Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/answers/perl-faq/part2

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Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,news.answers
Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!agate!boulder!wraeththu.cs.colorado.edu!tchrist
From: Tom Christiansen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Perl Frequently Asked Questions, part 2 of 4
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Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1993 06:37:26 GMT
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Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.lang.perl:20583 news.answers:13121

Archive-name: perl-faq/part2
Version: $Id: perl-info2,v 1.1 93/10/02 00:27:07 tchrist Exp Locker: tchrist $

This posting contains answers to general information questions,
mostly of a non-technical nature.  The following questions are
answered in this posting:

1.21) Is there a Perl profiler?
1.22) Is there a yacc for Perl?
1.23) How can I use curses with perl?
1.24) How can I use X with Perl?
1.25) What is perl4?  What is perl5?
1.26) How does Perl compare with languages like REXX or TCL?
1.27) Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?
1.28) What's the difference between "Perl" and "perl"?
1.29) What companies use or ship Perl?
1.30) Is there commercial, 3rd-party support for Perl?
1.31) Where can I get a list of the JAPH signature quotes?
1.32) Where can I get a list of Larry Wall witticisms?
1.33) Is there a pretty-printer for Perl?
1.34) Can I dynamically load C user routines?


1.21) Is there a Perl profiler?

    While there isn't one included with the perl source distribution (yet)
    various folks have written packages that allow you to do at least some
    sort of profiling.  The strategy usually includes modifying the perl
    debugger to handle profiling.  Authors of these packages include

    Wayne Thompson         <[e-mail]>
    Ray Lischner         <[e-mail]>
    Kresten Krab Thorup     <[e-mail]>

    The original articles by these folks containing their
    profilers are available on convex.com in
    /pub/perl/information/profiling.shar via anon ftp.


1.22) Is there a yacc for Perl?

    Yes!! It's a version of Berkeley yacc that outputs Perl code instead
    of C code!  You can get this from ftp.sterling.com [192.124.9.1] in
    /local/perl-byacc1.8.1.tar.Z, or send the author mail for details.


1.23) How can I use curses with perl?

    One way is to build a curseperl binary by linking in your C curses
    library as described in the usub subdirectory of the perl sources.
    This requires a modicum of work, but it will be reasonably fast
    since it's all in C (assuming you consider curses reasonably fast. :-)
    Programs written using this method require the modified curseperl,
    not vanilla perl, to run.  While this is something of a disadvantage,
    experience indicates that it's better to use curseperl than to
    try to roll your own using termcap directly.

    For a good example of using curseperl, you might want to pick up a
    copy of  Steven L Kunz's <[e-mail]> "perl menus" package
    ("menu.pl") via anonymous FTP from "ftp.iastate.edu".  It's in the
    /pub/perl as

    menu.pl.v1.4.shar
    menu.pl.v2.0.shr1
    menu.pl.v2.0.shr2
    menu.pl.v2.0.tar.Z

    menus.pl is a complete menu front-end for curseperl and demonstates
    a lot of things (plus it is useful to boot if you want full-screen
    menu selection ability).

    Another possibility is to use Henk Penning's cterm package, a curses
    emulation library written in perl.  cterm is actually a separate
    program with which you communicate via a pipe.  It is available from
    ftp.cs.ruu.nl [131.211.80.17] via anonymous ftp. in the directory
    pub/PERL.  You may also acquire the package via email in compressed,
    uuencoded form by sending a message to [e-mail]
    containing these lines:

    begin
    send PERL/cterm.shar.Z
    end

    See the question on retrieving perl via mail for more information on
    how to get retrieve other items of interest from the mail server
    there.


1.24) How can I use X with Perl?

    Right now, you have several choices.  You can wait for perl5, use
    the WAFE or STDWIN packages, or try to make your own usub bindings.

    Perl5 is anticipated to be released with bindings for X, called
    guiperl.  An exciting prototype for this, written by Jon Biggar
    <[e-mail]>, Larry's *other* brother-in-law and officemate,
    is already up and running inside of Netlabs.  This program addresses
    the same dynamic gui-building problem space as does tcl/tk.

    If you can't wait or don't think that guiperl will do what you want,
    a stab at Motif bindings was begun by Theodore C. Law
    <[e-mail]> area.  His article about this is
    on convex.com in /pub/perl/info/motif for anon ftp.

    STDWIN is a library written by Guido van Rossum <[e-mail]>
    (author of the Python programming language) that is portable
    between Mac, Dos and X11.  One could write a Perl agent to
    speak to this STDWIN server.

