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.\" ========================================================================
.\"
.IX Title "PERLFAQ3 1"
.TH PERLFAQ3 1 "2002-11-24" "perl v5.8.0" "Perl Programmers Reference Guide"
.SH "NAME"
perlfaq3 \- Programming Tools ($Revision: 1.22 $, $Date: 2002/05/06 13:11:13 $)
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.IX Header "DESCRIPTION"
This section of the \s-1FAQ\s0 answers questions related to programmer tools
and programming support.
.Sh "How do I do (anything)?"
.IX Subsection "How do I do (anything)?"
Have you looked at \s-1CPAN\s0 (see perlfaq2)? The chances are that
someone has already written a module that can solve your problem.
Have you read the appropriate manpages? Here's a brief index:
.PP
.Vb 12
\& Basics perldata, perlvar, perlsyn, perlop, perlsub
\& Execution perlrun, perldebug
\& Functions perlfunc
\& Objects perlref, perlmod, perlobj, perltie
\& Data Structures perlref, perllol, perldsc
\& Modules perlmod, perlmodlib, perlsub
\& Regexes perlre, perlfunc, perlop, perllocale
\& Moving to perl5 perltrap, perl
\& Linking w/C perlxstut, perlxs, perlcall, perlguts, perlembed
\& Various http://www.cpan.org/misc/olddoc/FMTEYEWTK.tgz
\& (not a man-page but still useful, a collection
\& of various essays on Perl techniques)
.Ve
.PP
A crude table of contents for the Perl manpage set is found in perltoc.
.Sh "How can I use Perl interactively?"
.IX Subsection "How can I use Perl interactively?"
The typical approach uses the Perl debugger, described in the
\&\fIperldebug\fR\|(1) manpage, on an ``empty'' program, like this:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& perl -de 42
.Ve
.PP
Now just type in any legal Perl code, and it will be immediately
evaluated. You can also examine the symbol table, get stack
backtraces, check variable values, set breakpoints, and other
operations typically found in symbolic debuggers.
.Sh "Is there a Perl shell?"
.IX Subsection "Is there a Perl shell?"
In general, not yet. There is psh available at
.PP
.Vb 1
\& http://www.focusresearch.com/gregor/psh
.Ve
.PP
Which includes the following description:
.PP
.Vb 5
\& The Perl Shell is a shell that combines the interactive nature
\& of a Unix shell with the power of Perl. The goal is to eventually
\& have a full featured shell that behaves as expected for normal
\& shell activity. But, the Perl Shell will use Perl syntax and
\& functionality for control-flow statements and other things.
.Ve
.PP
The Shell.pm module (distributed with Perl) makes Perl try commands
which aren't part of the Perl language as shell commands. perlsh
from the source distribution is simplistic and uninteresting, but
may still be what you want.
.Sh "How do I debug my Perl programs?"
.IX Subsection "How do I debug my Perl programs?"
Have you tried \f(CW\*(C`use warnings\*(C'\fR or used \f(CW\*(C`\-w\*(C'\fR? They enable warnings
to detect dubious practices.
.PP
Have you tried \f(CW\*(C`use strict\*(C'\fR? It prevents you from using symbolic
references, makes you predeclare any subroutines that you call as bare
words, and (probably most importantly) forces you to predeclare your
variables with \f(CW\*(C`my\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`our\*(C'\fR, or \f(CW\*(C`use vars\*(C'\fR.
.PP
Did you check the return values of each and every system call? The operating
system (and thus Perl) tells you whether they worked, and if not
why.
.PP
.Vb 2
\& open(FH, "> /etc/cantwrite")
\& or die "Couldn't write to /etc/cantwrite: $!\en";
.Ve
.PP
Did you read perltrap? It's full of gotchas for old and new Perl
programmers and even has sections for those of you who are upgrading
from languages like \fIawk\fR and \fIC\fR.
.PP
Have you tried the Perl debugger, described in perldebug? You can
step through your program and see what it's doing and thus work out
why what it's doing isn't what it should be doing.
.Sh "How do I profile my Perl programs?"
.IX Subsection "How do I profile my Perl programs?"
You should get the Devel::DProf module from the standard distribution
(or separately on \s-1CPAN\s0) and also use Benchmark.pm from the standard
distribution. The Benchmark module lets you time specific portions of
your code, while Devel::DProf gives detailed breakdowns of where your
code spends its time.
.PP
Here's a sample use of Benchmark:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& use Benchmark;
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& @junk = `cat /etc/motd`;
\& $count = 10_000;
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 10
\& timethese($count, {
\& 'map' => sub { my @a = @junk;
\& map { s/a/b/ } @a;
\& return @a
\& },
\& 'for' => sub { my @a = @junk;
\& local $_;
\& for (@a) { s/a/b/ };
\& return @a },
\& });
.Ve
.PP
This is what it prints (on one machine\*(--your results will be dependent
on your hardware, operating system, and the load on your machine):
.PP
.Vb 3
\& Benchmark: timing 10000 iterations of for, map...
