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Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed fortext manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks includingsystem administration, web development, network programming, GUIdevelopment, and more.

The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient,complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). Its majorfeatures are that it's easy to use, supports both procedural andobject-oriented (OO) programming, has powerful built-in support for textprocessing, and has one of the world's most impressive collections ofthird-party modules.

For an introduction to the language's features, see pod/perlintro.pod.

For a discussion of the important changes in this release, seepod/perldelta.pod.

There are also many Perl books available, covering a wide variety of topics,from various publishers. See pod/perlbook.pod for more information.

If you're using a relatively modern operating system and want toinstall this version of Perl locally, run the following commands:

./Configure -des -Dprefix=$HOME/localperlmake testmake install

This will configure and compile perl for your platform, run the regressiontests, and install perl in a subdirectory "localperl" of your home directory.

If you run into any trouble whatsoever or you need to install a customizedversion of Perl, you should read the detailed instructions in the "INSTALL"file that came with this distribution. Additionally, there are a number of"README" files with hints and tips about building and using Perl on a widevariety of platforms, some more common than others.

Once you have Perl installed, a wealth of documentation is available to youthrough the 'perldoc' tool. To get started, run this command:

perldoc perl

Perl is a large and complex system that's used for everything fromknitting to rocket science. If you run into trouble, it's quitelikely that someone else has already solved the problem you'refacing. Once you've exhausted the documentation, please report bugs to usat the GitHub issue tracker athttps://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues

While it was current when we made it available, Perl is constantly evolvingand there may be a more recent version that fixes bugs you've run into oradds new features that you might find useful.

You can always find the latest version of perl on a CPAN (Comprehensive PerlArchive Network) site near you athttps://www.cpan.org/src/

If you want to submit a simple patch to the perl source, see the "SUPERQUICK PATCH GUIDE" in pod/perlhack.pod.

Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like thisbecause it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then yournotion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)

The author.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modifyit under the terms of either:

a. the GNU General Public License as published by the FreeSoftware Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) anylater version, or

b. the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty ofMERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See eitherthe GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with thisKit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one.

You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public Licensealong with this program in the file named "Copying". If not, seehttps://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License,my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perlscript falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly putsaid script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, anyobject code linked with perl does not automatically fall under theterms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitionsof subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair theresulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. Iconsider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moralequivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. Youmay sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provideor offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU GeneralPublic License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying inputto the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping ofa running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide oroffer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (Thefact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary fileis, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretationof the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understandingmy intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic Licensespells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that.