    WAFE is a package that implements a symbolic interface to the Athena
    widgets (X11R5). A typical Wafe application consists in our framework
    of two parts: the front-end (we call it Wafe for Widget[Athena]front
    end) and an application program running typically as separate process.
    The application program can be implemented in an arbitrary programming
    language and talks to the front-end via stdio.  Since Wafe (the
    front-end) was developed using the extensible TCL shell (cite John
    Ousterhout), an application program can dynamically submit requests to
    the front-end to build up the graphical user interface; the
    application can even down-load application specific procedures into
    the front-end.  The distribution contains sample application programs
    in Perl, GAWK, Prolog, TCL, and C talking to the same Wafe binary.
    Many of the demo applications are implemented in Perl.  Wafe 0.9 can
    be obtained via anonymous ftp from
    ftp.wu-wien.ac.at:pub/src/X11/wafe-0.9.tar.Z
    (for people without name server: the ip address is 137.208.3.5)

    Alternatively, you could use wish from tcl.

    #!/usr/local/bin/perl
    #####################################################################
    #  An example of calling wish as a subshell under Perl and
    #  interactively communicating with it through sockets.
    #
    #  The script is directly based on Gustaf Neumann's perlwafe script.
    #
    #  Dov Grobgeld [e-mail]
    #  1993-05-17
    #####################################################################

    $wishbin = "/usr/local/bin/wish";

    die "socketpair unsuccessful: $!!\n" unless socketpair(W0,WISH,1,1,0);
    if ($pid=fork) {
        select(WISH); $| = 1;
        select(STDOUT);

    # Create some TCL procedures
        print WISH 'proc echo {s} {puts stdout $s; flush stdout}',"\n";

    # Create the widgets
    print WISH <<TCL;
    # This is a comment "inside" wish

    frame .f -relief raised -border 1 -bg green
    pack append . .f {top fill expand}

    button .f.button-pressme -text "Press me" -command {
        echo "That's nice."
    }
    button .f.button-quit -text quit -command {
        echo "quit"
    }
    pack append .f .f.button-pressme {top fill expand} \\
               .f.button-quit {top expand}

TCL
    ;
    # Here is the main loop which receives and sends commands
    # to wish.
    while (<WISH>) {
        chop;
        print "Wish sais: <$_>\n";
        if (/^quit/) { print WISH "destroy .\n"; last; }
    }
        wait;
    } elsif (defined $pid) {
    open(STDOUT, ">&W0");
    open(STDIN, ">&W0");
    close(W0);
    select(STDOUT); $| = 1;
    exec "$wishbin --";
    } else {
    die "fork error: $!\n";
    }



1.25) What is perl4?  What is perl5?

    The answer to what is perl4 is nearly anything you might otherwise
    program in shell or C.  The answer to what is perl5 is basically
    Perl: the Next Generation.  In fact, it's essentially a complete
    rewrite of perl from the bottom up, and back again.  It's available
    in alpha form (alpha-2 now, alpha-3 soon).   The only docs for this stuff
    is what you're about to read, and what's in the t/op/ref.t file.

    Here are the things which are already done:
    a faster, tighter, more flexible interpreter

    new token "=>" as synonym for ","; this makes
        tables look nicer
        %T = ( OC => $red,
              TOF => "\f",
             );
        and provides for named argument passing:
        &some_func( OC => $red, TOF => "\f");

    recursive lists and tables:
        [a, b, [c, d], e] has 4 elts, the 3rd being itself a list
        $r->[3]->{PEANUT}; $r is a reference to a list
                of references to tables

    typed pointers (references) and generalized indirection:
        like @{$aptr} or &{$fptr} or &{ $table[$index] . "func" }().

    merging of list operator and function calling syntax:
        split /pat/, $string;

    the ref operator to find out what something is a reference to

    object oriented programming:
        $o->func(); # call the func member function of whatever class $o is

    inheritance of object types through the @ISA array
    much improved -w checking
    lexical scoping with the my operator

    safe global variables through package statements
        forces variable declarations, but only if you want it

    per-package END functions triggered at die() or exit()
    embeddable Perl code in C code: cc prog.c -lperl

    oo syntactic extensions:
        $dog->give($bone);
        is like
        give $dog $bone;
        and
        $STDOUT->flush(1);
        is like
        flush $STDOUT 1;
    multiple co-resident perl interpreters:

    Here is what is hoped to be done for production, but might not:
    very easy GUI Perl applications using high-level X bindings ("guiperl")
    subroutines without &'s:   myfunc($arg);
    mnemonic aliases for $<punctuation> variables
    file handle objects: $STDOUT->flush(1);
    cleanup (namespace pollution) and documentation
        (eg. man 3pl getopt) of libraries
    addition of several new libraries (atexit, autoload, etc.)
    update h2ph and c2ph
    misc perl development tools
    a perl profiler
    POSIX compatibility

