[Melbourne-pm] Bamboozled by perl

[ajthornton]

        Hello
             I am a student of graphics design and .NET/java/XML
programming. I don't know what sort of skillset this leads to -
computational graphics designer!? :)

             Anyway, I don't mean by the above to imply that I have any
ability at, or knowledge of, programming. In fact I am an idiot at computers
in general. Anyway, after resurrecting a 64 MB RAM Packard Bell computer,
nuking Windows 98 with GpARTED, and putting in Puppy Linux 4.3 instead,
maybe I know a little bit. It is completely offline and unless I can find an
ancient hard modem will never go  online. Anyway, Puppy Linux has one
programming language already on it: Perl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [from
memory 5.8 or something]. Puppy also has a primitive but effective text
style IDE. 

            So I thought after going to the trouble of resurrecting such a
monster and finding Perl on it, that I would put aside my loathing for Perl
that I have said on this list many times, and at least mess about with some
very simple Perl programs. 

            So I started with my main online PC [this one: a dual booted
Windows XP/kubuntu 9.04 box] and found strawberry perl. Downloaded starberry
perl, it pops up in -v in windows cmd line, and has the cpan etc things
[whatever cpan is] in the program list. So I got out notepad and cut and
pasted a program into notepad++:

            #!/usr/local/bin/perl
#
# Program to do the obvious
#
print 'Hello world.';		# Print a message


            ***
               Then I saved this as perlme.pl and put it in the Perl bin
part of strawberry dir [I don't why this usually works - but I did find with
Ruby that I have to whack the sourcew code file into the bin folder for the
program to work on command line]. So I went to cmd in windows and typed
perlme.pl and windows notepad appears with the entire raw sourcecode in it.
Not the desired outcome. Then I search for forums. There is so much stuff on
the net that I am bamboozled and forums for beginners appear to be lost in
the fog. 

            OK. If anyone feels that as a beginner that I am intruding on
the list I will say this much: [1] the above pt is where more people give up
a programming language entirely - no contest - they can't get perl-v to pop
up in the command line, basically can't get the car to start. [2] Some of
you teach Perl. The above is pretty much the thought process of someone who
tries perl for about the first 5 mins. 

            I have lost count of the number of languages that I have
downloaded the guts of it and gone cmd/language blahblah -v and seen "file
not recognised" and turned my back on it. There is a reason why I use mainly
IDEs. My track record for getting command line programming to work is pretty
lousy. I have Netbeans. IDE. I have QT4. IDE. I have Pelles. IDE. So if
somebody can come up with a Perl IDE, yeah, I will use that.

            John