SCO Skunkware 96 contains Perl 5.003 built with dynamic loading and packaged so as to be installed with SCO custom. To install Perl 5.003, issue the following command as root :
custom -p SKUNK96:default:Perl5 -i -z $MOUNTPT/inst/All
where $MOUNTPT refers to the mount-point of the SCO Skunkware 96 CD-ROM.
If, for some reason, you are either unable or unwilling to install Perl using custom, you can install from the gzip'd built source archive in $MOUNTPT/src/Tools/perl-5.003.tar.gz. To do so, follow these steps (as root) :
gzcat $MOUNTPT/src/Tools/perl-5.003.tar.gz | tar xf -where $MOUNTPT refers to the mount-point of the SCO Skunkware 96 CD-ROM.
The perl-5.003 directory in .../src/Tools contains information on licensing, copying and a README as well. The SCO custom installable Perl 5.003 component contains the CGI.pm Perl5 CGI library, Version 2.21, 5/31/96, by Lincoln Stein.
NAME
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
SYNOPSIS
perl [ -acdhnpPsSTuUvw ] [ -0[octal] ] [ -Dnumber/list] ] [
-Fstring ] [ -i[extension] ] [ -Idir ] [ -loctal ] [ -xdir ]
[ programfile | -e command ] [ argument ... ]
For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into a
number of sections:
perl Perl overview (this section)
perltoc Perl documentation table of contents
perldata Perl data structures
perlsyn Perl syntax
perlop Perl operators and precedence
perlre Perl regular expressions
perlrun Perl execution and options
perlfunc Perl builtin functions
perlvar Perl predefined variables
perlsub Perl subroutines
perlmod Perl modules
perlref Perl references
perldsc Perl data structures intro
perllol Perl data structures: lists of lists
perlobj Perl objects
perltie Perl objects hidden behind simple variables
perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
perldebug Perl debugging
perldiag Perl diagnostic messages
perlform Perl formats
perlipc Perl interprocess communication
perlsec Perl security
perltrap Perl traps for the unwary
perlstyle Perl style guide
perlxs Perl XS application programming interface
perlxstut Perl XS tutorial
perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
perlembed Perl how to embed perl in your C or C++ app
perlpod Perl plain old documentation
perlbook Perl book information
(If you're intending to read these straight through for the
first time, the suggested order will tend to reduce the
number of forward references.)
Additional documentation for Perl modules is available in
the /usr/local/man/ directory. Some of this is distributed
standard with Perl, but you'll also find third-party modules
there. You should be able to view this with your man(1)
program by including the proper directories in the
appropriate start-up files. To find out where these are,
type:
perl -le 'use Config; print "@Config{man1dir,man3dir}"'
If the directories were /usr/local/man/man1 and
/usr/local/man/man3, you would only need to add
/usr/local/man to your MANPATH. If they are different,
you'll have to add both stems.
If that doesn't work for some reason, you can still use the
supplied perldoc script to view module information. You
might also look into getting a replacement man program.
If something strange has gone wrong with your program and
you're not sure where you should look for help, try the -w
switch first. It will often point out exactly where the
trouble is.
DESCRIPTION
Perl is an interpreted language optimized for scanning
arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text
files, and printing reports based on that information. It's
also a good language for many system management tasks. The
language is intended to be practical (easy to use,
efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant,
minimal). It combines (in the author's opinion, anyway)
some of the best features of C, sed, awk, and sh, so people
familiar with those languages should have little difficulty
with it. (Language historians will also note some vestiges
of csh, Pascal, and even BASIC-PLUS.) Expression syntax
corresponds quite closely to C expression syntax. Unlike
most Unix utilities, Perl does not arbitrarily limit the
size of your data--if you've got the memory, Perl can slurp
in your whole file as a single string. Recursion is of
unlimited depth. And the hash tables used by associative
arrays grow as necessary to prevent degraded performance.
Perl uses sophisticated pattern matching techniques to scan
large amounts of data very quickly. Although optimized for
scanning text, Perl can also deal with binary data, and can
make dbm files look like associative arrays. Setuid Perl
scripts are safer than C programs through a dataflow tracing
mechanism which prevents many stupid security holes. If you
have a problem that would ordinarily use sed or awk or sh,
but it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little
faster, and you don't want to write the silly thing in C,
then Perl may be for you. There are also translators to
turn your sed and awk scripts into Perl scripts.
But wait, there's more...
Perl version 5 is nearly a complete rewrite, and provides
the following additional benefits:
+ Many usability enhancements
It is now possible to write much more readable Perl
code (even within regular expressions). Formerly
cryptic variable names can be replaced by mnemonic
identifiers. Error messages are more informative, and
the optional warnings will catch many of the mistakes a
novice might make. This cannot be stressed enough.
Whenever you get mysterious behavior, try the -w
switch!!! Whenever you don't get mysterious behavior,
try using -w anyway.
+ Simplified grammar
The new yacc grammar is one half the size of the old
one. Many of the arbitrary grammar rules have been
regularized. The number of reserved words has been cut
by 2/3. Despite this, nearly all old Perl scripts will
continue to work unchanged.