    Here is what is hope to eventually be done but very probably not in
    the first production release:
    generalization of dbm binding for assoc arrays to handle
        any generic fetch/store/open/close/flush package.
        (thus allowing both dbm and gdbm at once)
    dynamic loading of C libraries for systems that can
    byte-compiled code for speed and maybe security

    And here are the things that will no longer work that used to:
    open FILE || die;
    $c = shift @a + 1;

    It's tempting to want this stuff soon, since the sooner it comes
    out the sooner we can all build really cool applications.  But the
    longer Larry works on it, the more items from this list will actually
    get done, and the more robust the release will be.  So let's not
    ask him about it too often.  Larry says (slightly edited):

    I've put a tar of my current Perl 5 directory onto
    ftp.netlabs.com, in pub/outgoing/perl5.0/perl5a2.tar.Z.

    Now's your chance to check out all the bugs I said I fixed in
    Perl 5.  :-)

    Before you get all twitterpated, this is unsupported "alpha 2"
    code.  There is no Configure, only a makefile.  It will
    probably only work on a Sun4.  The compiler and interpreter are
    still very much unoptimized (though it already runs as fast or
    faster than Perl 4).  It doesn't do everything that I want it
    to yet.  It doesn't have "my" yet (though it's got the innards
    for it).  It doesn't have a debugger.

    Like the Alpha 1 prerelease, this is an unsupported code.  It is
    expected to work only on a Sparc architecture machine.  No
    Configure support is provided.  In fact, if you succeed in
    configuring and making a new makefile, you'll probably overwrite
    the only makefile that works.  (Note that a Sparc executable comes
    with the kit, so you may not need to compile at all.) There is
    no list of new features yet, but if you look at t/op/ref.t
    you'll see some of them in use.  perl -Dxst is also fun.

    But it does have references, and you can play with them.  The
    object oriented stuff is there too.  See the op/ref.t file for
    how to use them.

    I smell some new JAPHs coming...

    I don't want to get stuck "supporting" this, but if you want to
    run your favorite scripts past it and see which ones toss their
    salad, you may.  If you can come up with a decent bug report
    with a small test case, I'll certainly be glad to look at it.
    I'm not really interested in obscure core dumps at the moment.
    I'm still getting plenty of those on my own.

    I'm not yet interested in memory leak reports either.

    I can tell you that no program that uses the old autoloading
    mechanism will run, since there is no visibility into the
    symbol table pointers currently.  You ought to be able to
    redefine a subroutine while it's running, though.  (I haven't
    tested that in several months, however.  There oughta be a
    regression test for that...)

    Don't bother trying to diff Perl 4 with Perl 5.  Everything is
    different.  All names have been regularized.  Here's a key, if
    you're brave and want to peek at the sources:

        SV      scalar value
        AV      array value
        HV      hash value
        GV      glob value
        CV      code value
        RV      reference value
        PV      pointer value
        NV      numeric value
        IV      integer value


1.26) How does Perl compare with languages like REXX or TCL?

    REXX is an interpreted programming language first seen on IBM systems,
    and TCL is John Ousterhout's embeddable command language.  TCL's most
    intriguing feature for many people is the tcl/tk toolset that allows
    for interpreted X-based tools.

    To avoid any flamage, if you really want to know the answer to this
    question, probably the best thing to do is try to write equivalent
    code to do a set of tasks.  All three have their own newsgroups in
    which you can learn about (but hopefully not argue about) these
    languages.

    To find out more about these or other languages, you might also check
    out David Muir Sharnoff <[e-mail]>'s posting on "Catalog of
    compilers, interpreters, and other language tools" which he posts to
    comp.lang.misc, comp.sources.d, comp.archives.admin, and the
    news.answers newsgroups.  It's a comprehensive treatment of many
    different languages.  (Caveat lector: he considers Perl's syntax
    "unappealing".)   This list is archived on convex.com in
    /pub/perl/info/lang-survey.shar .


1.27) Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?

    Certainly. :-)

    Current UNIX parlance holds that anything interpreted
    is a script, and anything compiled into native machine
    code is a program.  However, others hold that a program
    is a program is a program: after all, one seldom discusses
    scripts written in BASIC or LISP.  Larry considers it
    a program if it's set in stone and you can't change it,
    whereas if you go in and hack on it, then it's a script.

    But doesn't really matter.  The terms are generally
    interchangeable today.


1.28) What's the difference between "Perl" and "perl"?

     32 :-)  [  ord('p') - ord('P')  ]

     Larry now uses "Perl" to signify the language proper and "perl" the
     implementation of it, i.e. the current interpreter.  Hence tchrist's quip
     that "Nothing but perl can parse Perl."