\& for: 4 secs ( 3.97 usr 0.01 sys = 3.98 cpu)
\& map: 6 secs ( 4.97 usr 0.00 sys = 4.97 cpu)
.Ve
.PP
Be aware that a good benchmark is very hard to write. It only tests the
data you give it and proves little about the differing complexities
of contrasting algorithms.
.Sh "How do I cross-reference my Perl programs?"
.IX Subsection "How do I cross-reference my Perl programs?"
The B::Xref module can be used to generate cross-reference reports
for Perl programs.
.PP
.Vb 1
\& perl -MO=Xref[,OPTIONS] scriptname.plx
.Ve
.Sh "Is there a pretty-printer (formatter) for Perl?"
.IX Subsection "Is there a pretty-printer (formatter) for Perl?"
Perltidy is a Perl script which indents and reformats Perl scripts
to make them easier to read by trying to follow the rules of the
perlstyle. If you write Perl scripts, or spend much time reading
them, you will probably find it useful. It is available at
http://perltidy.sourceforge.net
.PP
Of course, if you simply follow the guidelines in perlstyle,
you shouldn't need to reformat. The habit of formatting your code
as you write it will help prevent bugs. Your editor can and should
help you with this. The perl-mode or newer cperl-mode for emacs
can provide remarkable amounts of help with most (but not all)
code, and even less programmable editors can provide significant
assistance. Tom Christiansen and many other \s-1VI\s0 users swear by
the following settings in vi and its clones:
.PP
.Vb 2
\& set ai sw=4
\& map! ^O {^M}^[O^T
.Ve
.PP
Put that in your \fI.exrc\fR file (replacing the caret characters
with control characters) and away you go. In insert mode, ^T is
for indenting, ^D is for undenting, and ^O is for blockdenting\*(--
as it were. A more complete example, with comments, can be found at
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/TOMC/scripts/toms.exrc.gz
.PP
The a2ps http://www\-inf.enst.fr/%7Edemaille/a2ps/black+white.ps does
lots of things related to generating nicely printed output of
documents, as does enscript at http://people.ssh.fi/mtr/genscript/ .
.Sh "Is there a ctags for Perl?"
.IX Subsection "Is there a ctags for Perl?"
Recent versions of ctags do much more than older versions did.
\&\s-1EXUBERANT\s0 \s-1CTAGS\s0 is available from http://ctags.sourceforge.net/
and does a good job of making tags files for perl code.
.PP
There is also a simple one at
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/TOMC/scripts/ptags.gz which may do
the trick. It can be easy to hack this into what you want.
.Sh "Is there an \s-1IDE\s0 or Windows Perl Editor?"
.IX Subsection "Is there an IDE or Windows Perl Editor?"
Perl programs are just plain text, so any editor will do.
.PP
If you're on Unix, you already have an IDE\*(--Unix itself. The \s-1UNIX\s0
philosophy is the philosophy of several small tools that each do one
thing and do it well. It's like a carpenter's toolbox.
.PP
If you want an \s-1IDE\s0, check the following:
.IP "Komodo" 4
.IX Item "Komodo"
ActiveState's cross-platform (as of April 2001 Windows and Linux),
multi-language \s-1IDE\s0 has Perl support, including a regular expression
debugger and remote debugging
( http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Komodo/index.html ). (Visual
Perl, a Visual Studio.NET plug-in is currently (early 2001) in beta
( http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/VisualPerl/index.html )).
.IP "The Object System" 4
.IX Item "The Object System"
( http://www.castlelink.co.uk/object_system/ ) is a Perl web
applications development \s-1IDE\s0, apparently for any platform
that runs Perl.
.IP "Open Perl \s-1IDE\s0" 4
.IX Item "Open Perl IDE"
( http://open\-perl\-ide.sourceforge.net/ )
Open Perl \s-1IDE\s0 is an integrated development environment for writing
and debugging Perl scripts with ActiveState's ActivePerl distribution
under Windows 95/98/NT/2000.
.IP "PerlBuilder" 4
.IX Item "PerlBuilder"
( http://www.solutionsoft.com/perl.htm ) is an integrated development
environment for Windows that supports Perl development.
.IP "visiPerl+" 4
.IX Item "visiPerl+"
( http://helpconsulting.net/visiperl/ )
From Help Consulting, for Windows.
.IP "OptiPerl" 4
.IX Item "OptiPerl"
( http://www.optiperl.com/ ) is a Windows \s-1IDE\s0 with simulated \s-1CGI\s0
environment, including debugger and syntax highlighting editor.
.PP
For Windows there's also the
.IP "CodeMagicCD" 4
.IX Item "CodeMagicCD"
( http://www.codemagiccd.com/ ) Collection of various programming
tools for Windows: Perl (5.005_03), TclTk, Python, \s-1GNU\s0 programming
tools, \s-1REBOL\s0, wxWindows toolkit, the MinGW \s-1GNU\s0 C/\*(C+ compiler, \s-1DJGPP\s0
\&\s-1GNU\s0 C/\*(C+ compiler, Cint C interpreter, YaBasic.