+ Lexical scoping
Perl variables may now be declared within a lexical
scope, like "auto" variables in C. Not only is this
more efficient, but it contributes to better privacy
for "programming in the large".
+ Arbitrarily nested data structures
Any scalar value, including any array element, may now
contain a reference to any other variable or
subroutine. You can easily create anonymous variables
and subroutines. Perl manages your reference counts
for you.
+ Modularity and reusability
The Perl library is now defined in terms of modules
which can be easily shared among various packages. A
package may choose to import all or a portion of a
module's published interface. Pragmas (that is,
compiler directives) are defined and used by the same
mechanism.
+ Object-oriented programming
A package can function as a class. Dynamic multiple
inheritance and virtual methods are supported in a
straightforward manner and with very little new syntax.
Filehandles may now be treated as objects.
+ Embeddable and Extensible
Perl may now be embedded easily in your C or C++
application, and can either call or be called by your
routines through a documented interface. The XS
preprocessor is provided to make it easy to glue your C
or C++ routines into Perl. Dynamic loading of modules
is supported.
+ POSIX compliant
A major new module is the POSIX module, which provides
access to all available POSIX routines and definitions,
via object classes where appropriate.
+ Package constructors and destructors
The new BEGIN and END blocks provide means to capture
control as a package is being compiled, and after the
program exits. As a degenerate case they work just
like awk's BEGIN and END when you use the -p or -n
switches.
+ Multiple simultaneous DBM implementations
A Perl program may now access DBM, NDBM, SDBM, GDBM,
and Berkeley DB files from the same script
simultaneously. In fact, the old dbmopen interface has
been generalized to allow any variable to be tied to an
object class which defines its access methods.
+ Subroutine definitions may now be autoloaded
In fact, the AUTOLOAD mechanism also allows you to
define any arbitrary semantics for undefined subroutine
calls. It's not just for autoloading.
+ Regular expression enhancements
You can now specify non-greedy quantifiers. You can
now do grouping without creating a backreference. You
can now write regular expressions with embedded
whitespace and comments for readability. A consistent
extensibility mechanism has been added that is upwardly
compatible with all old regular expressions.
Ok, that's definitely enough hype.
ENVIRONMENT
HOME Used if chdir has no argument.
LOGDIR Used if chdir has no argument and HOME is not
set.
PATH Used in executing subprocesses, and in finding
the script if -S is used.
PERL5LIB A colon-separated list of directories in which
to look for Perl library files before looking in
the standard library and the current directory.
If PERL5LIB is not defined, PERLLIB is used.
When running taint checks (because the script
was running setuid or setgid, or the -T switch
was used), neither variable is used. The script
should instead say
use lib "/my/directory";
PERL5DB The command used to get the debugger code. If
unset, uses
BEGIN { require 'perl5db.pl' }
PERLLIB A colon-separated list of directories in which
to look for Perl library files before looking in
the standard library and the current directory.
If PERL5LIB is defined, PERLLIB is not used.
Apart from these, Perl uses no other environment variables,
except to make them available to the script being executed,
and to child processes. However, scripts running setuid
would do well to execute the following lines before doing
anything else, just to keep people honest:
$ENV{'PATH'} = '/bin:/usr/bin'; # or whatever you need
$ENV{'SHELL'} = '/bin/sh' if defined $ENV{'SHELL'};
$ENV{'IFS'} = '' if defined $ENV{'IFS'};
AUTHOR
Larry Wall <<lwall@sems.com>, with the help of oodles of
other folks.
FILES
"/tmp/perl-e$$" temporary file for -e commands
"@INC" locations of perl 5 libraries
SEE ALSO
a2p awk to perl translator
s2p sed to perl translator
DIAGNOSTICS
The -w switch produces some lovely diagnostics.
See the perldiag manpage for explanations of all Perl's
diagnostics.
Compilation errors will tell you the line number of the
error, with an indication of the next token or token type
that was to be examined. (In the case of a script passed to
Perl via -e switches, each -e is counted as one line.)
Setuid scripts have additional constraints that can produce
error messages such as "Insecure dependency". See the
perlsec manpage.
Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the
-w switch?
BUGS
The -w switch is not mandatory.
Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of
various operations such as type casting, atof() and
sprintf(). The latter can even trigger a coredump when
passed ludicrous input values.
If your stdio requires a seek or eof between reads and
writes on a particular stream, so does Perl. (This doesn't
apply to sysread() and syswrite().)
While none of the built-in data types have any arbitrary
size limits (apart from memory size), there are still a few
arbitrary limits: a given identifier may not be longer than
255 characters, and no component of your PATH may be longer
than 255 if you use -S. A regular expression may not
compile to more than 32767 bytes internally.
See the perl bugs database at http://perl.com/perl/bugs/.
You may mail your bug reports (be sure to include full
configuration information as output by the myconfig program
in the perl source tree) to perlbug@perl.com. If you've
succeeded in compiling perl, the perlbug script in the
utils/ subdirectory can be used to help mail in a bug
report.
Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish
Lister, but don't tell anyone I said that.
NOTES
The Perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it."
Divining how many more is left as an exercise to the reader.
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness,
Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.