[Pdx-pm] Pdx-pm-list Digest, Vol 48, Issue 7

[Donald Richardson]

Noj.I don't know about Tiger, but whenever I get failure to install
XML::Parser it's because, for some reason unknown to me, it fails to compile
the Expat libs. I usually just do an apt-get (probably fink for you) for
lib-expat1 (I can't remember if you also need the lib-expat1-dev package).  

If I'm totally off-base with this, then you'll have to provide some
additional info.

Donny
> I've messed around with Perl for awhile, but I keep running into Perl
> Module Hell.  I'll spend a few hours/days trying to figure out CPAN,
> but it always seems less trouble to rewrite stuff from scratch than
> find that initial foothold on the CPAN climbing wall.  Frustratingly,
> all the material on it seems to take for granted that you already know
> CPAN and/or how to customize a makefile.  I want to do things the
> 'right' way, but I can't find a path up.
> 
> I keep seeing the phrase (sarcastic?) 'an easy install from CPAN', but
> when I tried running CPAN (most recently on a vanilla MacOS X Tiger),
> typed something like 'install XML::Parser' at the 'cpan>' prompt, it
> just keep saying things like 'depends on [some other module],
> prepend?', then lots of stuff scrolls by, and it asks to prepend
> another module, sometimes a newer version of the same packages, and
> finally wraps it up with a 'install failed' after 5+ minutes of this.
> Then I see some reference to using sudo, and warnings some packages
> would clobber existing stuff in /usr/bin if there was a name conflict,
> so change the default directory in the makefile, etc etc.  Seems
> pretty dodgy.
> 
> Is there any reference page on how to just get something like
> XML::Parser working on a vanilla MacOS X Tiger?  Can I get some advice
> on how to learn CPAN without already knowing how to use CPAN?
> 
> Most immediately, I'm trying to open a UTF-8 XML file.  If I read it
> using 'while (<>)', I get junk.  This is perl, v5.8.6 built for
> darwin-thread-multi-2level.  Am I on the right track trying to use
> XML::Parser?
> 
> Thanks in Advance.
> 
> Noj