylogout
keymap
keysyms
kgdb
kill
killall
killpg
kinit
kldfind
kldfirstmod
kldload
kldnext
kldstat
kldsym
kldunload
klist
kpasswd
kqueue
kse
kse_create
kse_exit
kse_release
kse_switchin
kse_thr_interrupt
kse_wakeup
ktrace
label
labelframe
lam
lappend
last
lastcomm
lastlog
lchflags
lchmod
lchown
ld
ldap
ldapadd
ldapcompare
ldapdelete
ldapmodify
ldapmodrdn
ldappasswd
ldapsearch
ldapwhoami
ldd
leave
less
lesskey
lex
lgetfh
lhash
libnetcfg
library
limit
limits
lindex
link
linprocfs
linsert
lint
lio_listio
list
listbox
listen
lj4_font
lkbib
llength
lmtp
ln
load
loadfont
local
locale
locate
lock
lockf
log
logger
login
logins
logname
logout
look
lookbib
lorder
lower
lp
lpq
lpr
lprm
lptest
lrange
lreplace
ls
lsearch
lseek
lset
lsort
lstat
lsvfs
lutimes
lynx
m4
madvise
magic
mail
maildiracl
maildirkw
maildirmake
mailq
mailx
make
makeinfo
makewhatis
man
manpath
master
mc
mcedit
mcview
md2
md4
md5
mdc2
memory
menu
menubar
menubutton
merge
mesg
message
mincore
minherit
minigzip
mkdep
mkdir
mkfifo
mkimapdcert
mklocale
mknod
mkpop3dcert
mkstr
mktemp
mlock
mlockall
mmap
mmroff
modfind
modfnext
modnext
modstat
moduli
more
motd
mount
mprotect
mptable
msdos
msdosfs
msgattrib
msgcat
msgcmp
msgcomm
msgconv
msgen
msgexec
msgfilter
msgfmt
msggrep
msginit
msgmerge
msgs
msgunfmt
msguniq
mskanji
msql2mysql
msync
mt
munlock
munlockall
munmap
mv
myisamchk
myisamlog
myisampack
mysql
mysqlaccess
mysqladmin
mysqlbinlog
mysqlcheck
mysqld
mysqldump
mysqld_multi
mysqld_safe
mysqlhotcopy
mysqlimport
mysqlshow
mysql_config
mysql_fix_privilege_tables
mysql_zap
namespace
nanosleep
nawk
nc
ncal
ncplist
ncplogin
ncplogout
neqn
netconfig
netgroup
netid
netstat
networks
newaliases
newgrp
nex
nfsstat
nfssvc
ngettext
nice
nl
nm
nmount
nohup
nologin
notify
nroff
nseq
nslookup
ntp_adjtime
ntp_gettime
nvi
nview
objcopy
objdump
objformat
ocsp
od
onintr
open
openssl
opieaccess
opieinfo
opiekey
opiekeys
opiepasswd
option
options
oqmgr
pack
package
packagens
pagesize
palette
pam_auth
panedwindow
parray
passwd
paste
patch
pathchk
pathconf
pawd
pax
pbm
pcre
pcreapi
pcrebuild
pcrecallout
pcrecompat
pcrecpp
pcregrep
pcrematching
pcrepartial
pcrepattern
pcreperform
pcreposix
pcreprecompile
pcresample
pcretest
perl
perl56delta
perl58delta
perl561delta
perl570delta
perl571delta
perl572delta
perl573delta
perl581delta
perl582delta
perl583delta
perl584delta
perl585delta
perl586delta
perl587delta
perl588delta
perl5004delta
perl5005delta
perlaix
perlamiga
perlapi
perlapio
perlapollo
perlartistic
perlbeos
perlbook
perlboot
perlbot
perlbs2000
perlbug
perlcall
perlcc
perlce
perlcheat
perlclib
perlcn
perlcompile
perlcygwin
perldata
perldbmfilter
perldebguts
perldebtut
perldebug
perldelta
perldgux
perldiag
perldoc
perldos
perldsc
perlebcdic
perlembed
perlepoc
perlfaq
perlfaq1
perlfaq2
perlfaq3
perlfaq4
perlfaq5
perlfaq6
perlfaq7
perlfaq8
perlfaq9
perlfilter
perlfork
perlform
perlfreebsd
perlfunc
perlglossary
perlgpl
perlguts
perlhack
perlhist
perlhpux
perlhurd
perlintern
perlintro
perliol
perlipc
perlirix
perlivp
perljp
perlko
perllexwarn
perllinux
perllocale
perllol
perlmachten
perlmacos
perlmacosx
perlmint
perlmod
perlmodinstall
perlmodlib
perlmodstyle
perlmpeix
perlnetware
perlnewmod
perlnumber
perlobj
perlop
perlopenbsd
perlopentut
perlos2
perlos390
perlos400
perlothrtut
perlpacktut
perlplan9
perlpod
perlpodspec
perlport
perlqnx
perlre
perlref
perlreftut
perlrequick
perlreref
perlretut
perlrun
perlsec
perlsolaris
perlstyle
perlsub
perlsyn