.PP
For editors: if you're on Unix you probably have vi or a vi clone already,
and possibly an emacs too, so you may not need to download anything.
In any emacs the cperl-mode (M\-x cperl\-mode) gives you perhaps the
best available Perl editing mode in any editor.
.PP
If you are using Windows, you can use any editor that lets
you work with plain text, such as NotePad or WordPad. Word
processors, such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, typically
do not work since they insert all sorts of behind-the-scenes
information, although some allow you to save files as \*(L"Text
Only\*(R". You can also download text editors designed
specifically for programming, such as Textpad
( http://www.textpad.com/ ) and UltraEdit
( http://www.ultraedit.com/ ), among others.
.PP
If you are using Mac \s-1OS\s0, the same concerns apply. MacPerl
(for Classic environments) comes with a simple editor.
Popular external editors are BBEdit ( http://www.bbedit.com/ )
or Alpha ( http://www.kelehers.org/alpha/ ). Mac \s-1OS\s0 X users can
use Unix editors as well.
.IP "\s-1GNU\s0 Emacs" 4
.IX Item "GNU Emacs"
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
.IP "MicroEMACS" 4
.IX Item "MicroEMACS"
http://members.nbci.com/uemacs/
.IP "XEmacs" 4
.IX Item "XEmacs"
http://www.xemacs.org/Download/index.html
.PP
or a vi clone such as
.IP "Elvis" 4
.IX Item "Elvis"
ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/elvis/ http://www.fh\-wedel.de/elvis/
.IP "Vile" 4
.IX Item "Vile"
http://vile.cx/
.IP "Vim" 4
.IX Item "Vim"
http://www.vim.org/
.Sp
win32: http://www.cs.vu.nl/%7Etmgil/vi.html
.PP
For vi lovers in general, Windows or elsewhere:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& http://www.thomer.com/thomer/vi/vi.html
.Ve
.PP
nvi ( http://www.bostic.com/vi/ , available from \s-1CPAN\s0 in src/misc/) is
yet another vi clone, unfortunately not available for Windows, but in
\&\s-1UNIX\s0 platforms you might be interested in trying it out, firstly because
strictly speaking it is not a vi clone, it is the real vi, or the new
incarnation of it, and secondly because you can embed Perl inside it
to use Perl as the scripting language. nvi is not alone in this,
though: at least also vim and vile offer an embedded Perl.
.PP
The following are Win32 multilanguage editor/IDESs that support Perl:
.IP "Codewright" 4
.IX Item "Codewright"
http://www.starbase.com/
.IP "MultiEdit" 4
.IX Item "MultiEdit"
http://www.MultiEdit.com/
.IP "SlickEdit" 4
.IX Item "SlickEdit"
http://www.slickedit.com/
.PP
There is also a toyedit Text widget based editor written in Perl
that is distributed with the Tk module on \s-1CPAN\s0. The ptkdb
( http://world.std.com/~aep/ptkdb/ ) is a Perl/tk based debugger that
acts as a development environment of sorts. Perl Composer
( http://perlcomposer.sourceforge.net/vperl.html ) is an \s-1IDE\s0 for Perl/Tk
\&\s-1GUI\s0 creation.
.PP
In addition to an editor/IDE you might be interested in a more
powerful shell environment for Win32. Your options include
.IP "Bash" 4
.IX Item "Bash"
from the Cygwin package ( http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ )
.IP "Ksh" 4
.IX Item "Ksh"
from the \s-1MKS\s0 Toolkit ( http://www.mks.com/ ), or the Bourne shell of
the U/WIN environment ( http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/ )
.IP "Tcsh" 4
.IX Item "Tcsh"
ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/tcsh/ , see also
http://www.primate.wisc.edu/software/csh\-tcsh\-book/
.IP "Zsh" 4
.IX Item "Zsh"
ftp://ftp.blarg.net/users/amol/zsh/ , see also http://www.zsh.org/
.PP
\&\s-1MKS\s0 and U/WIN are commercial (U/WIN is free for educational and
research purposes), Cygwin is covered by the \s-1GNU\s0 Public License (but
that shouldn't matter for Perl use). The Cygwin, \s-1MKS\s0, and U/WIN all
contain (in addition to the shells) a comprehensive set of standard
\&\s-1UNIX\s0 toolkit utilities.
.PP
If you're transferring text files between Unix and Windows using \s-1FTP\s0
be sure to transfer them in \s-1ASCII\s0 mode so the ends of lines are
appropriately converted.
.PP
On Mac \s-1OS\s0 the MacPerl Application comes with a simple 32k text editor
that behaves like a rudimentary \s-1IDE\s0. In contrast to the MacPerl Application
the \s-1MPW\s0 Perl tool can make use of the \s-1MPW\s0 Shell itself as an editor (with
no 32k limit).
.IP "BBEdit and BBEdit Lite" 4
.IX Item "BBEdit and BBEdit Lite"
are text editors for Mac \s-1OS\s0 that have a Perl sensitivity mode
( http://web.barebones.com/ ).
