macOS how to use perl

[Corrosive vinyl]

Sorry for the total newb questions, but gotta start somewhere. I got this cool book called Programming perl and have started weeding through the 1,000 some pages of it. Where can I write and compile this stuff I am learning? Do I need to get Xcode? Also, How can I open apps so I can see the code? I basically am interested in this language and want to implement it.

 

[robbieduncan]

Perl is not a compiled language (in the traditional sense). Just save plain text files (you can do that with Text Edit) and run them in the Terminal via perl <filename>

 

[Corrosive vinyl]

coolness... so just go to text edit and write out perl stuff like print "howdy, there!"\n then go to terminal and type perl <texteditfile> that is very doable, thanks!

 

[robbieduncan]

Just make sure TextEdit is in plain text mode. If you have the formatting toolbar find the Format->Make Plain Text command.

If you want to be able to just type perl <file> make sure you save the file in your home directory (not Documents).

You can use the cd command to change directories in Terminal to get to wherever you save it.

 

[iSee]

You might also look at getting a text editor that does syntax highlighting for Perl. There are free ones around.

I don't want to start another "which text editor is better" battle, but I know TextWrangler is a freeware editor with basic Perl syntax highlighting. I found the highlighting very useful as I learned the language.

 

[cube]

You don't need to type perl on the command line all the time

Just make the first line of the file be:
#!/usr/bin/perl

If the file is called "myscript" then you do:
chmod u+x myscript

And just run as:
myscript

 

[robbieduncan]

And just run as:
myscript

Probably actually as ./myscript unless the OP has added ./ (or the current directory explicitly) to the PATH.

 

[cube]

You don't add "./", you just add "."

 

[robbieduncan]

You don't add "./", you just add "."

I think you'll find I'm correct and you are wrong. I'm a professional Unix developer.

jay:~ robbie$ chmod u+x test
jay:~ robbie$ .test
-bash: .test: command not found
jay:~ robbie$ ./test
test

Note that with ./ it works and just . it gives the expected command not found?

 

[cube]

I'm talking about PATH

 

[robbieduncan]

I'm talking about PATH

In which case either will work, but as I clearly typed the whole command it was clear that I was using ./<command> to explicitly run a command in the CWD, and this was not talking about the PATH, that was a separate aside.

 

[cube]

You said:

unless the OP has added ./ (or the current directory explicitly) to the PATH.

I don't say it won't work. I mean real Unixers just use "."

 

[Corrosive vinyl]

so if i put scripts in documents/myscripts folder i just cd documents/myscripts then do perl "<file>" whatever file that may be and it runs whatever I wrote...