perlthrtut
perltie
perltoc
perltodo
perltooc
perltoot
perltrap
perltru64
perltw
perlunicode
perluniintro
perlutil
perluts
perlvar
perlvmesa
perlvms
perlvos
perlwin32
perlxs
perlxstut
perror
pfbtops
pftp
pgrep
phones
photo
pic
pickup
piconv
pid
pipe
pkcs7
pkcs8
pkcs12
pkg_add
pkg_check
pkg_create
pkg_delete
pkg_info
pkg_sign
pkg_version
pkill
pl2pm
place
pod2html
pod2latex
pod2man
pod2text
pod2usage
podchecker
podselect
poll
popd
popup
posix_madvise
postalias
postcat
postconf
postdrop
postfix
postkick
postlock
postlog
postmap
postqueue
postsuper
pr
pread
preadv
printcap
printenv
printf
proc
procfs
profil
protocols
prove
proxymap
ps
psed
psroff
pstruct
ptrace
publickey
pushd
puts
pwd
pwrite
pwritev
qmgr
qmqpd
quota
quotactl
radiobutton
raise
rand
ranlib
rcp
rcs
rcsclean
rcsdiff
rcsfile
rcsfreeze
rcsintro
rcsmerge
read
readelf
readlink
readonly
readv
realpath
reboot
recv
recvfrom
recvmsg
red
ree
refer
regexp
registry
regsub
rehash
remote
rename
repeat
replace
req
reset
resolver
resource
return
rev
revoke
rfcomm_sppd
rfork
rhosts
ripemd
ripemd160
rlog
rlogin
rm
rmd160
rmdir
rpc
rpcgen
rs
rsa
rsautl
rsh
rtld
rtprio
rup
ruptime
rusers
rwall
rwho
s2p
safe
sasl
sasldblistusers2
saslpasswd2
sbrk
scache
scale
scan
sched
sched_getparam
sched_getscheduler
sched_get_priority_max
sched_get_priority_min
sched_rr_get_interval
sched_setparam
sched_setscheduler
sched_yield
scon
scp
script
scrollbar
sdiff
sed
seek
select
selection
semctl
semget
semop
send
sendbug
sendfile
sendmail
sendmsg
sendto
services
sess_id
set
setegid
setenv
seteuid
setfacl
setgid
setgroups
setitimer
setlogin
setpgid
setpgrp
setpriority
setregid
setresgid
setresuid
setreuid
setrlimit
setsid
setsockopt
settc
settimeofday
setty
setuid
setvar
sftp
sh
sha
sha1
sha256
shar
shells
shift
shmat
shmctl
shmdt
shmget
showq
shutdown
sigaction
sigaltstack
sigblock
sigmask
sigpause
sigpending
sigprocmask
sigreturn
sigsetmask
sigstack
sigsuspend
sigvec
sigwait
size
slapadd
slapcat
slapd
slapdn
slapindex
slappasswd
slaptest
sleep
slogin
slurpd
smbutil
smime
smtp
smtpd
socket
socketpair
sockstat
soelim
sort
source
spawn
speed
spinbox
spkac
splain
split
squid
squid_ldap_auth
squid_ldap_group
squid_unix_group
sscop
ssh
sshd_config
ssh_config
stab
startslip
stat
statfs
stop
string
strings
strip
stty
su
subst
sum
suspend
swapoff
swapon
switch
symlink
sync
sysarch
syscall
sysconftool
sysconftoolcheck
systat
s_client
s_server
s_time
tabs
tail
talk
tar
tbl
tclsh
tcltest
tclvars
tcopy
tcpdump
tcpslice
tcsh
tee
tell
telltc
telnet
term
termcap
terminfo
test
texindex
texinfo
text
textdomain
tfmtodit
tftp
then
threads
time
tip
tk
tkerror
tkvars
tkwait
tlsmgr
tmac
top
toplevel
touch
tput
tr
trace
trafshow
trap
troff
true
truncate
truss
tset
tsort
tty
ttys
type
tzfile
ui
ul
ulimit
umask
unalias
uname
uncomplete
uncompress
undelete
unexpand
unhash
unifdef
unifdefall
uniq
units
unknown
unlimit
unlink
unmount
unset
unsetenv
until
unvis
update
uplevel
uptime
upvar
usbhidaction
usbhidctl
users
utf8
utimes
utmp
utrace
uudecode
uuencode
uuidgen
vacation
variable
verify
version
vfork
vgrind
vgrindefs
vi
vidcontrol
vidfont
view
virtual
vis
vt220keys
vwait
w
wait
wait3
wait4
waitpid
wall
wc
wget
what
whatis
where
whereis
which
while
who
whoami
whois
window
winfo
wish
wm
write
writev
wtmp
x509
xargs
xgettext
xmlwf
xstr
xsubpp
yacc
yes
ypcat
ypchfn
ypchpass
ypchsh
ypmatch
yppasswd
ypwhich
yyfix
zcat
zcmp
zdiff
zegrep
zfgrep
zforce
zgrep
zmore
znew
_exit
__syscall
 
