Perl-5.8.4

The Perl package contains the Practical Extraction and Report Language.

Approximate build time:  2.9 SBU
Required disk space:     143 MB

Perl installation depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, Gawk, GCC, Glibc, Grep, Make, Sed.

Installation of Perl

If you want full control over the way Perl is set up, you can run the interactive Configure script and hand-pick the way this package is built. If you think you can live with the (sensible) defaults it auto-detects, then prepare Perl for compilation with:

./configure.gnu --prefix=/usr -Dpager="/bin/less -isR"

The meaning of the configure option:

  • -Dpager="/bin/less -isR": This corrects an error in the perldoc code with the invocation of the less program.

Compile the package:

make

If you wish to run the test suite, you first have to create a basic /etc/hosts file, which is needed by a couple of tests to resolve the name localhost:

echo "127.0.0.1 localhost $(hostname)" > /etc/hosts

Now run the tests, if you wish:

make test

Finally, install the package:

make install

Contents of Perl

Installed programs: a2p, c2ph, dprofpp, enc2xs, find2perl, h2ph, h2xs, libnetcfg, perl, perl5.8.4 (link to perl), perlbug, perlcc, perldoc, perlivp, piconv, pl2pm, pod2html, pod2latex, pod2man, pod2text, pod2usage, podchecker, podselect, psed (link to s2p), pstruct (link to c2ph), s2p, splain and xsubpp

Installed libraries: (too many to name)

Short descriptions

a2p translates awk to perl.

c2ph dumps C structures as generated from "cc -g -S" stabs.

dprofpp displays perl profile data.

en2cxs builds a Perl extension for the Encode module, from either Unicode Character Mappings or Tcl Encoding Files.

find2perl translates find commands to perl.

h2ph converts .h C header files to .ph Perl header files.

h2xs converts .h C header files to Perl extensions.

libnetcfg can be used to configure the libnet.

perl combines some of the best features of C, sed, awk and sh into a single swiss-army language.

perlbug is used to generate bug reports about Perl or the modules that come with it, and mail them.

perlcc generates executables from Perl programs.

perldoc displays a piece of documentation in pod format that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in a perl script.

perlivp is the Perl Installation Verification Procedure. It can be used to verify that Perl and its libraries have been installed correctly.

piconv is a Perl version of the character encoding converter iconv.

pl2pm is a rough tool for converting Perl4 .pl files to Perl5 .pm modules.

pod2html converts files from pod format to HTML format.

pod2latex converts files from pod format to LaTeX format.

pod2man converts pod data to formatted *roff input.

pod2text converts pod data to formatted ASCII text.

pod2usage prints usage messages from embedded pod docs in files.

podchecker checks the syntax of pod format documentation files.

podselect displays selected sections of pod documentation.

psed is a Perl version of the stream editor sed.

pstruct dumps C structures as generated from "cc -g -S" stabs.

s2p translates sed to perl.

splain is used to force verbose warning diagnostics in perl.

xsubpp converts Perl XS code into C code.