[Chicago-talk] perl question

[Jason Rexilius]

I think the poor guys brain is going to pop with that one ;-)

But yes, it is difficult to write a single perl program and have it 
truly cross platform.

I think the best way to get started is reading the various books people 
have mentioned and getting a windows box loaded with Active State's perl 
and a linux box and start hacking.

I learned perl by coding, as I think most people did, so I always 
advocate jumping right in and giving it a try.

One of the many things I love about perl is that you dont have to 
compile it and you can test every little change right as you are making 
it.  Really friendly to rapid learning and development.


Steven Lembark wrote:
>> But the key is you don't have to compile it to run it on Linux.  I
>> think the original poster doesn't realize that you don't have to
>> compile it.
> 
> Actually, Perl is a compiled language: always has been.
> The perl executable performs the compile automatically
> as part of running the code (sort of like gcc calling
> the assembler for you to create object files). That
> provides the portability between systems (source is the
> only thing that has to be moved). It's also why calling
> Perl an "interpreter" is incorrect: the execution
> engine doesn't have to re-interpret the source as, say,
> a shell program would be.
> 
> Beyond the code itself, however, many functins within
> Perl are rather specific to *NIX. The password and
> group lookups return a gecos filed, for example, that
> has nada to do with msdog or VMS.
> 
> The O'Reilly perl for SysAdmins book gives a good
> look at writing cross-platform coding (e.g., using
> File::Spec instead of join '/', @dirz, $basename).
>