PERLWIN32(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLWIN32(1)
NAME
perlwin32 - Perl under Windows
SYNOPSIS
These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP on the Intel x86 and Itanium
architectures.
DESCRIPTION
Before you start, you should glance through the README file found in the top-level directory to which
the Perl distribution was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under which this
software is being distributed.
Also make sure you read "BUGS AND CAVEATS" below for the known limitations of this port.
The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is only relevant to people building
Perl on Unix-like systems. In particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
"Configure".
You may also want to look at two other options for building a perl that will work on Windows NT: the
README.cygwin and README.os2 files, each of which give a different set of rules to build a Perl that
will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods will probably enable you to build a more Unix-com-patible Unix-compatible
patible perl, but you will also need to download and use various other build-time and run-time sup-port support
port software described in those files.
This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native" port of Perl to Win32 platforms.
This includes both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. The resulting Perl requires no addi-tional additional
tional software to run (other than what came with your operating system). Currently, this port is
capable of using one of the following compilers on the Intel x86 architecture:
Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
Microsoft Visual C++ version 2.0 or later
MinGW with gcc gcc version 2.95.2 or later
The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler. Use version 3.2.x or later for the best
results with this compiler.
The Borland C++ and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being given away free. The Borland
compiler is available as "Borland C++ Compiler Free Command Line Tools" and is the same compiler that
ships with the full "Borland C++ Builder" product. The Microsoft compiler is available as "Visual
C++ Toolkit 2003", and also as part of the ".NET Framework SDK", and is the same compiler that ships
with "Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional".
This port can also be built on the Intel IA64 using:
Microsoft Platform SDK Nov 2001 (64-bit compiler and tools)
The MS Platform SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/
This port fully supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that is used to build extensions to perl).
Therefore, you should be able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites. See
"Usage Hints for Perl on Win32" below for general hints about this.
Setting Up Perl on Win32
Make
You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using Visual C++ or the Platform SDK
tools under Windows NT/2000/XP, nmake will work. All other builds need dmake.
dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features and parallelability.
A port of dmake for Windows is available from:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake/
Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path.
There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++ compilers. Namely, if a dis-
tribution has C files named with mixed case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate
.obj-files named with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked to bring files up to
date, it will try to recompile such files again. For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such
files, resulting in needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked. To avoid this, you may use
the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful build. It is available in the win32 subdirectory of
the Perl source distribution.
Command Shell
Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the popular 4DOS/NT shell have
incompatibilities that may cause you trouble. If the build fails under that shell, try building
again with the cmd shell.
The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the "command.com" shell that comes with
Windows 9x. You will need to use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.
The surest way to build it is on Windows NT/2000/XP, using the cmd shell.
Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces. The build usually works in
this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
Borland C++
If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake. (The make that Borland supplies is
seriously crippled and will not work for MakeMaker builds.)
See "Make" above.
Microsoft Visual C++
The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building. You will need to run the
VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN or C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual Studio\VC98\Bin. This will set your build environment.
You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however, you set OSRELEASE to
"microsft" (or whatever the directory name under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in
your environment and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The latter
step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default make for building extensions
using MakeMaker.
Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
This free toolkit contains the same compiler and linker that ship with Visual Studio .NET 2003
Professional, but doesn't contain everything necessary to build Perl.
You will also need to download the "Platform SDK" (the "Core SDK" and "MDAC SDK" components are
required) for header files, libraries and rc.exe, and ".NET Framework SDK" for more libraries and
nmake.exe. Note that the latter (which also includes the free compiler and linker) requires the
".NET Framework Redistributable" to be installed first. This can be downloaded and installed
separately, but is included in the "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" anyway.
These packages can all be downloaded by searching in the Download Center at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en (Providing exact links to these
packages has proven a pointless task because the links keep on changing so often.)
Try to obtain the latest version of the Platform SDK. Sometimes these packages contain a partic-
ular Windows OS version in their name, but actually work on other OS versions too. For example,
the "Windows Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK" also runs on Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000.
