Playing with PERL on my local Win98 machine

...suggestions?

[Drastic]

ok, I have been convinced that I need to learn perl. (thanks, lm...I think)

I want to play around with some scripts on my local Win98SE machine, and go from there. From previous discussions, it sounds like activeperl is the way to go here.

Any pitfalls, suggestions, must do's, don't do's?

[bobriggs]

I really like it..You only have to know some of the minor differences between Win and Unix, but other than that it's a great learning tool.

Once installed, .pl files are associated with the 'interpreter' so double clicking one will run it automatically, or you can run from command line.

For instance, IP2Host, and I'll just keep the command window open and it's just prompting for an IP, then resolves the host name and asks for the next IP.

[Eric_Jarvis]

I'd like to set up PERL locally...but I've made a start simply by taking some fairly cheap web space with cgi access

wonderful stuff, PERL, I got thrown in the deep end and had to fix up a chatroom overnight from scratch (sub contractor went drinking instead of coding and we had a strict deadline)...was scary to begin with...but by the time I had the thing running six hours later it did seem pretty straightforward

there are some superb PERL tutorials and references online too

[Drastic]

Thanks guys, looks like no reason to not move forward.

>superb PERL tutorials and references online

Excellent! Which would you recommend?

[theperlyking]

I've installed activeperl on NT and windows 2000 and the installation was easy and simple, cant see you would have any problems in Win98.

[Brett_Tabke]

Also install Apache for windows while you are at it. Setup perfect offline mirrors of your online sites (duplicate the paths and apache configuration). From there, you'll be able to develop 100% offline and then just reupload the finished product - it's a killer time saver. Nothing will boost your page and script production more.

The tricky part is getting apache setup just right so that it mirrors your online site. After it is, you simply run apache, connect with the browser, but it heads to your local server instead of out onto the net. Develop scripts, sites, and pages all offline.

If you do it, and need some tips, that would make for a really nice thread.

[Brett_Tabke]

oh, just make sure to install Perl in \usr\bin or \usr\bin\local to match your website.

[Eric_Jarvis]

I started off at

[perl.org...]

prosaic I know, but sometimes it pays to be brutally direct...it turns out to link out quite nicely to some very useful places

[toolman]

This here [sourceforge.net] thing will set you right up. Then all you have to do is add the Perl modules.

[Drastic]

Awesome, thanks toolman. That looks like the fasttrack to what I want. Installing Apache is going to definitely be a big help. Not much into scripting (yet), but I used SSI a lot on my last site, which meant: upload files and check, tweak locally, repeat. I was wondering what I was going to do for updates/revisions while the site is live. Thanks BT.

Forthcoming thread with questions likely.

[physics]

Also, cygwin [cygwin.com] is a UNIX shell emulator that is great to have on your windows system if you want to be messing around with scripts.