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

I know that there is a way that I can load Perl onto my Windows 95 environment and test programs I am currently writing. Please tell me how as I will be traveling and would like to work on my code without having to log onto my network to go through Unix. Any help would be greatly appreciated. peace dez I have downloaded the .tar program from CPAN, but don't know how to install it...

Edit: chipmunk 2001-07-13

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Help me if possible..
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Jul 13, 2001 at 23:13 UTC
    ActiveState is your friend. Do a PerlMonks search on "Win" to find a few of the gimmes'n'gotchas.

    A few things you should be aware of:

    • I don't know if Win95 is supported. I've only ever used ActivePerl on Win2000. Just letting you know.
    • ActivePerl will do the right thing when it comes to filenames and directories. Use the Unix-style.
    • she-bang options will work just fine. The Perl interpreter reads that line, even if Windows doesn't.
    • You cannot bind STDIN and STDOUT under Windows. To get this behavior, you'll need to telnet to yourself. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, ignore it.)
    • exec and system may or may not work as you expect.
    The biggest thing to be aware of is that a lot of things that Unix lets you get away with, Windows won't. A lot of things Windows forces you to do may or may not break your Unix code. There is a way to tell what OS you're on, but I would be very careful about sprinkling your code with it. That's a good way to give yourself heartburn.
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      she-bang options will work just fine. The Perl interpreter reads that line, even if Windows doesn't

      not exactly. if you're using taint mode (-T), if it's on the shebang line, ActiveState will report 'too late to run taint mode' or somesuch. instead, it must be specified at command-line, as in 'perl -T myscript.pl'

      and $^O (or $OSNAME) give you your OS.

      ~Particle

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        Particle sez :
        ActiveState will report 'too late to run taint mode' or somesuch. instead, it must be specified at command-line, as in 'perl -T myscript.pl'
        That's not exactly true.
        The "too late to run taint mode" error is indicative of running perl under IIS, though. Apache should run OK, according to memory, and the command line is good too, although it's a pain to troubleshoot CGI that way, occasionally.
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      I don't know if Win95 is supported. I've only ever used ActivePerl on Win2000. Just letting you know.

      It is, but it requires IE 5, DC0M95 and the MSI installer, all of which are available from Microsoft (although a pain to install with many, many reboots). Take a look at the ActiveState platform requirements.

      HTH

      Update: IE 5, not 5+ as I posted originally.

      Update 2: You don't have to have MSI. You can download a gzip'ed file. This page gives you both choices. Tip of the hat to crazyinsomniac for pointing that out.

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Re: Help me if possible..
by HyperZonk (Friar) on Jul 13, 2001 at 23:11 UTC
    If you are developing CGI for web use, you will need both a perl binary and a web server installed on your laptop. This, even, will be of limited usefulness if you do any external calls, like pipe to sendmail, or rely on system dependent structures (like Unix socket naming or permissions).

    However, if you can do your development work without those things (testing subs or modules, for instance), you can get the Windoze binaries for Perl by going to Outside Links and downloading the binaries from ActiveState.

    If you need the web host to work on CGI stuff, there is a Windoze port of Apache available that will run on almost any 'doze version.
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