According to the download pages the Toolkit and the .NET Framework SDK are only supported on Win-
dows 2000/XP/2003, so trying to use these tools on Windows 95/98/ME and even Windows NT probably
won't work.
Install the Toolkit first, then the Platform SDK, then the .NET Framework SDK. Setup your envi-
ronment as follows (assuming default installation locations were chosen):
SET PATH=%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\v1.1\Bin
SET INCLUDE=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include
SET LIB=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\lib;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\lib;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\lib
Several required files will still be missing:
* cvtres.exe is required by link.exe when using a .res file. It is actually installed by the
.NET Framework SDK, but into a location such as the following:
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322
Copy it from there to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin
* lib.exe is normally used to build libraries, but link.exe with the /lib option also works, so
change win32/config.vc to use it instead:
Change the line reading:
ar='lib'
to:
ar='link /lib'
It may also be useful to create a batch file called lib.bat in C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin containing:
@echo off
link /lib %*
for the benefit of any naughty C extension modules that you might want to build later which
explicitly reference "lib" rather than taking their value from $Config{ar}.
* setargv.obj is required to build perlglob.exe (and perl.exe if the USE_SETARGV option is
enabled). The Platform SDK supplies this object file in source form in C:\Program
Files\Microsoft SDK\src\crt. Copy setargv.c, cruntime.h and internal.h from there to some
temporary location and build setargv.obj using
cl.exe /c /I. /D_CRTBLD setargv.c
Then copy setargv.obj to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\lib
Alternatively, if you don't need perlglob.exe and don't need to enable the USE_SETARGV option
then you can safely just remove all mention of $(GLOBEXE) from win32/Makefile and setargv.obj
won't be required anyway.
Perl should now build using the win32/Makefile. You will need to edit that file to set
CCTYPE = MSVC70FREE
and to set CCHOME, CCINCDIR and CCLIBDIR as per the environment setup above.
Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler
The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suffice for building Perl. Make sure you are
building within one of the "Build Environment" shells available after you install the Platform
SDK from the Start Menu.
MinGW release 3 with gcc
The latest release of MinGW at the time of writing is 3.1.0, which contains gcc-3.2.3. It can be
downloaded here:
http://www.mingw.org/
Perl also compiles with earlier releases of gcc (2.95.2 and up). See below for notes about using
earlier versions of MinGW/gcc.
You also need dmake. See "Make" above on how to get it.
MinGW release 1 with gcc
The MinGW-1.1 bundle contains gcc-2.95.3.
Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated in the README for the
GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment variables (usually ran from a batch file).
There are a couple of problems with the version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe released 7 November
1999:
* It left out a fix for certain command line quotes. To fix this, be sure to download and
install the file fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe from the above ftp location.
* The definition of the fpos_t type in stdio.h may be wrong. If your stdio.h has this problem,
you will see an exception when running the test t/lib/io_xs.t. To fix this, change the type-
def for fpos_t from "long" to "long long" in the file i386-mingw32msvc/include/stdio.h, and
rebuild.
A potentially simpler to install (but probably soon-to-be-outdated) bundle of the above package
with the mentioned fixes already applied is available here:
http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
Building
Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel. This directory contains a
"Makefile" that will work with versions of nmake that come with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK,
and a dmake "makefile.mk" that will work for all supported compilers. The defaults in the dmake
makefile are setup to build using MinGW/gcc.
Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change the values of INST_DRV and
INST_TOP. You can also enable various build flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
Note that it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl with INST_DRV and INST_TOP set
to a path that already exists from a previous build. In particular, this may cause problems with
the lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t test, which attempts to build a test program and may end up building
against the installed perl's lib/CORE directory rather than the one being tested.
You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that CCHOME points to wherever you
installed your compiler.
The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++ may not be correct for some ver-
sions. Make sure the default exists and is valid.
You may also need to comment out the "DELAYLOAD = ..." line in the Makefile if you're using VC++
6.0 without the latest service pack and the linker reports an internal error.
