Is Perl Available on your Machine?
Perl is not automatically installed on Hofstra Machines. To see if it is installed, go to the Start/Program menu and look for "Active Perl". If it is not there, it has not been installed. To install it you need to be in an account that can see the "Active Perl Installer" icon in the "Statistical & Programming" NAL folder. If the installer ICON is available you can double click it to install Perl. The installation adds an item to "Start/Programs", but all this item does is provide online documentation. To use Perl, once it is installed, you need to get to the C:\Perl directory in DOS (or in "Command Prompt" in Windows 2000) as explained below.
If you are on a home machine you can download a version of Perl from the web. I will add the directions for this if I find them. There are versions of Perl available for most OS's including Macintosh. Perl is built in to most versions of Unix, including Linux.
I saw a reference to a downloadable application that claimed it could convert a Perl program to an executeable. That would be useful because then we could make a PERL program that could be run on any Windows/OS machine, whether or not it had Perl installed. If I have test it I will give the results here.
Once Perl has been installed on a particular Hofstra machine from any account, any future user of that machine can use it, even if their account does not see the "Active Perl Installer" icon.
Initial Installation of PERL (If not already installed, "verify"
the Active Perl Icon on "Statistical & Programmining" NAL menu)
NOTE:
to "verify" an application, click on the icon with the right mouse
button, then choose "verify" from the menu
Creating a PERL program and running it :
A second Approach - under construction:
This approach allows the user to store and run Perl files in a separate directory (c:\Perl\work) and also allows using one command rather than four to start each PERL session. This uses two small DOS command files. The first command file (mkwork.bat) creates the C:\Perl\Work directory and is used only once on each machine. The second command file "goPerl.bat", used at the start of each PERL session, has five DOS commands that enable the user to work in the c:\Perl\work directory.
To use this approach the user must download those two files into the C:\WIN95 directory and follow the instructions below:
Initial set up :
Right Click (i.e. use the right mouse button) on each of the two file names below and then select "Save Link As" from the menu and save each file in the C:\WIN95 directory.
mkWork.bat goPerl.bat goPerl.txt
Launch DOS: Start Program MS DOS Prompt
Run "MkWork.bat" program : C:\WIN95>mkWork
Note: In some cases the installation of Perl automatically permanently adds the "bin" directory to the DOS/Command prompt, in which case the "goPerl.bat" file should be modified to remove the line that begins with "path". To check what is currently in the "Path", type the command "path" at the Command prompt.
Each Future PERL Session:
DOS Batch Files :
|
File:
|
Contents
|
Location
|
When Used
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| mkWork.bat: | md c:\perl\work | c:\WIN95 | Once on each Machine the first time you use Perl. This creates the "c:\perl\work" directory |
| goPerl.bat | c: cd \ cd perl cd work path = %path%;c:\perl\bin rem completed Perl setup! |
C:\WIN95 | Each Perl Session. This takes you into the work directory and adds the perl\bin directory to the path. |