Banquo_ws has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello all, I've downloaded Perl 5.6.1 on www.perl.com and am currently fiddling my thumbs together, feeling rather quite stupid. I have windows 98, PIII, 128 ram. I need someone to tell me exactly how this jungle of files I have downloaded are to fit in this great language called Perl. I have tried for 3.5 hours, now, really, and am at my wits end. I guess most newbies have the same problem. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Antoine

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Installing Perl 5.6.1 on WinDoze 98
by dws (Chancellor) on Sep 01, 2001 at 01:11 UTC
    Many non-super-serious Perl users on Win32 make to with the ActiveState Perl distribution, which installs quite easily (and quickly). I updated a Win98 box to 5.6 a while back, and it took less than 10 minutes, including the download. I've also installed on NT4 and Win2K. All painlessly.

    (I guess this makes me non-super-serious. Oh well.)

Re: Installing Perl 5.6.1 on WinDoze 98
by archen (Pilgrim) on Sep 01, 2001 at 05:56 UTC
    For some reason I've never liked Active State, although it seems every (Windows) user but me uses it. Personally I went with Indigo Perl. My first use of Perl on Windows was using some distro I found on a Netscape page (yeah, no kidding!), and I found myself more comfortable with the Indigo distro. With Indigo there is no install, you just unzip it and the tree comes out wherever you put it (probably best to put it under C:\perl\ ) - and it's ready to go right out of the box.

    The main thing about Active state is that it does a lot of integration with Win98, which a lot of people like. Me, I like good'ol honest DOS programs. You can set up some helpful things yourself though.

    1) Add perl to the path in "C:\autoexec.bat"
    SET PATH=C:\perl\bin\;~~~~ other stuff ~~~~~~

    2) Make a perl script right click runable.
    In Windows explorer you can go to options and select the file types tab. Select New type
    for an extension you can enter .pl or .cgi (or just make two associations for both) In actions hit the new button and enter something like.
    Action: "Run Perl Script"
    Application used to perform this action. "C:\perl\bin\perl.exe %1"
    If you make this action the "default action" it will automatically run when you double click it. You can add other actions too, like "Edit" and send it to notepad and such.

    Well if you're lost with this crumby explanation, never mind I guess. A lot of people say it's lame to run perl on windows, but when your forced to use windows (work *cough cough*) Perl is handy. I mean batch files are weak, and windows doesn't let you automate anything reasonably. I have my windows box duct taped together with Perl...
Re: Installing Perl 5.6.1 on WinDoze 98
by arhuman (Vicar) on Sep 03, 2001 at 16:52 UTC
    Trying to be exhaustive : You could also try cygwin
    which is "a unix environment ported to windows" with a lot of prog available (among them you'll find Perl).
    The install is Super simple.

    BTW : Check Outside links for other recommended tools...

    "Only Bad Coders Code Badly In Perl" (OBC2BIP)