.IP "Alpha" 4
.IX Item "Alpha"
is an editor, written and extensible in Tcl, that nonetheless has
built in support for several popular markup and programming languages
including Perl and \s-1HTML\s0 ( http://alpha.olm.net/ ).
.PP
Pepper and Pe are programming language sensitive text editors for Mac
\&\s-1OS\s0 X and BeOS respectively ( http://www.hekkelman.com/ ).
.Sh "Where can I get Perl macros for vi?"
.IX Subsection "Where can I get Perl macros for vi?"
For a complete version of Tom Christiansen's vi configuration file,
see http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/toms.exrc.gz ,
the standard benchmark file for vi emulators. The file runs best with nvi,
the current version of vi out of Berkeley, which incidentally can be built
with an embedded Perl interpreter\*(--see http://www.cpan.org/src/misc/ .
.Sh "Where can I get perl-mode for emacs?"
.IX Subsection "Where can I get perl-mode for emacs?"
Since Emacs version 19 patchlevel 22 or so, there have been both a
perl\-mode.el and support for the Perl debugger built in. These should
come with the standard Emacs 19 distribution.
.PP
In the Perl source directory, you'll find a directory called \*(L"emacs\*(R",
which contains a cperl-mode that color-codes keywords, provides
context-sensitive help, and other nifty things.
.PP
Note that the perl-mode of emacs will have fits with \f(CW"main'foo"\fR
(single quote), and mess up the indentation and highlighting. You
are probably using \f(CW"main::foo"\fR in new Perl code anyway, so this
shouldn't be an issue.
.Sh "How can I use curses with Perl?"
.IX Subsection "How can I use curses with Perl?"
The Curses module from \s-1CPAN\s0 provides a dynamically loadable object
module interface to a curses library. A small demo can be found at the
directory http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/rep ;
this program repeats a command and updates the screen as needed, rendering
\&\fBrep ps axu\fR similar to \fBtop\fR.
.Sh "How can I use X or Tk with Perl?"
.IX Subsection "How can I use X or Tk with Perl?"
Tk is a completely Perl\-based, object-oriented interface to the Tk toolkit
that doesn't force you to use Tcl just to get at Tk. Sx is an interface
to the Athena Widget set. Both are available from \s-1CPAN\s0. See the
directory http://www.cpan.org/modules/by\-category/08_User_Interfaces/
.PP
Invaluable for Perl/Tk programming are the Perl/Tk \s-1FAQ\s0 at
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/%7Epvhp/ptk/ptkTOC.html , the Perl/Tk Reference
Guide available at
http://www.cpan.org/authors/Stephen_O_Lidie/ , and the
online manpages at
http://www\-users.cs.umn.edu/%7Eamundson/perl/perltk/toc.html .
.Sh "How can I generate simple menus without using \s-1CGI\s0 or Tk?"
.IX Subsection "How can I generate simple menus without using CGI or Tk?"
The http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/SKUNZ/perlmenu.v4.0.tar.gz
module, which is curses\-based, can help with this.
.Sh "How can I make my Perl program run faster?"
.IX Subsection "How can I make my Perl program run faster?"
The best way to do this is to come up with a better algorithm. This
can often make a dramatic difference. Jon Bentley's book
``Programming Pearls'' (that's not a misspelling!) has some good tips
on optimization, too. Advice on benchmarking boils down to: benchmark
and profile to make sure you're optimizing the right part, look for
better algorithms instead of microtuning your code, and when all else
fails consider just buying faster hardware. You will probably want to
read the answer to the earlier question ``How do I profile my Perl programs?''
if you haven't done so already.
.PP
A different approach is to autoload seldom-used Perl code. See the
AutoSplit and AutoLoader modules in the standard distribution for
that. Or you could locate the bottleneck and think about writing just
that part in C, the way we used to take bottlenecks in C code and
write them in assembler. Similar to rewriting in C,
modules that have critical sections can be written in C (for instance, the
\&\s-1PDL\s0 module from \s-1CPAN\s0).
.PP
In some cases, it may be worth it to use the backend compiler to
produce byte code (saving compilation time) or compile into C, which
will certainly save compilation time and sometimes a small amount (but
not much) execution time. See the question about compiling your Perl
programs for more on the compiler\*(--the wins aren't as obvious as you'd
hope.
.PP
If you're currently linking your perl executable to a shared \fIlibc.so\fR,
you can often gain a 10\-25% performance benefit by rebuilding it to
link with a static libc.a instead. This will make a bigger perl
executable, but your Perl programs (and programmers) may thank you for
it. See the \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR file in the source distribution for more
information.
.PP
Unsubstantiated reports allege that Perl interpreters that use sfio
outperform those that don't (for I/O intensive applications). To try
this, see the \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR file in the source distribution, especially
the ``Selecting File I/O mechanisms'' section.
