in reply to Re: Perl What for?
in thread Perl What for?

This is close to what you probably have in mind when saying "interactive Perl". Unfortunately, this one has some confusing behaviour with scopes, caused by the eval block: 

 perl> $_ = 'Foo'; print;
Foo
 perl> print;
print;

 perl> my $a = 'Bar'; print $a;
Bar
 perl> print $a;
Use of uninitialized value in print at (eval 4) line 1, <> line 4.

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Writing the same commands in a file scoped script would produce different results.

I think it might be better to go this way:
Write a testscript in your favorite text editor. It might look like this:

#!perl            # header
use warnings;     # enable warnings
use diagnostics;  # explain warnings
                  # code to test:
print "Hey world, I'm coming!!!\n";

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Then you can save the script (e.g. "C:\test.pl"). Open your DOS command window and type in the following to run your script:
perl C:\test.pl

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When your script succeeds, you can modify it (trying out something else), save it and run the command again.

Hope this helps, have a lot of fun with Perl!

~Django
"Why don't we ever challenge the spherical earth theory?"

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: Perl What for?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 08, 2002 at 16:26 UTC

    I tried to put myself in the place of a 13 y/o kid with no programming experience sitting at his Windows/ME machine staring at a screen that looked like: 

    C:\>perl
ashdahskjd
kajhsdakjshd

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    I am aware that play.pl has scoping problems, but once his copy of Programming Perl for Win32 arrives, he may arrive at the point where he knows what scoping is.

    I also thought about what would happen if his "favorite editor" is Word. 

    C:\>perl test.pl
Can't open perl script "test.pl": No such file or directory

C:\>dir test.pl
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 8C87-E163

 Directory of C:\

File Not Found

C:\>dir test*
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 8C87-E163

 Directory of C:\

02/09/08  07:18a        <DIR>          test
02/09/08  05:16p                19,456 test.pl.doc
               2 File(s)         19,456 bytes
                            302,397,440 bytes free

C:\>perl test.pl.doc
Unrecognized character \xD0 at test.pl.doc line 1.

C:\>

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    Well It's better than the Abottoire, but Yorkshire!
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