2) They also say if you can't get a compiler to download a binary version of Perl instead.
 Perl is open source. This means that the C source code in which perl is written is available for download. I would guess that what you read was talking about downloading and compiling perl, with a C compiler.
There's really no reason for you to do this (yet ;).

In reply to Re: Running/Testing Perl on Windows -- binaries, compiling by count0
in thread Running/Testing Perl on Windows -- binaries, compiling by garyj

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