perlfaq - frequently asked questions about Perl ($Date: 1998/08/05 12:09:32 $)
This document is structured into the following sections:
This document.
Very general, high-level information about Perl.
Where to find source and documentation to Perl, support, and related matters.
Programmer tools and programming support.
Manipulating numbers, dates, strings, arrays, hashes, and miscellaneous data issues.
I/O and the "f" issues: filehandles, flushing, formats and footers.
Pattern matching and regular expressions.
General Perl language issues that don't clearly fit into any of the other sections.
Interprocess communication (IPC), control over the user-interface (keyboard, screen and pointing devices).
Networking, the Internet, and a few on the web.
This document is posted regularly to comp.lang.perl.announce and several other related newsgroups. It is available in a variety of formats from CPAN in the /CPAN/doc/FAQs/FAQ/ directory, or on the web at http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/ .
You may mail corrections, additions, and suggestions to perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com . This alias should not be used toask FAQs. It's for fixing the current FAQ.
Your questions will probably go unread, unless they're suggestions of new questions to add to the FAQ, in which case they should have gone to the perlfaq-suggestions@perl.com instead.
You should have read section 2 of this faq. There you would have learned that comp.lang.perl.misc is the appropriate place to go for free advice. If your question is really important and you require a prompt and correct answer, you should hire a consultant.
When I first began the Perl FAQ in the late 80s, I never realized it would have grown to over a hundred pages, nor that Perl would ever become so popular and widespread. This document could not have been written without the tremendous help provided by Larry Wall and the rest of the Perl Porters.
Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington. All rights reserved.
When included as part of the Standard Version of Perl, or as part of its complete documentation whether printed or otherwise, this work may be distributed only under the terms of Perl's Artistic License. Any distribution of this file or derivatives thereofoutside of that package require that special arrangements be made with copyright holder.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in these files are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but is not required.
This information is offered in good faith and in the hope that it may be of use, but is not guaranteed to be correct, up to date, or suitable for any particular purpose whatsoever. The authors accept no liability in respect of this information or its use.
Significant changes throughout in preparation for the 5.005 release.
Style and whitespace changes from Chip, new question on reading one character at a time from a terminal using POSIX from Tom.
Added http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/ toperlfaq2. Style fix toperlfaq3. Added floating point precision, fixed complex number arithmetic, cross-references, caveat for Text::Wrap, alternative answer for initial capitalizing, fixed incorrect regexp, added example of Tie::IxHash toperlfaq4. Added example of passing and storing filehandles, added commify toperlfaq5. Restored variable suicide, and added mass commenting toperlfaq7. Added Net::Telnet, fixed backticks, added reader/writer pair to telnet question, added FindBin, grouped module questions together inperlfaq8. Expanded caveats for the simple URL extractor, gave LWP example, added CGI security question, expanded on the mail address answer inperlfaq9.
Added more info to the binary distribution section ofperlfaq2. Added Net::Telnet toperlfaq6. Fixed typos inperlfaq8. Added mail sending example toperlfaq9. Added Merlyn's columns toperlfaq2.
Added the DATE to the NAME section, indicating which sections have changed.
Mentioned SIGPIPE andperlipc in the forking open answer inperlfaq8.
Fixed description of a regular expression inperlfaq4.
Various typos fixed throughout.
Added new question on Perl BNF onperlfaq7.
This is the initial release of version 3 of the FAQ; consequently there have been no changes since its initial release.
Perldoc Browser is maintained by Dan Book (DBOOK). Please contact him via theGitHub issue tracker oremail regarding any issues with the site itself, search, or rendering of documentation.
The Perl documentation is maintained by the Perl 5 Porters in the development of Perl. Please contact them via thePerl issue tracker, themailing list, orIRC to report any issues with the contents or format of the documentation.