FYI, Windows can absolutely have Perl (and for free) -- ActiveState.com -- however, it's well known that Linux is much better for software development, welcome aboard.
It may be a great learning experience (and I hope that is why you are doing it), but you do realize you are cloning the world's most crippled shell interface, right? Ugh, DOS. If only it were dead...
FYI, here is Micro$oft's proposed DOS replacement: MONAD (Google search)
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it occured to me how much more cool Linux is than Windows becuase I could not make Windows run a perl interpreter
On the other hand, many people find downloading the ActiveState distribution to be easier than installing Linux...
I'm glad you're enthusiastic, but in the future I'd suggest that you refrain from bashing an OS on the basis that you couldn't accomplish something that tens of thousands of others have -- it makes you look like a clumsy novice.
(Of course, there are plenty of plausible reasons to bash Windows, but lack of a convenient Perl installation isn't one of them.)
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It's great that you've chosen Linux (I did it two years ago. At first, I couldn't work efficient :)) but now I'm satisfied with using Linux). But, of course, you can develop your project under Windows without any problems. You can install Perl, Apache, mod_perl, Embperl, Mason etc the same as under Linux.
Also, you can install and use Cygwin - Linux emulation for Windows.
Hope it will be helpful for you.
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I recently started learning perl, I switched to Linux and realized that I had a perl interpreter and decided to put it to some good use.
Good idea. Putting Perl to good use is not only fun,
it's also a great way to learn stuff.
Anyway, it occured to me how much more cool Linux is than Windows becuase I could not make Windows run a perl interpreter
Most Linux distros come with Perl out of the box,
as does any other decent modern operating system
these days, but it's available for Windows, and in
fact I learned Perl on a Windows 95 system at first.
You have your choice of ActiveState Perl, which has
better Windows integration, or Cygwin, which is a
complete POSIX environment. Which one is better
depends on whether you want to use Perl for doing
Windows stuff like interfacing with MS Office (in
that case, choose ActivePerl) or for running Perl
code that was really written for *nix (in that case,
you want Cygwin). Of course, if you're on a
Linux-based system then you just use the Perl that
came with your distribution usually. It's also
generally easier to get CPAN working on Linux than
under Windows (though it's possible with Cygwin).
my first big project to test my skills is to rebuild DOS using perl
All of DOS, or just the command interpreter?
;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print
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Well, I was just cloning the command line. I have a brother that uses Windows, but does not have the courage to learn how to use DOS because he's afraid that he might mess somehting up, so I figured that if I simulate the DOS command line I could teach him, and possibly other people, the value of being able to work with command line. I know that he would be safe working with a perl script on my computer, so when he's ready he could play with the DOS on his computer :).
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Ah, that makes sense. Of course, the usual way to
solve this problem is with an unprivileged user
account, but if your brother uses Windows 9x/Me
then that option is out, since it doesn't have
such things.
(Windows XP, being based on NT, does
have the ability to create unprivileged user
accounts, and while it's possible for a malicious
and knowledgeable person to shatter (ahem)
the barriers and get localsystem privileges from an
unprivileged account, that's not something that would
happen by accident, so it would be a safe sandbox
for your brother to use to avoid inadvertently
screwing up his system. If he has Windows XP, you
could set him up an unprivileged/limited account
and let him use that account to play with the
command prompt.)
The real value, though, of a project like the one
you're doing is in what it will teach you. It's a
good project from that standpoint, because it will
lead you through a number of different types of
common programming issues. In fact, I would say
that a command interpreter is a *particularly*
good beginner project, because it easily breaks
down into parts, and no one part is terribly
difficult, but the overall project is quite
involved and has a lot of parts. Also, you'll
be able to test each part as you complete it,
which is good. It'll teach you to code in a
modular fashion, too, as you find that you need
to abstract out things like wildcard matching,
which various commands use. Overall, it's a
very good project.
I once wrote my own fake "DOS" interpreter in GWBASIC,
which I used as part of a practical joke. I created
a phony antivirus package called Fool Proof AV, which
would pretend to scan your hard drive for viruses,
print scary warning messages about what it had found,
then pretend it was reformatting your hard drive.
Then it presented a nice "Finished" screen saying
that in order to protect you, Fool Proof had reformatted
your drive and installed an older version of DOS (1.7
as I recall; there is no such version, of course) that
was now in the public domain (again, this is bogus,
but almost believable), and you should carefully
install any software you wanted
to use, making sure it was virus-free first. Then
it dumped you into my fake "DOS prompt", where DIR
would show about three files in the root directory,
plus one DOS directory containing a dozen more files,
and nothing else.
So then I took it to my friend Andy, who didn't have
any virus protection (which on a college campus circa
1994 was slightly dangerous). "Hey, Andy, I
got this shareware antivirus thing. It didn't find
anything on my computer. Want to try it out?" Then
I stood over his shoulder and watched him run it.
Great fun. It was hard to keep an earnest, straight
face when he said, "What does this mean, Fool Proof
has reformatted?" (He knew very well what it _meant_,
of course. But you could hear in his voice he was
having a little trouble assimilating the information.
I muttered something to the effect that it hadn't
done that on my computer.
Then about ten very long seconds later something
clicked in his head: "Doh, okay, you got me."
Writing a command interpreter in Perl should be
much easier than writing it in BASIC, incidentally.
;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print
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Eh. While the project sounds like a lot of work for not a lot of benefit, if you learn some things along the way then it's stil la good thng.
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