From:             jaf@unb.ca
Date sent:        Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:57:16 -0300 (ADT)
To:               peasley@unb.ca
Subject:          Perl

Perl is installed on all CSD servers/workstations via the path
/usr/local/bin/perl.  There are other ways to get at the program,
however, this path should always get you the most recent version
of Perl available with the richest choice of modules.  Note that
the version of perl available on the Solaris 1 systems is not as
up to date as the Solaris 2 nor are as many modules available.

If you are teaching a course in Perl using our systems, I would
strongly recommend then, that you advise people to use only the
Solaris 2 systems (sol or workstations in D-7 or equivalent
systems.)

To create a Perl script, you can use the editor of your choice.
I would recommend vim (Vi IMproved), a vi compatible superset
with many usability enhancements.  I have a vim tutorial available
based on a seminar which I gave to our IS group at:

  http://www.unb.ca/documentation/UNIX/UNIX.new-user/vim/

You can, however, use any text editor you choose and we have the
standard vi editor as well as emacs available.  You can use 
textedit if you are telnetting to our system from an X server
(an X terminal, a workstation running Motif/CDE/OpenWindows/etc...
or a PC running one of the X servers available), however, if
you want a GUI editor, note that emacs automatically opens a 
GUI edit window if the DISPLAY environment variable is set and
vim has a -g option to launch a GUI interface.  Both vim and
emacs are vastly superior to textedit as editors.

The first line of your script must be #!/usr/local/bin/perl
with no leading spaces or blank lines and you will have to make
your script executable and readable.

For example, here I create a Perl script to print hello world!
without using an editor:

  sarastro [~/bin] {jaf.66}% echo #\!/usr/local/bin/perl > example
  sarastro [~/bin] {jaf.67}% echo 'print "hello world\!\n";'>>example
  sarastro [~/bin] {jaf.68}% chmod 755 example
  sarastro [~/bin] {jaf.69}% example
  hello world!
  sarastro [~/bin] {jaf.70}% cat example
  #!/usr/local/bin/perl
  print "hello world!\n";
  sarastro [~/bin] {jaf.71}%

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask.

You might also look at:

  http://www.unb.ca/Sample/perl

or on sol,  /web/Sample/perl, which contains example scripts
which I put together as part of a seminar on Perl.
--
O- J. Anthony Fitzgerald, jaf@UNB.ca, http://www.unb.ca/csd/staff/jaf/ -O