.PP
The undump program was an old attempt to speed up your Perl program
by storing the already-compiled form to disk. This is no longer
a viable option, as it only worked on a few architectures, and
wasn't a good solution anyway.
.Sh "How can I make my Perl program take less memory?"
.IX Subsection "How can I make my Perl program take less memory?"
When it comes to time-space tradeoffs, Perl nearly always prefers to
throw memory at a problem. Scalars in Perl use more memory than
strings in C, arrays take more than that, and hashes use even more. While
there's still a lot to be done, recent releases have been addressing
these issues. For example, as of 5.004, duplicate hash keys are
shared amongst all hashes using them, so require no reallocation.
.PP
In some cases, using \fIsubstr()\fR or \fIvec()\fR to simulate arrays can be
highly beneficial. For example, an array of a thousand booleans will
take at least 20,000 bytes of space, but it can be turned into one
125\-byte bit vector\*(--a considerable memory savings. The standard
Tie::SubstrHash module can also help for certain types of data
structure. If you're working with specialist data structures
(matrices, for instance) modules that implement these in C may use
less memory than equivalent Perl modules.
.PP
Another thing to try is learning whether your Perl was compiled with
the system malloc or with Perl's builtin malloc. Whichever one it
is, try using the other one and see whether this makes a difference.
Information about malloc is in the \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR file in the source
distribution. You can find out whether you are using perl's malloc by
typing \f(CW\*(C`perl \-V:usemymalloc\*(C'\fR.
.PP
Of course, the best way to save memory is to not do anything to waste
it in the first place. Good programming practices can go a long way
toward this:
.IP "\(bu Don't slurp!" 4
.IX Item "Don't slurp!"
Don't read an entire file into memory if you can process it line
by line. Or more concretely, use a loop like this:
.Sp
.Vb 6
\& #
\& # Good Idea
\& #
\& while (<FILE>) {
\& # ...
\& }
.Ve
.Sp
instead of this:
.Sp
.Vb 7
\& #
\& # Bad Idea
\& #
\& @data = <FILE>;
\& foreach (@data) {
\& # ...
\& }
.Ve
.Sp
When the files you're processing are small, it doesn't much matter which
way you do it, but it makes a huge difference when they start getting
larger.
.IP "\(bu Use map and grep selectively" 4
.IX Item "Use map and grep selectively"
Remember that both map and grep expect a \s-1LIST\s0 argument, so doing this:
.Sp
.Vb 1
\& @wanted = grep {/pattern/} <FILE>;
.Ve
.Sp
will cause the entire file to be slurped. For large files, it's better
to loop:
.Sp
.Vb 3
\& while (<FILE>) {
\& push(@wanted, $_) if /pattern/;
\& }
.Ve
.IP "\(bu Avoid unnecessary quotes and stringification" 4
.IX Item "Avoid unnecessary quotes and stringification"
Don't quote large strings unless absolutely necessary:
.Sp
.Vb 1
\& my $copy = "$large_string";
.Ve
.Sp
makes 2 copies of \f(CW$large_string\fR (one for \f(CW$copy\fR and another for the
quotes), whereas
.Sp
.Vb 1
\& my $copy = $large_string;
.Ve
.Sp
only makes one copy.
.Sp
Ditto for stringifying large arrays:
.Sp
.Vb 4
\& {
\& local $, = "\en";
\& print @big_array;
\& }
.Ve
.Sp
is much more memory-efficient than either
.Sp
.Vb 1
\& print join "\en", @big_array;
.Ve
.Sp
or
.Sp
.Vb 4
\& {
\& local $" = "\en";
\& print "@big_array";
\& }
.Ve
.IP "\(bu Pass by reference" 4
.IX Item "Pass by reference"
Pass arrays and hashes by reference, not by value. For one thing, it's
the only way to pass multiple lists or hashes (or both) in a single
call/return. It also avoids creating a copy of all the contents. This
requires some judgment, however, because any changes will be propagated
back to the original data. If you really want to mangle (er, modify) a
copy, you'll have to sacrifice the memory needed to make one.
.IP "\(bu Tie large variables to disk." 4
.IX Item "Tie large variables to disk."
For \*(L"big\*(R" data stores (i.e. ones that exceed available memory) consider
using one of the \s-1DB\s0 modules to store it on disk instead of in \s-1RAM\s0. This
will incur a penalty in access time, but that's probably better than
causing your hard disk to thrash due to massive swapping.
.Sh "Is it unsafe to return a pointer to local data?"
.IX Subsection "Is it unsafe to return a pointer to local data?"
No, Perl's garbage collection system takes care of this.
.PP
.Vb 4
\& sub makeone {
\& my @a = ( 1 .. 10 );
\& return \e@a;
\& }
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 3
\& for $i ( 1 .. 10 ) {
\& push @many, makeone();
\& }
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 1
\& print $many[4][5], "\en";
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 1
\& print "@many\en";
.Ve
.Sh "How can I free an array or hash so my program shrinks?"
.IX Subsection "How can I free an array or hash so my program shrinks?"
