Perl Programming : Installing Perl
To use the Perl programming language you must install a Perl interpreter. Depending on the operating system you are using, it is possible that the interpreter may be already installed. To see whether it is installed, go to a command prompt and enter:
perl -v
If you get a message like ‘command not found’ or ‘Bad command or file name’, it means that the interpreter is not installed or the path of the interpreter has not been added to the system (environment) variable (in Windows).
If it is installed, its version number along with a few other bits of information will be printed (displayed on the screen).
Installing Perl on Windows
ActiveState Tool Corp provides a self-installing Perl distribution. You can download and install this from the ActiveState.com website.
Make sure that the location of the interpreter is added to the path variable (in environment variables), which is accessible via the Control Panel.
Installing Perl on Unix
You can download Perl from the perl.com website. Make sure that you download the ’stable’ or ‘production’ version and not a version that is still being developed and tested.
Installing Perl on a Macintosh
You can download and install Perl for a Macintosh from the perl.com website.
Documentation
With every installation, you get a full copy of the latest version of the documentation. Once the software is installed, you can access the documentation from the command line by entering the following command:
perldoc perl
You may also be able to access an HTML version of the documentation, which you can view in a browser. For a Windows installation, this would typically be found at C:Perlhtmlindex.html.