FreeBSD/Linux/UNIX General Commands Manual
Hypertext Man Pages
perlfaq3
 
PERLFAQ3(1)	       Perl Programmers Reference Guide 	   PERLFAQ3(1)



NAME
       perlfaq3 - Programming Tools ($Revision: 1.56 $, $Date: 2005/12/31
       00:54:37 $)

DESCRIPTION
       This section of the FAQ answers questions related to programmer tools
       and programming support.

       How do I do (anything)?

       Have you looked at CPAN (see perlfaq2)?	The chances are that someone
       has already written a module that can solve your problem.  Have you
       read the appropriate manpages?  Here's a brief index:

	       Basics	       perldata, perlvar, perlsyn, perlop, perlsub
	       Execution       perlrun, perldebug
	       Functions       perlfunc
	       Objects	       perlref, perlmod, perlobj, perltie
	       Data Structures perlref, perllol, perldsc
	       Modules	       perlmod, perlmodlib, perlsub
	       Regexes	       perlre, perlfunc, perlop, perllocale
	       Moving to perl5 perltrap, perl
	       Linking w/C     perlxstut, perlxs, perlcall, perlguts, perlembed
	       Various	       http://www.cpan.org/misc/olddoc/FMTEYEWTK.tgz
			       (not a man-page but still useful, a collection
				of various essays on Perl techniques)

       A crude table of contents for the Perl manpage set is found in perltoc.

       How can I use Perl interactively?

       The typical approach uses the Perl debugger, described in the perlde-
       bug(1) manpage, on an "empty" program, like this:

	   perl -de 42

       Now just type in any legal Perl code, and it will be immediately evalu-
       ated.  You can also examine the symbol table, get stack backtraces,
       check variable values, set breakpoints, and other operations typically
       found in symbolic debuggers.

       Is there a Perl shell?

       The psh (Perl sh) is currently at version 1.8. The Perl Shell is a
       shell that combines the interactive nature of a Unix shell with the
       power of Perl. The goal is a full featured shell that behaves as
       expected for normal shell activity and uses Perl syntax and functional-
       ity for control-flow statements and other things. You can get psh at
       http://sourceforge.net/projects/psh/ .

       Zoidberg is a similar project and provides a shell written in perl,
       configured in perl and operated in perl. It is intended as a login
       shell and development environment. It can be found at http://zoid-
       berg.sf.net/ or your local CPAN mirror.

       The Shell.pm module (distributed with Perl) makes Perl try commands
       which aren't part of the Perl language as shell commands.  perlsh from
       the source distribution is simplistic and uninteresting, but may still
       be what you want.

       How do I find which modules are installed on my system?

       You can use the ExtUtils::Installed module to show all installed dis-
       tributions, although it can take awhile to do its magic.  The standard
       library which comes with Perl just shows up as "Perl" (although you can
       get those with Module::CoreList).

	       use ExtUtils::Installed;

	       my $inst    = ExtUtils::Installed->new();
	       my @modules = $inst->modules();

       If you want a list of all of the Perl module filenames, you can use
       File::Find::Rule.

	       use File::Find::Rule;

	       my @files = File::Find::Rule->file()->name( '*.pm' )->in( @INC );

       If you do not have that module, you can do the same thing with
       File::Find which is part of the standard library.

	   use File::Find;
	   my @files;

	   find(
	     sub {
	       push @files, $File::Find::name
		       if -f $File::Find::name && /\.pm$/
	       },

	     @INC
	     );

	       print join "\n", @files;

       If you simply need to quickly check to see if a module is available,
       you can check for its documentation.  If you can read the documentation
       the module is most likely installed.  If you cannot read the documenta-
       tion, the module might not have any (in rare cases).

	       prompt% perldoc Module::Name

       You can also try to include the module in a one-liner to see if perl
       finds it.

	       perl -MModule::Name -e1

       How do I debug my Perl programs?

       Have you tried "use warnings" or used "-w"?  They enable warnings to
       detect dubious practices.

       Have you tried "use strict"?  It prevents you from using symbolic ref-
       erences, makes you predeclare any subroutines that you call as bare
       words, and (probably most importantly) forces you to predeclare your
       variables with "my", "our", or "use vars".

       Did you check the return values of each and every system call?  The
       operating system (and thus Perl) tells you whether they worked, and if
       not why.

	 open(FH, "> /etc/cantwrite")
	   or die "Couldn't write to /etc/cantwrite: $!\n";

       Did you read perltrap?  It's full of gotchas for old and new Perl pro-
       grammers and even has sections for those of you who are upgrading from
       languages like awk and C.

       Have you tried the Perl debugger, described in perldebug?  You can step
       through your program and see what it's doing and thus work out why what
       it's doing isn't what it should be doing.

       How do I profile my Perl programs?

       You should get the Devel::DProf module from the standard distribution
       (or separately on CPAN) and also use Benchmark.pm from the standard
       distribution.  The Benchmark module lets you time specific portions of
       your code, while Devel::DProf gives detailed breakdowns of where your
       code spends its time.

       Here's a sample use of Benchmark:

	 use Benchmark;

	 @junk = `cat /etc/motd`;
	 $count = 10_000;

	 timethese($count, {
		   'map' => sub { my @a = @junk;
				  map { s/a/b/ } @a;
				  return @a },
		   'for' => sub { my @a = @junk;
				  for (@a) { s/a/b/ };
				  return @a },
		  });

       This is what it prints (on one machine--your results will be dependent
       on your hardware, operating system, and the load on your machine):

	 Benchmark: timing 10000 iterations of for, map...
		for:  4 secs ( 3.97 usr  0.01 sys =  3.98 cpu)
		map:  6 secs ( 4.97 usr  0.00 sys =  4.97 cpu)

       Be aware that a good benchmark is very hard to write.  It only tests
       the data you give it and proves little about the differing complexities
       of contrasting algorithms.

       How do I cross-reference my Perl programs?

       The B::Xref module can be used to generate cross-reference reports for
       Perl programs.

	   perl -MO=Xref[,OPTIONS] scriptname.plx

       Is there a pretty-printer (formatter) for Perl?

