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

I'm just getting started with perl, and I have a system running Win 98. Well, I went perusing the oh-so-helpful world wide web :/ and found what I *thought* would help get me started. >( I found LOADS of sites, perl tutorials, code snippets, and "what you need to get started" fun, but now I have a 181Mb directory full of great things like perl561, gcc 3.1, dmake 4.01, bzip2-102-x86-win32.exe and a BUNCH of readme.whatever files to look at, and I'm - still - no closer to knowing what to do than I was two days ago when I started my search. I'm ready to grovel in front of anyone who can help me, but not just point me in the right direction, because as you can see, I'm *headed* that way already, only the light is dim and the path is covered with shrubbery. :/ I need someone to lay it out for me...at least what I need to do to start doing some programming. I'm familiar with c, c++, visual c++, a smidgen of basic, lots of html, some java & javascript, so I just need to get to the starting blocks :D Anyhow, I need help *sniff sniffle* :(

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl on Windows 98...?
by ichimunki (Priest) on Jul 17, 2002 at 22:12 UTC
Re: Perl on Windows 98...?
by DamnDirtyApe (Curate) on Jul 17, 2002 at 22:14 UTC

    I recommend you download ActivePerl from http://www.activestate.com. If you just want to get Perl up and running, you don't need all the rest of those programs. Once you've installed ActivePerl, take a look at the Tutorials section of this site.


    _______________
    D a m n D i r t y A p e
    Home Node | Email
Re: Perl on Windows 98...?
by rbc (Curate) on Jul 17, 2002 at 22:33 UTC
    I use cygwin's port of perl.
    You might want to look at that option.
Re: Perl on Windows 98...?
by aseidas (Beadle) on Jul 17, 2002 at 22:21 UTC
    If you haven't already check out and install activeperl for windows from activestate It automatically installs tons of excellent doc. All you really need to create your code is notepad. Just save the files with a .pl extension and it will automatically associate them with the perl interpreter. Don't know what else to tell you it really isn't that difficult, although I do all of my perl dev on SCO Unix or Linux. Hope this helps. -Aseidas

    Sorry about the blank nodes above, I submitted 3 times trying to correct something, made it worse instead, hopefully they will be deleted soon

      all you need is notepad,but a really cool notepad replacement is editplus It has syntax highlighting for perl built in, regex-enabled searching, tabbed file windows, and lots more. another more powerful (but not so simple to use) editor is vim there are dozens of other great editors for windows, notepad is not one of them. I know the first thing I download on a new pc (after Perl) is a "real" text editor.

      I recommend getting a good book on perl. Assuming you have a basic understanding of programming, the other languages you list suggest this, try Learning Perl it is an excellent intro to Perl.