If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(), enable the appropriate
option in the makefile. A ready-to-use version of fcrypt.c, based on the version originally
written by Eric Young at ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/dsi/libdes/ is bundled with the
distribution and CRYPT_SRC is set to use it. Alternatively, if you have built a library that
contains des_fcrypt(), you can set CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name. Perl will also build
without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will fail at run time.
If you want build some core extensions statically into perl's dll, specify them in the STATIC_EXT
macro.
Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.
Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe, perl58.dll at the perl
toplevel, and various other extension dll's under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for
any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
Testing Perl on Win32
Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from the testsuite (many tests
will be skipped).
There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT/2000/XP. Many tests will fail under
Windows 9x due to the inferior command shell.
Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the native "cmd.exe", or if you
are building from a path that contains spaces. So don't do that.
If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see failures in op/stat.t. Run
"dmake test-notty" in that case.
If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t arising from the inability
to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported
by the messages from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory (usually
somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run into problems finding the cor-
rect header files when building extensions. For example, building the "Tk" extension may fail
because both perl and Tk contain a header file called "patchlevel.h". The latest Borland compiler
(v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even supports an option -VI- for backward (bugward) com-
patibility for using the old Borland search algorithm to locate header files.
If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for "link()" related tests:
Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List
../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_dup.t 6 4 66.67% 2-5
../lib/File/Temp/t/mktemp.t 9 1 11.11% 2
../lib/File/Temp/t/posix.t 7 1 14.29% 3
../lib/File/Temp/t/security.t 13 1 7.69% 2
../lib/File/Temp/t/tempfile.t 20 2 10.00% 2 4
comp/multiline.t 6 2 33.33% 5-6
io/dup.t 8 6 75.00% 2-7
op/write.t 47 7 14.89% 1-3 6 9-11
Testing on NTFS avoids these errors.
Furthermore, you should make sure that during "make test" you do not have any GNU tool packages in
your path: some toolkits like Unixutils include some tools ("type" for instance) which override the
Windows ones and makes tests fail. Remove them from your path while testing to avoid these errors.
Please report any other failures as described under "BUGS AND CAVEATS".
Installation of Perl on Win32
Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly built perl and the libraries
under whatever "INST_TOP" points to in the Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation
under "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\lib\pod" and HTML versions of the same under
"$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\lib\pod\html".
To use the Perl you just installed you will need to add a new entry to your PATH environment vari-
able: "$INST_TOP\bin", e.g.
set PATH=c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
If you opted to uncomment "INST_VER" and "INST_ARCH" in the makefile then the installation structure
is a little more complicated and you will need to add two new PATH components instead:
"$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin" and "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin\$ARCHNAME", e.g.
set PATH=c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
Usage Hints for Perl on Win32
Environment Variables
The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled into perl, so you don't have to
do anything additional to start using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB to a list of paths separated by
semicolons where you want perl to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
variables you can set in perlrun.
You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and backtick commands via
PERL5SHELL. See perlrun.
Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default values if you choose to
put them there. Perl attempts to read entries from "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl" and
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl". Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One
or more of the following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
lib standard library path to add to @INC
sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
sitelib site library path to add to @INC
vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
Note the $] in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version of perl you want to honor
that entry, e.g. 5.6.0. Paths must be separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
File Globbing
By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension, which provides portable
globbing.
If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS filename conventions, you might
want to consider using File::DosGlob to override the internal glob() implementation. See
File::DosGlob for details.
Using perl from the command line
If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line shells found in UNIX environments,
you will be less than pleased with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that the command line you type
in is processed twice before Perl sees it. First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows
NT, and COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle redirection, environ-
ment variable expansion, and location of the executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits
the remaining command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library upon which Perl
was built.
It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C runtime do any wildcard
expansions of command-line arguments (so wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behav-
iours of the shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are using a non-
standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote character is the double quote ("). It
can be used to protect spaces and other special characters in arguments.
