Getting Perl

Perl is freeware. You get the best results if you get the Perl source code and build it on your local machine. This may sound like a lot of work, but the configuration scripts that come with the source code make it easy to build and install. You can get the source code via anonymous ftp as follows:

UNIX:

look at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/CPAN.html to find a Perl Archive site near you and download the source code from there.

VMS:

download the Perl5 source code from ftp://genetics.upenn.edu/perl5. It is especially tailored for VMS, and overcomes many limitations the generic CPAN version has on that platform. VMS-specific information on Perl, and what UNIX-like tools are required to build it can be found at
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/perl/vms/VMS.html.

Each of the machines providing the source code keeps things in a slightly different way, so the best strategy is to look for a README file and follow the local instructions. At the time of this writing, the most recent version of Perl was >5.0. We are currently running v5.004_04on surf.

For those of you who wish to know more about Perl, there are two excellent books [1], web sites containing on-line manuals (http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/cgi-bin/perl-man and http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/htbin/perl-man), and at least one user group (comp.lang.perl).