What do I need for simple Perl development?

Question

I'd like to write and run some very simple Perl scripts on my machine.

What do I need to get started?

Answer 1

For Windows? Get ActivePerl:

http://www.activestate.com/Products/acti...

Then, a simple text editor (notepad will do, but you should try to get a better development environment if you start doing more complex things).  I forget offhand whether the installation for ActivePerl by default sets all ".pl" files to run through Perl or not, but I think it does.  If not, you can always set your registry accordingly, or use the Windows Command Prompt to run Perl scripts, like "perl myperlfile.pl".

If not Windows, then you probably already have Perl installed-- if you've got a reasonably recent Mac installation or Linux, you've probably already got Perl, and all you need is to start writing some scripts.  Though in the Mac, you'd likely need to be in the command prompt (not sure what the terminology is-- could be "terminal" or "shell" or "command" or "prompt" or something similar)

You may also want a book on Perl-- I'd recommend O'Reilly's "Programming Perl" (it was partially written by Larry Wall, Perl's creator, and is well written with a sense of humor).

DaveE

Answer 2

All you really need is a text editor, and genral scripting knowledge.

http://www.w3schools.com/