The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the quoting rules are implemented,
but here are some general observations based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at
spaces and passes them to programs in argc/argv. Double quotes can be used to prevent arguments
with spaces in them from being split up. You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping
it with a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. The backslash and the
pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by the C runtime.
The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by double quotes (although there
are suggestions that this may not always be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by
the shell or the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just to make this type of quot-
ing completely useless). The caret "^" has also been observed to behave as a quoting character,
but this appears to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command line, so
Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat the caret as a quote character).
Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
This prints two doublequotes:
perl -e "print '\"\"' "
This does the same:
perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x is left as an exercise to the
reader :)
One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for Windows NT is that it (nearly)
always treats a % character as indicating that environment variable expansion is needed. Under
this shell, it is therefore important to always double any % characters which you want Perl to
see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are quoted.
Building Extensions
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth of extensions, some of which
require a C compiler to build. Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work in the Win32 environment; you
should check the information at http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
porting modules that don't readily build.
Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can be built, tested and installed
with the standard mantra:
perl Makefile.PL
$MAKE
$MAKE test
$MAKE install
where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to use. Use "perl -V:make" to
find out what this is. Some extensions may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do
anything or fail), but most serious ones do.
It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and ensure Config.pm knows about it. If
you don't have nmake, you can either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an old
version of nmake reportedly available from:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/nmake15.exe
Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from CPAN.
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/
You may also use dmake. See "Make" above on how to get it.
Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax depending on what 'make' it
thinks you are using. Therefore, it is important that one of the following values appears in
Config.pm:
make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
(e.g GNU make, or Perl make)
If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use, edit Config.pm to fix it.
If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported C compilers. You must make sure
you have set up the environment for the compiler for command-line compilation.
If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for why it failed, and report problems
to the module author. If it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report that
with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug utility.
Command-line Wildcard Expansion
The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such as they are) usually do not
expand wildcard arguments supplied to programs. They consider it the application's job to handle
that. This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case, perl) with startup code
that the C runtime libraries usually provide. However, doing that results in incompatible perl
versions (since the behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the compiler, and it
is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may be a source of frustration if you use such a
perl binary with an alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things about it are 1) you can start
using it right away; 2) it is more powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern
like */*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and 4) you can extend the
method to add any customizations (or even entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).
C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
# Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
use File::DosGlob;
@ARGV = map {
my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
@g ? @g : $_;
} @ARGV;
1;
^Z
C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
p4view/perl/perl.c
p4view/perl/perlio.c
p4view/perl/perly.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create Wild.pm and put it in your perl
lib directory. 2) You'll need to set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expan-
sion to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup environment.
If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's command line wildcard expan-
sion built into perl binary. The resulting binary will always expand unquoted command lines,
which may not be what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion done is
also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
Win32 Specific Extensions
A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available from CPAN. You may find that
many of these extensions are meant to be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be
the only native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not have adequate
support for Perl's extension building tools, these extensions typically do not support those
tools either and, therefore, cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous sec-
tion.
To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the ActiveState port, there is a bundle
of Win32 extensions that contains all of the ActiveState extensions and several other Win32
extensions from CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker support.
The latest version of this bundle is available at:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/libwin32/
See the README in that distribution for building and installation instructions.
Notes on 64-bit Windows
Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on the Intel Itanium architecture.
The LLP64 data model is different from the LP64 data model that is the norm on 64-bit Unix plat-
forms. In the former, "int" and "long" are both 32-bit data types, while pointers are 64 bits
wide. In addition, there is a separate 64-bit wide integral type, "__int64". In contrast, the
LP64 data model that is pervasive on Unix platforms provides "int" as the 32-bit type, while both
the "long" type and pointers are of 64-bit precision. Note that both models provide for 64-bits
of addressability.
64-bit Windows running on Itanium is capable of running 32-bit x86 binaries transparently. This
means that you could use a 32-bit build of Perl on a 64-bit system. Given this, why would one
want to build a 64-bit build of Perl? Here are some reasons why you would bother:
* A 64-bit native application will run much more efficiently on Itanium hardware.
