hi I have been limiting myself to batch as my main programming tool. this of course is not very flexible and I know that if I was to get a job later on they would require a little bit more then that. so i decided to move onto perl. of course now i'm lost. does anyone know where i could dl it. any good books on it. links. or maybe even suggestions. keep in mind i'm 13 and currently cant handle anything "too heavy"

Nathan

Nathan,

The Perl website is http://www.perl.com/

You can download the latest version 5.8.0 at
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/language/info/software.html

There are tons of tutorials online for Perl... goto www.google.com and use "Perl tutorials" as keywords to locate some interesting tutorials.

I only have one Perl / CGI book... most of the things in it were wrong so it ended up as a coaster for my mountain dews... ;)

Good luck, have fun.

Infinite Recursion

perl.about.com is a good tutorial.. also, perlmonks.com is pretty good... www.activeperl.com(where you get the latest distro.) has some links to a few good repositories.

If you're looking of books, the Oreilly series in probably the best.

I think IR got the same book as I did...Learn perl in a weekend? I was barely able to give it away. I'm putting in a vote for cgi101.com, which has the first six chapters of the book cgi101...Very easy to understand, and teaches you how to do the things perl is most often used for (reading in forms, text files, etc.)
Best of luck,
-SN

thanks for all the help it is all very useful. I have one more question though, what is "active perl"?

Nathan

active perl is the windows version of perl that uses an activex object (dll) to process the perl code (perl is an interpreted language like java)

Couldn't have said it better myself Chi Happens :)

There ya go Nathan... good luck to ya.

IR

Chi's response brings me to a question I've had for some time...Is perl strictly classified as "interpreted?" Java is both and neither compiled and/nor interpreted...The "compiler" goes halfway, and the jvm takes it home. I figured perl was similar, but have never figured out for sure.

Some of my error messages in perl seem to happen before run-time (If I'm missing a semicolon on the last line, for instance, the rest of the code still won't run), which leads me to believe it's compiled to some degree, and some do happen during run-time...Thoughts?

-SN

I always thought Perl was interpreted... good question.

Are you using an IDE that is checking the syntax or is the Perl code uploaded and fixing to be utilized then bombs out with "error x on line y"....?

Infinite Recursion

Either one. I have a perl IDE that has a "compile" button, where I will get errors occasionally, or sometimes I just upload it and run it, and get a compilation error.

I'm running activeperl on win98. I have some generic free perl ide that just interfaces with activeperl to get the debugging and compiling done...Kind of like jbuilder.
-SN

You're correct.. perl is an interpreted language.

Exerpts from the perl faq on perl.com:
Finally, because Perl is frequently (but not always, and certainly not by definition) an interpreted language, you can write your programs and test them without an intermediate compilation step, allowing you to experiment and test/debug quickly and easily. This ease of experimentation flattens the learning curve even more."

and

A computer scientist will correctly explain that all programs are interpreted, and that the only question is at what level. But if you ask this question of someone who isn't a computer scientist, they might tell you that a program has been compiled to physical machine code once, and can then be run multiple times, whereas a script must be translated by a program each time it's used.

"Perl programs are (usually) neither strictly compiled nor strictly interpreted. They can be compiled to a byte-code form (something of a Perl virtual machine) or to completely different languages, like C or assembly language. You can't tell just by looking at it whether the source is destined for a pure interpreter, a parse-tree interpreter, a byte-code interpreter, or a native-code compiler, so it's hard to give a definitive answer here."

I still don't get it, but I guess it changes depending on whether you have a perl interpreter, the native code compiler, or something in between...

-SN

That is a pretty vague definition.. I guess I always looked at it as an interpreted language for two reasons..

1) We used to type in and run simple scripts right from the command prompt just as we would most other scripting language.

2) When creating cgi scripts, we used to have to compile ones we had written in C, but not in perl.

Interpretation of Perl code... is a fuzzy area, that definition seems to claim both interpretation and compilation depending on how you initially proceed.

Infinite Recursion

WARNING SEVERE EDUCATION AHEAD, PROCEED WITH CAUTION:

The Statement "Perl is an interpreted language" is TRUE because perl requires the perl engine (if you will) to run. On a window's system, this can be perl.exe or the active perl dll (I am not going searching for it, so let's call it winperl.dll). On other systems it runs through a similar perl.exe file. The code is never "compiled down" to a stand-alone single exe. Just like VB is never compiled down to a single exe (there are always ocx and run-time objects to include with your simple little "hello world" vb app.

A TRUE compiled language (like C++) does not require external files to run (these files may be needed, but you can link them inside the actual exe and make a single exe file out of a bunch)

YOU MAY NOW RESUME YOUR NORMAL ACTIVITIES.

Now we're getting into semantics...Chi apparently defines an "interpreted" language as anything that needs external files to run...This explains why he described java as "interpreted." Okay, but I don't think that's the strict definition. Another monkey wrench into our education above, perl CAN be put into a standalone exe.

I could be wrong, but I figured a "pure" interpreted language was strictly one that reads in the original source text file each time the program is run, and converts the program to the opcodes and data necessary "on the fly." An interpreted language wouldn't create intermediate byte code (like javac does) or a finished exe (like C or C++)...My humble opinion.

As the excerpt mentions, all programming languages (including C and C++) are interpreted to some degree...After all, don't many C and C++ commands require an operating system? Not many people (outside of embedded systems guys) write code in any language that goes right into the instruction register and is executed independently of other things on the system.

Perl is, after all, written in C, and there are tools that can turn it into a standalone exe (maybe that is what is meant by a native code compiler)

In summary, If I absolutely had to choose between interpreted and compiled, I would choose interpreted, but if I wanted to be accurate, I would say "both and neither."

I appreciate all the responses. As usual, the greater minds of computing.net have provided me with some great insights.

-SN

I just wanted to register my vote, not really add anything of educational value, because I do not have sufficient time...

I totally agree with SN on his statement
below... (reprinted for your viewing pleasure... lol)

"I could be wrong, but I figured a "pure" interpreted language was strictly one that reads in the original source text file each time the program is run, and converts the program to the opcodes and data necessary "on the fly." An interpreted language wouldn't create intermediate byte code (like javac does) or a finished exe (like C or C++)...My humble opinion."

I just received my degree in Software Engineering last May... and from the class lectures I gathered the exact same concept as SN's above. If I had to stand on a side of the fence, I would say Perl was interpreted.

Infinite Recursion

SN & IR,
I concur. Maybe I should have been more CLEAR on my points (you know, since I got all pompous and crap with the all caps header and footer...oh well)

compiling perl down (just like java, or vb) requires that you distribute run-time support files. without them, your programs will not run.

C++, on the other hand, can be stand-alone and NOT require run-time support files. (technically speaking, YES everything needs some support files like the API Dlls and the OS files)

Thanks for the clarifications,
Chi Happens