You usually can't. On most operating systems, memory
allocated to a program can never be returned to the system.
That's why long-running programs sometimes re-exec
themselves. Some operating systems (notably, systems that
use \fImmap\fR\|(2) for allocating large chunks of memory) can
reclaim memory that is no longer used, but on such systems,
perl must be configured and compiled to use the \s-1OS\s0's malloc,
not perl's.
.PP
However, judicious use of \fImy()\fR on your variables will help make sure
that they go out of scope so that Perl can free up that space for
use in other parts of your program. A global variable, of course, never
goes out of scope, so you can't get its space automatically reclaimed,
although \fIundef()\fRing and/or \fIdelete()\fRing it will achieve the same effect.
In general, memory allocation and de-allocation isn't something you can
or should be worrying about much in Perl, but even this capability
(preallocation of data types) is in the works.
.Sh "How can I make my \s-1CGI\s0 script more efficient?"
.IX Subsection "How can I make my CGI script more efficient?"
Beyond the normal measures described to make general Perl programs
faster or smaller, a \s-1CGI\s0 program has additional issues. It may be run
several times per second. Given that each time it runs it will need
to be re-compiled and will often allocate a megabyte or more of system
memory, this can be a killer. Compiling into C \fBisn't going to help
you\fR because the process start-up overhead is where the bottleneck is.
.PP
There are two popular ways to avoid this overhead. One solution
involves running the Apache \s-1HTTP\s0 server (available from
http://www.apache.org/ ) with either of the mod_perl or mod_fastcgi
plugin modules.
.PP
With mod_perl and the Apache::Registry module (distributed with
mod_perl), httpd will run with an embedded Perl interpreter which
pre-compiles your script and then executes it within the same address
space without forking. The Apache extension also gives Perl access to
the internal server \s-1API\s0, so modules written in Perl can do just about
anything a module written in C can. For more on mod_perl, see
http://perl.apache.org/
.PP
With the \s-1FCGI\s0 module (from \s-1CPAN\s0) and the mod_fastcgi
module (available from http://www.fastcgi.com/ ) each of your Perl
programs becomes a permanent \s-1CGI\s0 daemon process.
.PP
Both of these solutions can have far-reaching effects on your system
and on the way you write your \s-1CGI\s0 programs, so investigate them with
care.
.PP
See http://www.cpan.org/modules/by\-category/15_World_Wide_Web_HTML_HTTP_CGI/ .
.PP
A non\-free, commercial product, ``The Velocity Engine for Perl'',
(http://www.binevolve.com/ or http://www.binevolve.com/velocigen/ )
might also be worth looking at. It will allow you to increase the
performance of your Perl programs, running programs up to 25 times
faster than normal \s-1CGI\s0 Perl when running in persistent Perl mode or 4
to 5 times faster without any modification to your existing \s-1CGI\s0
programs. Fully functional evaluation copies are available from the
web site.
.Sh "How can I hide the source for my Perl program?"
.IX Subsection "How can I hide the source for my Perl program?"
Delete it. :\-) Seriously, there are a number of (mostly
unsatisfactory) solutions with varying levels of ``security''.
.PP
First of all, however, you \fIcan't\fR take away read permission, because
the source code has to be readable in order to be compiled and
interpreted. (That doesn't mean that a \s-1CGI\s0 script's source is
readable by people on the web, though\*(--only by people with access to
the filesystem.) So you have to leave the permissions at the socially
friendly 0755 level.
.PP
Some people regard this as a security problem. If your program does
insecure things and relies on people not knowing how to exploit those
insecurities, it is not secure. It is often possible for someone to
determine the insecure things and exploit them without viewing the
source. Security through obscurity, the name for hiding your bugs
instead of fixing them, is little security indeed.
.PP
You can try using encryption via source filters (Starting from Perl
5.8 the Filter::Simple and Filter::Util::Call modules are included in
the standard distribution), but any decent programmer will be able to
decrypt it. You can try using the byte code compiler and interpreter
described below, but the curious might still be able to de-compile it.
You can try using the native-code compiler described below, but
crackers might be able to disassemble it. These pose varying degrees
of difficulty to people wanting to get at your code, but none can
definitively conceal it (true of every language, not just Perl).
.PP
If you're concerned about people profiting from your code, then the
bottom line is that nothing but a restrictive license will give you
legal security. License your software and pepper it with threatening
statements like ``This is unpublished proprietary software of \s-1XYZ\s0 Corp.
Your access to it does not give you permission to use it blah blah
blah.'' We are not lawyers, of course, so you should see a lawyer if
you want to be sure your license's wording will stand up in court.
.Sh "How can I compile my Perl program into byte code or C?"
.IX Subsection "How can I compile my Perl program into byte code or C?"
Malcolm Beattie has written a multifunction backend compiler,
available from \s-1CPAN\s0, that can do both these things. It is included
in the perl5.005 release, but is still considered experimental.
This means it's fun to play with if you're a programmer but not
really for people looking for turn-key solutions.