       Perltidy is a Perl script which indents and reformats Perl scripts to
       make them easier to read by trying to follow the rules of the perl-
       style. If you write Perl scripts, or spend much time reading them, you
       will probably find it useful.  It is available at
       http://perltidy.sourceforge.net

       Of course, if you simply follow the guidelines in perlstyle, you
       shouldn't need to reformat.  The habit of formatting your code as you
       write it will help prevent bugs.  Your editor can and should help you
       with this.  The perl-mode or newer cperl-mode for emacs can provide
       remarkable amounts of help with most (but not all) code, and even less
       programmable editors can provide significant assistance.  Tom Chris-
       tiansen and many other VI users	swear by the following settings in vi
       and its clones:

	   set ai sw=4
	   map! ^O {^M}^[O^T

       Put that in your .exrc file (replacing the caret characters with con-
       trol characters) and away you go.  In insert mode, ^T is for indenting,
       ^D is for undenting, and ^O is for blockdenting-- as it were.  A more
       complete example, with comments, can be found at
       http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/TOMC/scripts/toms.exrc.gz

       The a2ps http://www-inf.enst.fr/%7Edemaille/a2ps/black+white.ps.gz does
       lots of things related to generating nicely printed output of docu-
       ments, as does enscript at http://people.ssh.fi/mtr/genscript/ .

       Is there a ctags for Perl?

       (contributed by brian d foy)

       Exuberent ctags supports Perl: http://ctags.sourceforge.net/

       You might also try pltags: http://www.mscha.com/pltags.zip

       Is there an IDE or Windows Perl Editor?

       Perl programs are just plain text, so any editor will do.

       If you're on Unix, you already have an IDE--Unix itself.  The UNIX phi-
       losophy is the philosophy of several small tools that each do one thing
       and do it well.	It's like a carpenter's toolbox.

       If you want an IDE, check the following (in alphabetical order, not
       order of preference):

       Eclipse
	   http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/

	   The Eclipse Perl Integration Project integrates Perl editing/debug-
	   ging with Eclipse.

       Enginsite
	   http://www.enginsite.com/

	   Perl Editor by EngInSite is a complete integrated development envi-
	   ronment (IDE) for creating, testing, and  debugging	Perl scripts;
	   the tool runs on Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP or later.

       Komodo
	   http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Komodo/

	   ActiveState's cross-platform (as of October 2004, that's Windows,
	   Linux, and Solaris), multi-language IDE has Perl support, including
	   a regular expression debugger and remote debugging.

       Open Perl IDE
	   http://open-perl-ide.sourceforge.net/

	   Open Perl IDE is an integrated development environment for writing
	   and debugging Perl scripts with ActiveState's ActivePerl distribu-
	   tion under Windows 95/98/NT/2000.

       OptiPerl
	   http://www.optiperl.com/

	   OptiPerl is a Windows IDE with simulated CGI environment, including
	   debugger and syntax highlighting editor.

       PerlBuilder
	   http://www.solutionsoft.com/perl.htm

	   PerlBuidler is an integrated development environment for Windows
	   that supports Perl development.

       visiPerl+
	   http://helpconsulting.net/visiperl/

	   From Help Consulting, for Windows.

       Visual Perl
	   http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_Perl/

	   Visual Perl is a Visual Studio.NET plug-in from ActiveState.

       Zeus
	   http://www.zeusedit.com/lookmain.html

	   Zeus for Window is another Win32 multi-language editor/IDE that
	   comes with support for Perl:

       For editors: if you're on Unix you probably have vi or a vi clone
       already, and possibly an emacs too, so you may not need to download
       anything. In any emacs the cperl-mode (M-x cperl-mode) gives you per-
       haps the best available Perl editing mode in any editor.

       If you are using Windows, you can use any editor that lets you work
       with plain text, such as NotePad or WordPad.  Word processors, such as
       Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, typically do not work since they insert
       all sorts of behind-the-scenes information, although some allow you to
       save files as "Text Only". You can also download text editors designed
       specifically for programming, such as Textpad ( http://www.textpad.com/
       ) and UltraEdit ( http://www.ultraedit.com/ ), among others.

       If you are using MacOS, the same concerns apply.  MacPerl (for Classic
       environments) comes with a simple editor. Popular external editors are
       BBEdit ( http://www.bbedit.com/ ) or Alpha (
       http://www.his.com/~jguyer/Alpha/Alpha8.html ). MacOS X users can use
       Unix editors as well. Neil Bowers (the man behind Geekcruises) has a
       list of Mac editors that can handle Perl ( http://www.neilbow-
       ers.org/macperleditors.html ).

       GNU Emacs
	   http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html

       MicroEMACS
	   http://www.microemacs.de/

       XEmacs
	   http://www.xemacs.org/Download/index.html

       Jed http://space.mit.edu/~davis/jed/

       or a vi clone such as

       Elvis
	   ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/elvis/ http://www.fh-wedel.de/elvis/

       Vile
	   http://dickey.his.com/vile/vile.html

       Vim http://www.vim.org/

       For vi lovers in general, Windows or elsewhere:

	       http://www.thomer.com/thomer/vi/vi.html

       nvi ( http://www.bostic.com/vi/ , available from CPAN in src/misc/) is
       yet another vi clone, unfortunately not available for Windows, but in
       UNIX platforms you might be interested in trying it out, firstly
       because strictly speaking it is not a vi clone, it is the real vi, or
       the new incarnation of it, and secondly because you can embed Perl
       inside it to use Perl as the scripting language.  nvi is not alone in
       this, though: at least also vim and vile offer an embedded Perl.