* There is no 2GB limit on process size.
* Perl automatically provides large file support when built under 64-bit Windows.
* Embedding Perl inside a 64-bit application.
Running Perl Scripts
Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to indicate to the OS that it should execute
the file using perl. Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are executables.
Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on Win32 rely on the file "extension".
There are three methods to use this to execute perl scripts:
1 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will work in Windows NT 4.0.
This can be manipulated via the two commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Win-
dows NT 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this up for perl scripts
(Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't perl-ready? :).
2 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are reportedly bugs with file asso-
ciations where it does work, the old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like
a regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process makes available the
"pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap perl scripts into batch files. For example:
pl2bat foo.pl
will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix
to the generated file.
If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in
the generated batch file to refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing, 4DOS/NT users will need a
"ParameterChar = *" statement in their 4NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in
the 4DOS/NT startup file to enable this to work.
3 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed, so scripts that rely on $0 to
find what they must do may not run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive if the originals get
updated often. A different approach that avoids both problems is possible.
A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied to any filename (along with the
.bat suffix). For example, if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply by typing the name (with-
out the extension), this effectively runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or
"foo.bat". With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location than the file
"foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on the PATH. If your scripts are on a
filesystem that allows symbolic links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type "runperl". Explain the
observed behavior, or lack thereof. :) Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled
:tniH
Miscellaneous Things
A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be able to use it if you have a web
browser installed on your system.
"perldoc" is also a useful tool for browsing information contained in the documentation, especially
in conjunction with a pager like "less" (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may have
to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager. "perldoc -f foo" will print informa-
tion about the perl operator "foo".
One common mistake when using this port with a GUI library like "Tk" is assuming that Perl's normal
behavior of opening a command-line window will go away. This isn't the case. If you want to start a
copy of "perl" without opening a command-line window, use the "wperl" executable built during the
installation process. Usage is exactly the same as normal "perl" on Win32, except that options like
"-h" don't work (since they need a command-line window to print to).
If you find bugs in perl, you can run "perlbug" to create a bug report (you may have to send it manu-
ally if "perlbug" cannot find a mailer on your system).
BUGS AND CAVEATS
Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if set to "AutoProtect, All Files,
when Opened". Unlike large applications the perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files.
Having the the AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process significantly. Worse, with
PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar messages as the virus checker interacts badly with
miniperl.exe writing configure files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat it as sus-
picious, or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which inhibits miniperl updating it). The
build does complete with
set PERLIO=perlio
but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in perlfunc, and a few are not imple-
mented at all. To avoid surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl in other
operating environments or if you intend to write code that will be portable to other environments,
see perlport for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly in the Win32 environment. See
"Building Extensions".
Most "socket()" related calls are supported, but they may not behave as on Unix platforms. See perl-
port for the full list. Perl requires Winsock2 to be installed on the system. If you're running
Win95, you can download Winsock upgrade from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUAdminTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sock-
ets2/Default.asp
Later OS versions already include Winsock2 support.
Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it doesn't exactly "behave", either :).
For instance, calling "die()" or "exit()" from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
implementations of "signal()" on Win32 are severely crippled. Thus, signals may work only for simple
things like setting a flag variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should currently
be considered unsupported.
Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that you may find to <perl-
bug@perl.org>, along with the output produced by "perl -V".
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The use of a camel with the topic of Perl is a trademark of O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Used with
permission.
AUTHORS
Gary Ng <71564.1743@CompuServe.COM>
Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@activestate.com>
Nick Ing-Simmons <nick@ing-simmons.net>
Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
Steve Hay <steve.hay@uk.radan.com>
This document is maintained by Jan Dubois.
SEE ALSO
perl
HISTORY
This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24, and borrowed from the Hip Communica-
tions port that was available at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks since
then.
Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
Support for 64-bit Windows added in 5.8 (ActiveState Corp).
Last updated: 30 September 2005
perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLWIN32(1)
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