I usually add:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
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Hope this helps.

Liz

Dear all,

Thank you for your marvellous replies. I am so impressed with this forum, mind if I stick around? You all deserve a repsonse....

Liz,
I've been banging my head against the table tying to work this out. You responded and fixed the problem in 7 minutes!

Shemne,
Where did I put perl?

I just downloaded the tar to my user account and unpacked it into a directory there. I then installed from that directory.
Is there a better way to do this?
Is it better to install from root?

Where should I install new moules to?
I used your "find iname" command from root to get a complete list from the system. Very useful command. I got a very long list but I think these are the main points...

./usr/local/bin/perl5.8.1
./usr/bin/perl5.6.0

Tachyon,

The "locate" command - very useful, thank you. The -u listed hundreds of lines. These are updates? Do you mean things I have added - like modules?

Any modules I have added do not show now. I only see perl5.8.1. No modules. They were there under 5.6.0

Roger,

I like the script. Havn't tried it yet, but I learned something about profiles and login scripts from your text - thanks.

I'm off to try and find my modules now. I'm sure I'll be back soon...

Where _did_ that copy of Perl get put, anyway?   You might want to use "find . -iname 'perl*'" at some likely starting points.   Once you find it you can try "export PATH=/that/place/you/found/it:$PATH" to put that into your path so the system can execute it from there.   At that point "which perl" should show you that Perl was found where you put it.

When you do a command like this:

$ command
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Then the system looks at the diretories in you path and executes the first matching one. To see your path do:

$ echo $PATH
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:
$
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In this case we have 4 dirs in the PATH. The OS will look for 'command' in /bin, then /sbin....etc until it finds an exe called 'command' If there is one in /bin it will never look any further.

You are seeing the result of this behaviour. You will have (prabably a symlink) to 'perl' in /usr/bin so that is the first one found, and the one that gets executed when you ask for perl. If you do '/usr/local/bin/perl' (probable install location) you will get 5.8. Either call 5.8 on the shebang line as shown or replace the symlink in /usr/bin.....

To find all the perls on your system do:

$ locate -u
$ locate bin/perl
/usr/bin/perl
/usr/local/bin/perl
$
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Hi tachyon,

The -u flag to locate updates the DB...

Not trying to be a SA here but the -u flag for locate isn't applicable to all *nix's (in my case Debian). I have to use the updatedb command instead.

Not an attack, just an observation and "heads up" if anyone attempting it gets the good ole 'locate: invalid option -- u' error message.

Sure, but AM specified did specify RH 7.2 where it is certainly valid.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

# Validate current user
die "Unknown user!" if (!$ENV{LOGIN});

# Load user configuration (from external file or from this script)
my %config;
while (<DATA>)
{
    chomp;
    my ($user, $pref) = /(\w+)\s+(.*)\/perl/;
    $config{$user} = $pref;
}

# Find out the preferred perl version for this user
# If user not seen in the config file, set to default
# path to the latest version of perl
my $path = $config{$ENV{LOGIN}} || "/usr/local/bin";

# Export the modified path for the user
print "export PATH=$path:\${PATH}\n";

__DATA__
roger   /usr/bin/perl
james   /usr/local/bin/perl
thomas  /usr/bin/perl
peter   /usr/perl/bin/perl
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eval $(/etc/perl_config.pl)
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