Re^3: Creating a random generator

The first step will be to install Perl on your computer. If you have a machine running Microsoft Windows, download and install ActiveState Perl. If you have an Apple computer, chances are good that Perl already is installed. If you have any other brand of computer, the chance that it already has Perl installed isn't that bad either, but ask your machine administrator on how to access it.

Then, you can test the .pl files directly by saving them from a text editor and then running them. On Windows, notepad.exe is an ugly but preinstalled editor. Word and Wordpad are unsuitable for editing programs. On the Apple products I don't know what built-in editors there are except vi and vi is an editor you want to avoid when starting out.

So, if you have saved your Perl program as myprogram.pl, you can give it a local test run by opening a command prompt in the directory you saved the file to and typing

perl -w myprogram.pl
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If there were any errors, Perl will tell you so. If not, look if the output matches what you expect.

After that, you can upload the Perl file myprogram.pl to your web account, possibly into the cgi-bin directory, make it executable and then link to that.

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Re^4: Creating a random generator by Lady_Aleena (Priest) on Sep 07, 2007 at 09:16 UTC
Corion; My only interest in Perl is the web application of it for this one project for my website. As the output will be a .shtml file, which I can not view locally anyway, having Perl on my computer would be redundant as my server already has it on theirs. My hard drive space is very limited as well. I have been making text/html files out of almost all of my MS Word files, since MS word files are huge in comparison. If I knew how to make a web page act like Excel, I would have almost all of my spreadsheets as web pages which would hopefully be smaller.	[reply]
Re^5: Creating a random generator by Corion (Patriarch) on Sep 07, 2007 at 09:25 UTC
Installing Perl locally is merely a convenience because it makes testing and error tracking far easier. If you are starting out with Perl I really recommend the more convenient way because debugging things remotely is more difficult by far. Perl can also "run" `.shtml` files as long as these look like Perl programs. Which are far easier debugged on the command line. But you're free to choose your own way.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^6: Creating a random generator by Lady_Aleena (Priest) on Sep 07, 2007 at 19:04 UTC
Corion...~~do you know where else I could possibly download ActiveState Perl. I got a copy from their website, but it will not unzip due to an error. I would really like to take a look at it.~~ Update I knew I should try again before posting, but I am such a blond sometimes. :) As of now, I have ActiveState Perl installed on my computer. Now, how often I use is the question.	[reply]