.PP
Merely compiling into C does not in and of itself guarantee that your
code will run very much faster. That's because except for lucky cases
where a lot of native type inferencing is possible, the normal Perl
run-time system is still present and so your program will take just as
long to run and be just as big. Most programs save little more than
compilation time, leaving execution no more than 10\-30% faster. A few
rare programs actually benefit significantly (even running several times
faster), but this takes some tweaking of your code.
.PP
You'll probably be astonished to learn that the current version of the
compiler generates a compiled form of your script whose executable is
just as big as the original perl executable, and then some. That's
because as currently written, all programs are prepared for a full
\&\fIeval()\fR statement. You can tremendously reduce this cost by building a
shared \fIlibperl.so\fR library and linking against that. See the
\&\fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR podfile in the Perl source distribution for details. If
you link your main perl binary with this, it will make it minuscule.
For example, on one author's system, \fI/usr/bin/perl\fR is only 11k in
size!
.PP
In general, the compiler will do nothing to make a Perl program smaller,
faster, more portable, or more secure. In fact, it can make your
situation worse. The executable will be bigger, your \s-1VM\s0 system may take
longer to load the whole thing, the binary is fragile and hard to fix,
and compilation never stopped software piracy in the form of crackers,
viruses, or bootleggers. The real advantage of the compiler is merely
packaging, and once you see the size of what it makes (well, unless
you use a shared \fIlibperl.so\fR), you'll probably want a complete
Perl install anyway.
.Sh "How can I compile Perl into Java?"
.IX Subsection "How can I compile Perl into Java?"
You can also integrate Java and Perl with the
Perl Resource Kit from O'Reilly and Associates. See
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prkunix/ .
.PP
Perl 5.6 comes with Java Perl Lingo, or \s-1JPL\s0. \s-1JPL\s0, still in
development, allows Perl code to be called from Java. See jpl/README
in the Perl source tree.
.ie n .Sh "How can I get ""#!perl"" to work on [\s-1MS\-DOS\s0,NT,...]?"
.el .Sh "How can I get \f(CW#!perl\fP to work on [\s-1MS\-DOS\s0,NT,...]?"
.IX Subsection "How can I get #!perl to work on [MS-DOS,NT,...]?"
For \s-1OS/2\s0 just use
.PP
.Vb 1
\& extproc perl -S -your_switches
.Ve
.PP
as the first line in \f(CW\*(C`*.cmd\*(C'\fR file (\f(CW\*(C`\-S\*(C'\fR due to a bug in cmd.exe's
`extproc' handling). For \s-1DOS\s0 one should first invent a corresponding
batch file and codify it in \f(CW\*(C`ALTERNATIVE_SHEBANG\*(C'\fR (see the
\&\fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR file in the source distribution for more information).
.PP
The Win95/NT installation, when using the ActiveState port of Perl,
will modify the Registry to associate the \f(CW\*(C`.pl\*(C'\fR extension with the
perl interpreter. If you install another port, perhaps even building
your own Win95/NT Perl from the standard sources by using a Windows port
of gcc (e.g., with cygwin or mingw32), then you'll have to modify
the Registry yourself. In addition to associating \f(CW\*(C`.pl\*(C'\fR with the
interpreter, \s-1NT\s0 people can use: \f(CW\*(C`SET PATHEXT=%PATHEXT%;.PL\*(C'\fR to let them
run the program \f(CW\*(C`install\-linux.pl\*(C'\fR merely by typing \f(CW\*(C`install\-linux\*(C'\fR.
.PP
Macintosh Perl programs will have the appropriate Creator and
Type, so that double-clicking them will invoke the Perl application.
.PP
\&\fI\s-1IMPORTANT\s0!\fR: Whatever you do, \s-1PLEASE\s0 don't get frustrated, and just
throw the perl interpreter into your cgi-bin directory, in order to
get your programs working for a web server. This is an \s-1EXTREMELY\s0 big
security risk. Take the time to figure out how to do it correctly.
.Sh "Can I write useful Perl programs on the command line?"
.IX Subsection "Can I write useful Perl programs on the command line?"
Yes. Read perlrun for more information. Some examples follow.
(These assume standard Unix shell quoting rules.)
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # sum first and last fields
\& perl -lane 'print $F[0] + $F[-1]' *
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # identify text files
\& perl -le 'for(@ARGV) {print if -f && -T _}' *
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # remove (most) comments from C program
\& perl -0777 -pe 's{/\e*.*?\e*/}{}gs' foo.c
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # make file a month younger than today, defeating reaper daemons
\& perl -e '$X=24*60*60; utime(time(),time() + 30 * $X,@ARGV)' *
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # find first unused uid
\& perl -le '$i++ while getpwuid($i); print $i'
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 3
\& # display reasonable manpath
\& echo $PATH | perl -nl -072 -e '
\& s![^/+]*$!man!&&-d&&!$s{$_}++&&push@m,$_;END{print"@m"}'
.Ve
.PP
\&\s-1OK\s0, the last one was actually an Obfuscated Perl Contest entry. :\-)
.Sh "Why don't Perl one-liners work on my DOS/Mac/VMS system?"