       The following are Win32 multilanguage editor/IDESs that support Perl:

       Codewright
	   http://www.borland.com/codewright/

       MultiEdit
	   http://www.MultiEdit.com/

       SlickEdit
	   http://www.slickedit.com/

       There is also a toyedit Text widget based editor written in Perl that
       is distributed with the Tk module on CPAN.  The ptkdb (
       http://world.std.com/~aep/ptkdb/ ) is a Perl/tk based debugger that
       acts as a development environment of sorts.  Perl Composer (
       http://perlcomposer.sourceforge.net/ ) is an IDE for Perl/Tk GUI cre-
       ation.

       In addition to an editor/IDE you might be interested in a more powerful
       shell environment for Win32.  Your options include

       Bash
	   from the Cygwin package ( http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ )

       Ksh from the MKS Toolkit ( http://www.mks.com/ ), or the Bourne shell
	   of the U/WIN environment (
	   http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/ )

       Tcsh
	   ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/tcsh/ , see also http://www.pri-
	   mate.wisc.edu/software/csh-tcsh-book/

       Zsh ftp://ftp.blarg.net/users/amol/zsh/ , see also http://www.zsh.org/

       MKS and U/WIN are commercial (U/WIN is free for educational and
       research purposes), Cygwin is covered by the GNU Public License (but
       that shouldn't matter for Perl use).  The Cygwin, MKS, and U/WIN all
       contain (in addition to the shells) a comprehensive set of standard
       UNIX toolkit utilities.

       If you're transferring text files between Unix and Windows using FTP be
       sure to transfer them in ASCII mode so the ends of lines are appropri-
       ately converted.

       On Mac OS the MacPerl Application comes with a simple 32k text editor
       that behaves like a rudimentary IDE.  In contrast to the MacPerl Appli-
       cation the MPW Perl tool can make use of the MPW Shell itself as an
       editor (with no 32k limit).

       Affrus
	   is a full Perl development environment with full debugger support (
	   http://www.latenightsw.com ).

       Alpha
	   is an editor, written and extensible in Tcl, that nonetheless has
	   built in support for several popular markup and programming lan-
	   guages including Perl and HTML (
	   http://www.his.com/~jguyer/Alpha/Alpha8.html ).

       BBEdit and BBEdit Lite
	   are text editors for Mac OS that have a Perl sensitivity mode (
	   http://web.barebones.com/ ).

       Pepper and Pe are programming language sensitive text editors for Mac
       OS X and BeOS respectively ( http://www.hekkelman.com/ ).

       Where can I get Perl macros for vi?

       For a complete version of Tom Christiansen's vi configuration file, see
       http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/toms.exrc.gz , the
       standard benchmark file for vi emulators.  The file runs best with nvi,
       the current version of vi out of Berkeley, which incidentally can be
       built with an embedded Perl interpreter--see
       http://www.cpan.org/src/misc/ .

       Where can I get perl-mode for emacs?

       Since Emacs version 19 patchlevel 22 or so, there have been both a
       perl-mode.el and support for the Perl debugger built in.  These should
       come with the standard Emacs 19 distribution.

       In the Perl source directory, you'll find a directory called "emacs",
       which contains a cperl-mode that color-codes keywords, provides con-
       text-sensitive help, and other nifty things.

       Note that the perl-mode of emacs will have fits with "main'foo" (single
       quote), and mess up the indentation and highlighting.  You are probably
       using "main::foo" in new Perl code anyway, so this shouldn't be an
       issue.

       How can I use curses with Perl?

       The Curses module from CPAN provides a dynamically loadable object mod-
       ule interface to a curses library.  A small demo can be found at the
       directory http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/rep.gz ;
       this program repeats a command and updates the screen as needed, ren-
       dering rep ps axu similar to top.

       How can I use X or Tk with Perl?

       Tk is a completely Perl-based, object-oriented interface to the Tk
       toolkit that doesn't force you to use Tcl just to get at Tk.  Sx is an
       interface to the Athena Widget set.  Both are available from CPAN.  See
       the directory http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-category/08_User_Inter-
       faces/

       Invaluable for Perl/Tk programming are the Perl/Tk FAQ at http://pha-
       seit.net/claird/comp.lang.perl.tk/ptkFAQ.html , the Perl/Tk Reference
       Guide available at http://www.cpan.org/authors/Stephen_O_Lidie/ , and
       the online manpages at http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/%7Eamund-
       son/perl/perltk/toc.html .

       How can I make my Perl program run faster?

       The best way to do this is to come up with a better algorithm.  This
       can often make a dramatic difference.  Jon Bentley's book Programming
       Pearls (that's not a misspelling!)  has some good tips on optimization,
       too.  Advice on benchmarking boils down to: benchmark and profile to
       make sure you're optimizing the right part, look for better algorithms
       instead of microtuning your code, and when all else fails consider just
       buying faster hardware.	You will probably want to read the answer to
       the earlier question "How do I profile my Perl programs?" if you
       haven't done so already.

       A different approach is to autoload seldom-used Perl code.  See the
       AutoSplit and AutoLoader modules in the standard distribution for that.
       Or you could locate the bottleneck and think about writing just that
       part in C, the way we used to take bottlenecks in C code and write them
       in assembler.  Similar to rewriting in C, modules that have critical
       sections can be written in C (for instance, the PDL module from CPAN).

