And what is the Alpaca book?
Intermediate Perl, the next book up from the beginner’s Llama book.
I was planning in learning Ruby next, do u reccomend so?
If its like Perl but with preetier syntax then why not right?
I have only started with Perl and have no reason to learn Ruby right now. In general it might not be a good idea to learn multiple languages all at once. Wait until you have the syntax in your head very good. I still catch myself using Javascript syntax in my Perl because I’m new to both.
Um also what is modern Perl and how to I keep myself i’m using old icky Perl?
Using Perl best practices (which you learn about as you read more about Perl… and the llama book doesn’t teach bad perl, so you’re ok there). Participate in the Perl community. Read chromatic’s modern Perl blog. Read the Perl Resources sticky in this forum (it links to everything and more).
Finally, can I save all my Perl programmes as. Plx?
What about .pl I thought that was for perl?
Unix does not actually care what the extension is on a filename. All files are files. Create your files as you learn with .pl but remember that that’s mostly just for you (you know it’s a Perl file).
The llama book explains how to get started.
And then I find it in terminal on my Mac tell the Mac to use perl and it should run the programme once I find it using CD to the dir it is in?
So I don’t have to run Perl scripts thru a server, I can just run them thru terminal?
MacOSX basically runs on a form of Unix, a special Apple version called “Darwin”. My computer runs Linux, which has perl already installed because it actually uses it to Do Stuff. So I did not have to install perl. However I keep my scripts in their own separate folder as I do not want anything I write getting in trouble with actual programs my computer needs. I assume your Mac has perl but I dunno which version (type in terminal perl -v) or whether you can do everything the same as someone on another type of Unix system.
I do all my Perl-writing in the command line (in the terminal). I made my own folder called Perl and I cd to that, write programs there in vi, save them, and then give them permissions:
chmod 755 perlfile.pl
Because they reference where perl (the compiler and interpreter) is with the first line (the #! line), I can then simply run them by
./perlfile.pl
and they do their thing.
You could either do that or you can type your programs from the Desktop in a simple text editor like TextMate. You do not want to write them in a word processor program. Just plain text. I think the terminal is easier.
I don’t know if, on Macs, you need to or should start with the shebang line
#!/usr/bin/perl
On my system this references where perl is. Your perl may be somewhere else.
You may need to ask a Mac user about how to get started with Perl on a Mac. You could check out Perlmonks.org, just be sure to read how to make posts before doing so.