.IX Subsection "Why don't Perl one-liners work on my DOS/Mac/VMS system?"
The problem is usually that the command interpreters on those systems
have rather different ideas about quoting than the Unix shells under
which the one-liners were created. On some systems, you may have to
change single-quotes to double ones, which you must \fI\s-1NOT\s0\fR do on Unix
or Plan9 systems. You might also have to change a single % to a %%.
.PP
For example:
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # Unix
\& perl -e 'print "Hello world\en"'
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # DOS, etc.
\& perl -e "print \e"Hello world\en\e""
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 3
\& # Mac
\& print "Hello world\en"
\& (then Run "Myscript" or Shift-Command-R)
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # MPW
\& perl -e 'print "Hello world\en"'
.Ve
.PP
.Vb 2
\& # VMS
\& perl -e "print ""Hello world\en"""
.Ve
.PP
The problem is that none of these examples are reliable: they depend on the
command interpreter. Under Unix, the first two often work. Under \s-1DOS\s0,
it's entirely possible that neither works. If 4DOS was the command shell,
you'd probably have better luck like this:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& perl -e "print <Ctrl-x>"Hello world\en<Ctrl-x>""
.Ve
.PP
Under the Mac, it depends which environment you are using. The MacPerl
shell, or \s-1MPW\s0, is much like Unix shells in its support for several
quoting variants, except that it makes free use of the Mac's non-ASCII
characters as control characters.
.PP
Using \fIqq()\fR, q(), and \fIqx()\fR, instead of \*(L"double quotes\*(R", 'single
quotes', and `backticks`, may make one-liners easier to write.
.PP
There is no general solution to all of this. It is a mess.
.PP
[Some of this answer was contributed by Kenneth Albanowski.]
.Sh "Where can I learn about \s-1CGI\s0 or Web programming in Perl?"
.IX Subsection "Where can I learn about CGI or Web programming in Perl?"
For modules, get the \s-1CGI\s0 or \s-1LWP\s0 modules from \s-1CPAN\s0. For textbooks,
see the two especially dedicated to web stuff in the question on
books. For problems and questions related to the web, like ``Why
do I get 500 Errors'' or ``Why doesn't it run from the browser right
when it runs fine on the command line'', see the troubleshooting
guides and references in perlfaq9 or in the \s-1CGI\s0 MetaFAQ:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
.Ve
.Sh "Where can I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?"
.IX Subsection "Where can I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?"
A good place to start is perltoot, and you can use perlobj,
perlboot, perltoot, perltooc, and perlbot for reference.
(If you are using really old Perl, you may not have all of these,
try http://www.perldoc.com/ , but consider upgrading your perl.)
.PP
A good book on \s-1OO\s0 on Perl is the \*(L"Object\-Oriented Perl\*(R"
by Damian Conway from Manning Publications,
http://www.manning.com/Conway/index.html
.Sh "Where can I learn about linking C with Perl? [h2xs, xsubpp]"
.IX Subsection "Where can I learn about linking C with Perl? [h2xs, xsubpp]"
If you want to call C from Perl, start with perlxstut,
moving on to perlxs, xsubpp, and perlguts. If you want to
call Perl from C, then read perlembed, perlcall, and
perlguts. Don't forget that you can learn a lot from looking at
how the authors of existing extension modules wrote their code and
solved their problems.
.Sh "I've read perlembed, perlguts, etc., but I can't embed perl in my C program; what am I doing wrong?"
.IX Subsection "I've read perlembed, perlguts, etc., but I can't embed perl in my C program; what am I doing wrong?"
Download the ExtUtils::Embed kit from \s-1CPAN\s0 and run `make test'. If
the tests pass, read the pods again and again and again. If they
fail, see perlbug and send a bug report with the output of
\&\f(CW\*(C`make test TEST_VERBOSE=1\*(C'\fR along with \f(CW\*(C`perl \-V\*(C'\fR.
.Sh "When I tried to run my script, I got this message. What does it mean?"
.IX Subsection "When I tried to run my script, I got this message. What does it mean?"
A complete list of Perl's error messages and warnings with explanatory
text can be found in perldiag. You can also use the splain program
(distributed with Perl) to explain the error messages:
.PP
.Vb 2
\& perl program 2>diag.out
\& splain [-v] [-p] diag.out
.Ve
.PP
or change your program to explain the messages for you:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& use diagnostics;
.Ve
.PP
or
.PP
.Vb 1
\& use diagnostics -verbose;
.Ve
.Sh "What's MakeMaker?"
.IX Subsection "What's MakeMaker?"
This module (part of the standard Perl distribution) is designed to
write a Makefile for an extension module from a Makefile.PL. For more
information, see ExtUtils::MakeMaker.
.SH "AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT"
.IX Header "AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT"
Copyright (c) 1997\-2002 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
All rights reserved.
.PP
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
.PP
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the \s-1FAQ\s0 would
be courteous but is not required.
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