       If you're currently linking your perl executable to a shared libc.so,
       you can often gain a 10-25% performance benefit by rebuilding it to
       link with a static libc.a instead.  This will make a bigger perl exe-
       cutable, but your Perl programs (and programmers) may thank you for it.
       See the INSTALL file in the source distribution for more information.

       The undump program was an ancient attempt to speed up Perl program by
       storing the already-compiled form to disk.  This is no longer a viable
       option, as it only worked on a few architectures, and wasn't a good
       solution anyway.

       How can I make my Perl program take less memory?

       When it comes to time-space tradeoffs, Perl nearly always prefers to
       throw memory at a problem.  Scalars in Perl use more memory than
       strings in C, arrays take more than that, and hashes use even more.
       While there's still a lot to be done, recent releases have been
       addressing these issues.  For example, as of 5.004, duplicate hash keys
       are shared amongst all hashes using them, so require no reallocation.

       In some cases, using substr() or vec() to simulate arrays can be highly
       beneficial.  For example, an array of a thousand booleans will take at
       least 20,000 bytes of space, but it can be turned into one 125-byte bit
       vector--a considerable memory savings.  The standard Tie::SubstrHash
       module can also help for certain types of data structure.  If you're
       working with specialist data structures (matrices, for instance) mod-
       ules that implement these in C may use less memory than equivalent Perl
       modules.

       Another thing to try is learning whether your Perl was compiled with
       the system malloc or with Perl's builtin malloc.  Whichever one it is,
       try using the other one and see whether this makes a difference.
       Information about malloc is in the INSTALL file in the source distribu-
       tion.  You can find out whether you are using perl's malloc by typing
       "perl -V:usemymalloc".

       Of course, the best way to save memory is to not do anything to waste
       it in the first place. Good programming practices can go a long way
       toward this:

       * Don't slurp!
	   Don't read an entire file into memory if you can process it line by
	   line. Or more concretely, use a loop like this:

		   #
		   # Good Idea
		   #
		   while () {
		      # ...
		   }

	   instead of this:

		   #
		   # Bad Idea
		   #
		   @data = ;
		   foreach (@data) {
		       # ...
		   }

	   When the files you're processing are small, it doesn't much matter
	   which way you do it, but it makes a huge difference when they start
	   getting larger.

       * Use map and grep selectively
	   Remember that both map and grep expect a LIST argument, so doing
	   this:

		   @wanted = grep {/pattern/} ;

	   will cause the entire file to be slurped. For large files, it's
	   better to loop:

		   while () {
			   push(@wanted, $_) if /pattern/;
		   }

       * Avoid unnecessary quotes and stringification
	   Don't quote large strings unless absolutely necessary:

		   my $copy = "$large_string";

	   makes 2 copies of $large_string (one for $copy and another for the
	   quotes), whereas

		   my $copy = $large_string;

	   only makes one copy.

	   Ditto for stringifying large arrays:

		   {
			   local $, = "\n";
			   print @big_array;
		   }

	   is much more memory-efficient than either

		   print join "\n", @big_array;

	   or

		   {
			   local $" = "\n";
			   print "@big_array";
		   }

       * Pass by reference
	   Pass arrays and hashes by reference, not by value. For one thing,
	   it's the only way to pass multiple lists or hashes (or both) in a
	   single call/return. It also avoids creating a copy of all the con-
	   tents. This requires some judgment, however, because any changes
	   will be propagated back to the original data. If you really want to
	   mangle (er, modify) a copy, you'll have to sacrifice the memory
	   needed to make one.

       * Tie large variables to disk.
	   For "big" data stores (i.e. ones that exceed available memory) con-
	   sider using one of the DB modules to store it on disk instead of in
	   RAM. This will incur a penalty in access time, but that's probably
	   better than causing your hard disk to thrash due to massive swap-
	   ping.

       Is it safe to return a reference to local or lexical data?

       Yes. Perl's garbage collection system takes care of this so everything
       works out right.

	   sub makeone {
	       my @a = ( 1 .. 10 );
	       return \@a;
	   }

	   for ( 1 .. 10 ) {
	       push @many, makeone();
	   }

	   print $many[4][5], "\n";

	   print "@many\n";

       How can I free an array or hash so my program shrinks?

       (contributed by Michael Carman)

       You usually can't. Memory allocated to lexicals (i.e. my() variables)
       cannot be reclaimed or reused even if they go out of scope. It is
       reserved in case the variables come back into scope. Memory allocated
       to global variables can be reused (within your program) by using
       undef()ing and/or delete().

       On most operating systems, memory allocated to a program can never be
       returned to the system. That's why long-running programs sometimes re-
       exec themselves. Some operating systems (notably, systems that use
       mmap(2) for allocating large chunks of memory) can reclaim memory that
       is no longer used, but on such systems, perl must be configured and
       compiled to use the OS's malloc, not perl's.

       In general, memory allocation and de-allocation isn't something you can
       or should be worrying about much in Perl.

       See also "How can I make my Perl program take less memory?"

       How can I make my CGI script more efficient?

       Beyond the normal measures described to make general Perl programs
       faster or smaller, a CGI program has additional issues.	It may be run
       several times per second.  Given that each time it runs it will need to
       be re-compiled and will often allocate a megabyte or more of system
       memory, this can be a killer.  Compiling into C isn't going to help you
       because the process start-up overhead is where the bottleneck is.

       There are two popular ways to avoid this overhead.  One solution
       involves running the Apache HTTP server (available from
       http://www.apache.org/ ) with either of the mod_perl or mod_fastcgi
       plugin modules.

