Hi, Ive recently downloaded the 'stable' version of perl for Windows. I am currently using NT. It has downloaded but Im not too sure what to do next. I am familiar with some Perl syntax and have Visual Basic and HTML experience but not CGI scripting. What is my best approach? Can note-pad be used as a compiler and if yes, where can I run the programs? Many thanks, Morgan
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
You can run your scripts from anywere just double click them make sure they are associated with perl.exe
E.G.
I created a new text document
new textdocument.txt
and added this code to the file
print qq~
hello world
~;
then renamed it whatever.pl
now i can run it from the command promt
start run type command
then c:\whereever\whatever.pl
to run as CGI we need a bit of info what http server are you using
ActiveState has PerlApp that will compile a Perl script to an .exe executable. Excerpt from ActiveState.com (source: http://www.activestate.com
PerlApp
Turns your Perl scripts into executables, so that you can run Perl scripts on computers without installing Perl.
morganferriter,
".. What is my best approach? Can note-pad be used as a compiler and if yes, where can I run the programs? "
PERL in an interpreted language, so it does not need any kind of compiling.
You can use Notepad as an editor to create your PERL scripts. in fact, you can use any editor, as long as the editor allows you to save the file as a text file.
Since you also want to use PERL as a CGI language, you will need to have a web server installed and configured on your Windows system.
Although there are a lot of free web servers available, i would suggest you use IIS for NT.
IIS 4.0 is contained in the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack. You can download Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack from ...
http://www.microsoft.com/m
After you have downloaded and installed IIS, you need to configure IIS to work with PERL.
You can follow these steps to do the same.
Creating a Test PERL Script
======================
Open a new file with Notepad, and copy the following lines of code. Save the file in the scripts directory as
"helloworld.pl".
$url = "http://$ENV{SERVER_NAME}$
$ip = "$ENV{REMOTE_ADDR}";
print <<ENDOFTEXT;
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>Hello World!</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<H4>Hello World!</H4>
<P>You have reached <a href="$url">$url</a></P>
<P>Your IP Address is $ip</P>
<H5>Have a nice day!</H5>
</BODY>
</HTML>
ENDOFTEXT
exit(0);
NOTE: The PERL language allows no spaces at the beginning of a line. Once you have created the file, you need to
configure PERL to run securely with Internet Information Services. "Perl.exe" should not be located in any of the
directories accessible by a user with a browser.
By using the Internet Service Manager MMC Snap-in, you can place the "Perl.exe" or "PerlIS.dll" outside of the normal
Web directory structure a user has access to and use the "Script Mapping" feature of IIS to configure execution of
PERL scripts.
Configuring PERL Script Mapping
==========================
1.Select the Internet Services Manager (ISM) under the "Administrative Tools" menu.
2.Right-click a Web site that you want to enable PERL for and select Properties.
3.Select the Home Directory tab.
4.Click Configuration button.
5.Click Add.
6.Enter the following for the "Executable":
<full path to perlis.dll>\perlis.dll
Or the following:
<full path to perl.exe>\perl.exe %s %s
NOTE: The "%s %s" is case sensitive (for example, "%S %S" will not work)
7.Enter the following for the "Extension":
.pl
NOTE: Make sure that the "All Verbs" radio button is selected for full functionality
8.Click "OK" all the way back to the ISM
9.Using the default scripts directory with IIS, the URL would be the following:
http://<Server Name>/scripts/helloworld.p
Hi,
When I started out doing CGIs under Windows I used the Xitami web server. It's free and dead easy. I used ActiveState's ActivePerl interpreter...I had no need to really do any proper setting up and the two worked great together. Apache works nicely once you get your head round it's (fairly simple) congifuration file.
http://www.xitami.com/
http://www.activestate.com
Jonathan
While you CAN use notepad to edit Perl scripts, I find that PerlBuilder (not free, but cheap) is an excellent environment for script development.
ActiveState also has an IDE (actually 2 now), but I don't find them as easy to work with as PerlBuilder.
PerlBuilder allow running of scripts; has color coding; supports a simulated CGI environment; and will give you access to output, error codes, watchpoints, stepping through code, etc.
Really quite nice.
On the side, I would recommend getting a subscrition to The Perl Journal. It talks about the various products, has interesting and fun articles, etc.
Also visit the Oreilly web site and work your way into their perl stuff.
As far as has been stated above, ActiveState has the best support of Perl on Win32. Their basic perl interpreter is free, but you do have to pay for their PDK (perl developer kit). This gives you the ability to create executables and COM components (or use COM components) on Win32. They also have a very nice distribution of the mods with the mod library on disk. The cost isn't a lot and having everything you need on a single CD is very, very handy.
HOWEVER, once you've drunk the magic coolaid, don't expect to be able to create your own mods or get creative with modifications to the CPAN distribution. It doesn't sound like you're at this point however and so if you do have the cash I would recommend making your initial experience an easy and fun one. Always time for turning into a perl geek later :-).
Good morning, morganferriter,
You've asked 14 questions, with no updates since people have posted recommendations, and all of them remain open. It would be most appreciated if you could revisit your questions and update them with comments if more information is needed, so that we can help you resolve and close those items. If you've been helped, and the issues are resolved, you should be able to accept the pending answers, or choose the comment which best served you as the answer to grade and close.
Thank you very much,
Asta
Good morning, morganferriter.
You have asked 15 questions here, received input from various experts, yet all 15 items remain open today. In order to achieve your goal, it is highly recommended that you provide feedback on your issues so that
1) you can get the needed solution
2) open questions are resolved
3) when the answer is found and you choose the comment which served you as the answer to then close and grade provides help to others that may need it as this question then migrates to the PAQ.
I'll post this in your open items, so that you'll get an Email notif making it easier for you to follow up on your open items.
Best of luck, and thank you for your responsiveness.
Asta
Hello everybody,
the morganferriter account has been closed after persistent failure to follow up on his questions, after several reminders to do so.
Which leaves us to clean up after his many open questions. I would appreciate it if the participants on this question can advise on how we shall proceed on this. Do you believe that anyone deserves points for this, or should the question be deleted and forgotten?
Thank you for your cooperation
modder
Community Support Admin
There's only 50 points in question here and several correct answers.
I would suggest just closing all of this person's question and awarding no points. Chalk up the lack of points to the user (who caused the problem).
In this case, unfortunately, it took several people's responses to really answer the question. The first person was right (you don't need a compiler), but was wrong (you don't need to run perl in a web server). Follow-on replies cleared things up, but things just sort of dribbled in.
Leaving the whole thing available for others might be nice.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: cpa802Posted on 2001-02-19 at 09:03:20ID: 5856453
PERL isn't actually compiled, it is interpreted at runtime like unix shell scripts so yes notepad can be used to write your scripts. As for running the programs I only have limited experience with PERL and windows but I assume that you will need some sort of web server on your comupter, I recommend Apache for windows, its free and I'm relativly sure you can get it to work with PERL CGI's. It's downfall is that it expects you to understand how to configure a UNIX web server so you might run in to some problems configuring it (it does come with default settings that work for most PC's).