SPUG: Windows Newbie Needs Help

[Creede Lambard]

Don't worry about it, Bogdan. It all makes sense when you've done it for a
bit but at first Perl can be intimidating.

It looks like your copy of Perl is installed properly, so to run a program
that's on disk you can do something like

   perl C:\scripts\myperlscript.pl

When the book has an example that you type on one line, they may have
forgotten to mention the "-e" switch, which basically means "treat this next
string coming up as a little perl program." So in the example you give, you
would type

  perl -e "print 'This is a string!'; "

You have to use double quotes or the Win32 Perl interpreter gets annoyed.
This could cause other problems if you try to run one-liners written for
Unix, but for now the above will work for you.

Most people I know recommend the book "Learning Perl for Win32 Systems" from
O'Reilly and Associates as the best place to start learning Perl and
consider "Perl for Dummies" to be of suspect quality. I haven't looked at
the Dummies book in a while, but I can recommend "Learning Perl for Win32
Systems" quite highly.

Cheers,

-- Creede

Creede Lambard      | Never rush a miracle man.
Senior Developer    | You get rotten miracles.
Reynolds & Reynolds |
creede at rrauto.com   | - Miracle Max,
                    |    The Princess Bride


----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Maher/CONSULTIX <tim at consultix-inc.com>
To: <spug-list at pm.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 11:32 AM
Subject: SPUG: Windows Newbie Needs Help


> Hello SPUG,
> my name is Bogdan Vladu and I am currently trying to educate myself in
Perl.
> I am using "Perl for Dummies 2nd edition" by Paul Hoffman.
> Although the book makes sense (so far ...) I am unable to put in practice
> what I am reading (learning ?!).
> I am a totally neophite to the programming field and my only experience
with
> programming was in college, struggling to write and understand "Fortran".
> Anyway, I installed Perl version 5.005 on Windows '95 but have no clue how
> to proceed to run loaded programs (from the accompanying CD-Rom) or basic
> commands such as "print".
> For example, while typing (this is the actual line on the ms-dos prompt)
> the reply appears.
>
> C:\Perl>perl print "This is a string!" ;
> Can't open perl script "print": No such file or directory
>
> I am aware that I might be stupid but I know that I installed the CD-Rom
> correctly and it seems that numerous files and short programs have been
> installed on the hard drive.
>
> If you guys have can help me with this matter or at least with suggestions
> for a better book that will help me learn Pearl  I'm all ears.
>
> Thank you !
>
> Bogdan Vladu
> bvladu at hotmail.com
>
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