       With mod_perl and the Apache::Registry module (distributed with
       mod_perl), httpd will run with an embedded Perl interpreter which pre-
       compiles your script and then executes it within the same address space
       without forking.  The Apache extension also gives Perl access to the
       internal server API, so modules written in Perl can do just about any-
       thing a module written in C can.  For more on mod_perl, see
       http://perl.apache.org/

       With the FCGI module (from CPAN) and the mod_fastcgi module (available
       from http://www.fastcgi.com/ ) each of your Perl programs becomes a
       permanent CGI daemon process.

       Both of these solutions can have far-reaching effects on your system
       and on the way you write your CGI programs, so investigate them with
       care.

       See http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-cate-
       gory/15_World_Wide_Web_HTML_HTTP_CGI/ .

       How can I hide the source for my Perl program?

       Delete it. :-) Seriously, there are a number of (mostly unsatisfactory)
       solutions with varying levels of "security".

       First of all, however, you can't take away read permission, because the
       source code has to be readable in order to be compiled and interpreted.
       (That doesn't mean that a CGI script's source is readable by people on
       the web, though--only by people with access to the filesystem.)	So you
       have to leave the permissions at the socially friendly 0755 level.

       Some people regard this as a security problem.  If your program does
       insecure things and relies on people not knowing how to exploit those
       insecurities, it is not secure.	It is often possible for someone to
       determine the insecure things and exploit them without viewing the
       source.	Security through obscurity, the name for hiding your bugs
       instead of fixing them, is little security indeed.

       You can try using encryption via source filters (Starting from Perl 5.8
       the Filter::Simple and Filter::Util::Call modules are included in the
       standard distribution), but any decent programmer will be able to
       decrypt it.  You can try using the byte code compiler and interpreter
       described below, but the curious might still be able to de-compile it.
       You can try using the native-code compiler described below, but crack-
       ers might be able to disassemble it.  These pose varying degrees of
       difficulty to people wanting to get at your code, but none can defini-
       tively conceal it (true of every language, not just Perl).

       It is very easy to recover the source of Perl programs.	You simply
       feed the program to the perl interpreter and use the modules in the B::
       hierarchy.  The B::Deparse module should be able to defeat most
       attempts to hide source.  Again, this is not unique to Perl.

       If you're concerned about people profiting from your code, then the
       bottom line is that nothing but a restrictive license will give you
       legal security.	License your software and pepper it with threatening
       statements like "This is unpublished proprietary software of XYZ Corp.
       Your access to it does not give you permission to use it blah blah
       blah."  We are not lawyers, of course, so you should see a lawyer if
       you want to be sure your license's wording will stand up in court.

       How can I compile my Perl program into byte code or C?

       (contributed by brian d foy)

       In general, you can't do this.  There are some things that may work for
       your situation though.  People usually ask this question because they
       want to distribute their works without giving away the source code, and
       most solutions trade disk space for convenience.  You probably won't
       see much of a speed increase either, since most solutions simply bundle
       a Perl interpreter in the final product (but see "How can I make my
       Perl program run faster?").

       The Perl Archive Toolkit ( http://par.perl.org/index.cgi ) is Perl's
       analog to Java's JAR.  It's freely available and on CPAN (
       http://search.cpan.org/dist/PAR/ ).

       The B::* namespace, often called "the Perl compiler", but is really a
       way for Perl programs to peek at its innards rather than create pre-
       compiled versions of your program.  However. the B::Bytecode module can
       turn your script  into a bytecode format that could be loaded later by
       the ByteLoader module and executed as a regular Perl script.

       There are also some commercial products that may work for you, although
       you have to buy a license for them.

       The Perl Dev Kit ( http://www.activestate.com/Products/Perl_Dev_Kit/ )
       from ActiveState can "Turn your Perl programs into ready-to-run exe-
       cutables for HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and Windows."

       Perl2Exe ( http://www.indigostar.com/perl2exe.htm ) is a command line
       program for converting perl scripts to executable files.  It targets
       both Windows and unix platforms.

       How can I compile Perl into Java?

       You can also integrate Java and Perl with the Perl Resource Kit from
       O'Reilly Media.	See http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prkunix/ .

       Perl 5.6 comes with Java Perl Lingo, or JPL.  JPL, still in develop-
       ment, allows Perl code to be called from Java.  See jpl/README in the
       Perl source tree.

       How can I get "#!perl" to work on [MS-DOS,NT,...]?

       For OS/2 just use

	   extproc perl -S -your_switches

       as the first line in "*.cmd" file ("-S" due to a bug in cmd.exe's
       "extproc" handling).  For DOS one should first invent a corresponding
       batch file and codify it in "ALTERNATE_SHEBANG" (see the dosish.h file
       in the source distribution for more information).

       The Win95/NT installation, when using the ActiveState port of Perl,
       will modify the Registry to associate the ".pl" extension with the perl
       interpreter.  If you install another port, perhaps even building your
       own Win95/NT Perl from the standard sources by using a Windows port of
       gcc (e.g., with cygwin or mingw32), then you'll have to modify the Reg-
       istry yourself.	In addition to associating ".pl" with the interpreter,
       NT people can use: "SET PATHEXT=%PATHEXT%;.PL" to let them run the pro-
       gram "install-linux.pl" merely by typing "install-linux".

       Under "Classic" MacOS, a perl program will have the appropriate Creator
       and Type, so that double-clicking them will invoke the MacPerl applica-
       tion.  Under Mac OS X, clickable apps can be made from any "#!" script
       using Wil Sanchez' DropScript utility: http://www.wsanchez.net/soft-
       ware/ .

       IMPORTANT!: Whatever you do, PLEASE don't get frustrated, and just
       throw the perl interpreter into your cgi-bin directory, in order to get
       your programs working for a web server.	This is an EXTREMELY big secu-
       rity risk.  Take the time to figure out how to do it correctly.

       Can I write useful Perl programs on the command line?

       Yes.  Read perlrun for more information.  Some examples follow.	(These
       assume standard Unix shell quoting rules.)

	   # sum first and last fields
	   perl -lane 'print $F[0] + $F[-1]' *

	   # identify text files
	   perl -le 'for(@ARGV) {print if -f && -T _}' *

	   # remove (most) comments from C program
	   perl -0777 -pe 's{/\*.*?\*/}{}gs' foo.c

	   # make file a month younger than today, defeating reaper daemons
	   perl -e '$X=24*60*60; utime(time(),time() + 30 * $X,@ARGV)' *

	   # find first unused uid
	   perl -le '$i++ while getpwuid($i); print $i'

	   # display reasonable manpath
	   echo $PATH | perl -nl -072 -e '
	       s![^/+]*$!man!&&-d&&!$s{$_}++&&push@m,$_;END{print"@m"}'

       OK, the last one was actually an Obfuscated Perl Contest entry. :-)

       Why don't Perl one-liners work on my DOS/Mac/VMS system?

       The problem is usually that the command interpreters on those systems
       have rather different ideas about quoting than the Unix shells under
       which the one-liners were created.  On some systems, you may have to
       change single-quotes to double ones, which you must NOT do on Unix or
       Plan9 systems.  You might also have to change a single % to a %%.

       For example:

	   # Unix
	   perl -e 'print "Hello world\n"'

	   # DOS, etc.
	   perl -e "print \"Hello world\n\""

	   # Mac
	   print "Hello world\n"
	    (then Run "Myscript" or Shift-Command-R)

	   # MPW
	   perl -e 'print "Hello world\n"'

	   # VMS
	   perl -e "print ""Hello world\n"""

       The problem is that none of these examples are reliable: they depend on
       the command interpreter.  Under Unix, the first two often work. Under
       DOS, it's entirely possible that neither works.	If 4DOS was the com-
       mand shell, you'd probably have better luck like this:

	 perl -e "print "Hello world\n""

       Under the Mac, it depends which environment you are using.  The MacPerl
       shell, or MPW, is much like Unix shells in its support for several
       quoting variants, except that it makes free use of the Mac's non-ASCII
       characters as control characters.

       Using qq(), q(), and qx(), instead of "double quotes", 'single quotes',
       and `backticks`, may make one-liners easier to write.

       There is no general solution to all of this.  It is a mess.

       [Some of this answer was contributed by Kenneth Albanowski.]

       Where can I learn about CGI or Web programming in Perl?

       For modules, get the CGI or LWP modules from CPAN.  For textbooks, see
       the two especially dedicated to web stuff in the question on books.
       For problems and questions related to the web, like "Why do I get 500
       Errors" or "Why doesn't it run from the browser right when it runs fine
       on the command line", see the troubleshooting guides and references in
       perlfaq9 or in the CGI MetaFAQ:

	       http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html

       Where can I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?

       A good place to start is perltoot, and you can use perlobj, perlboot,
       perltoot, perltooc, and perlbot for reference.

       A good book on OO on Perl is the "Object-Oriented Perl" by Damian Con-
       way from Manning Publications, or "Learning Perl References, Objects, &
       Modules" by Randal Schwartz and Tom Phoenix from O'Reilly Media.

       Where can I learn about linking C with Perl?

       If you want to call C from Perl, start with perlxstut, moving on to
       perlxs, xsubpp, and perlguts.  If you want to call Perl from C, then
       read perlembed, perlcall, and perlguts.	Don't forget that you can
       learn a lot from looking at how the authors of existing extension mod-
       ules wrote their code and solved their problems.

       You might not need all the power of XS. The Inline::C module lets you
       put C code directly in your Perl source. It handles all the magic to
       make it work. You still have to learn at least some of the perl API but
       you won't have to deal with the complexity of the XS support files.

       I've read perlembed, perlguts, etc., but I can't embed perl in my C
       program; what am I doing wrong?

       Download the ExtUtils::Embed kit from CPAN and run `make test'.	If the
       tests pass, read the pods again and again and again.  If they fail, see
       perlbug and send a bug report with the output of "make test TEST_VER-
       BOSE=1" along with "perl -V".

       When I tried to run my script, I got this message. What does it mean?

       A complete list of Perl's error messages and warnings with explanatory
       text can be found in perldiag. You can also use the splain program
       (distributed with Perl) to explain the error messages:

	   perl program 2>diag.out
	   splain [-v] [-p] diag.out

       or change your program to explain the messages for you:

	   use diagnostics;

       or

	   use diagnostics -verbose;

       What's MakeMaker?

       This module (part of the standard Perl distribution) is designed to
       write a Makefile for an extension module from a Makefile.PL.  For more
       information, see ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (c) 1997-2006 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and other
       authors as noted. All rights reserved.

       This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.

       Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the
       public domain.  You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and
       any derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as
       you see fit.  A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ
       would be courteous but is not required.



perl v5.8.8			  2006-01-07			   PERLFAQ3(1)
=19198
+516
(84)