     On the other hand, the aesthetic value of casewise parallelism
     in "awk", "sed", and "perl" as much require the lower-case
     version as "C", "Pascal", and "Perl" require the
     upper-case version.  It's also easier to type "Perl" in
     typeset print than to be constantly switching in Courier. :-)

     In other words, it doesn't matter much, especially if all
     you're doing is hearing someone talk about the language;
     case is hard to distinguish aurally.


1.29) What companies use or ship Perl?

    At this time, the known list of companies that ship Perl includes at
    least the following, although some have snuck it into /usr/contrib
    or its moral equivalent:

    BSDI
    Comdisco Systems
    CONVEX Computer Corporation
    Crosspoint Solutions
    Dell
    DRD Corporation
    Intergraph
    Kubota Pacific
    Netlabs
    Univel

    Furthermore, the following vendors are reported to begin shipping perl
    standard with their systems in the very near future:

    Sun
    SGI

    Some companies ship it on their "User Contributed Software Tape",
    such as DEC and HP.  Apple Computer has shipped the MPW version of
    Macintosh Perl on one of their Developer CDs (Essentials*Tools*Objects
    #11) (and they included it under "Essentials" :-)

    Many other companies use Perl internally for purposes of tools
    development, systems administration, installation scripts, and test
    suites.  Rumor has it that the large workstation vendors (the TLA set)
    are seriously looking into shipping Perl with their standard systems
    "soon".

    People with support contracts with their vendors are actively
    encouraged to submit enhancement requests that Perl be shipped
    as part of their standard system.  It would, at the very least,
    reduce the FTP load on the Internet. :-)

    If you know of any others, please send them in.


1.30) Is there commercial, 3rd-party support for Perl?

    Not really.  Although perl is included in the GNU distribution, at
    last check, Cygnus does not offer support for it.  However, it's
    unclear whether they've ever been offered sufficient financial
    incentive to do so.

    On the other hand, you do have comp.lang.perl as a totally gratis
    support mechanism.  As long as you ask "interesting" questions,
    you'll probably get plenty of help. :-)

    While some vendors do ship Perl with their platforms, that doesn't
    mean they support it on arbitrary other platforms.  And in fact, all
    they'll probably do is forward any bug reports on to Larry.  In
    practice, this is far better support than you could hope for from
    nearly any vendor.

    The companies who won't use something unless they can pay money
    for it will be left out.  Often they're motivated by wanting
    someone whom they could sue.  If all they want is someone to help
    them out with Perl problems, there's always the net.  And if they
    really want to pay someone for that help, well, Tom and Randal are
    always looking for a job. :-)

    If companies want "commercial support" for it badly enough, speak
    up -- something might be able to be arranged.


1.31) Where can I get a list of the JAPH signature quotes?

    These are the "just another perl hacker" signatures that
    some people sign their postings with.  About 100 of the
    of the earlier ones are on convex.com in /pub/perl/info/japh.

1.32) Where can I get a list of Larry Wall witticisms?

    Over a hundred quips by Larry, from postings of his or source code,
    can be found on convex.com in /pub/perl/info/lwall-quotes.

1.33) Is there a pretty-printer for Perl?

    That depends on what you mean.  If you want something
    that works like vgrind on Perl programs, then the answer
    is "yes, nearly".  Here's a vgrind entry for perl:

    PERL|perl|Perl:\
        :pb=^\d?(sub|package)\d\p\d:\
        :bb={:be=}:cb=#:ce=$:sb=":se=\e":lb=':\
        :le=\e':tl:\
        :id=_:\
        :kw=\
        if for foreach unless until while continue else elsif \
        do eval require \
        die exit \
        defined delete reset \
        goto last redo next dump \
        local undef return  \
        write format  \
        sub package

    It doesn't actually do everything right; in particular,
    things like $#, $', s#/foo##, and $foo'bar all confuse it.

    David Levine uses this:

    # perl 4.x                        David Levine <[e-mail]> 05 apr 1993
    # Derived from Tom  Christiansen's perl vgrindef.   I'd  like to  treat all  of
    # perl's  built-ins  as   keywords,  but  vgrind   fields are  limited  to 1024
    # characters   and  the built-ins  overflow that  (surprise  :-).  So, I didn't
    # include  the dbm*,  end*, get*,  msg*,  sem*, set*,  and  shm* functions.   I
    # couldn't come  up  with an easy   way to  distinguish beginnings  of literals
    # ('...') from package prefixes, so literals are not marked.
    # Be sure to:
    # 1) include whitespace between a subprogram name and its opening {
    # 2) include whitespace before a comment (so that $# doesn't get interpreted as
    #    one).
    perl4:\
        :pb=^\d?(sub|package)\d\p\d:\
        :id=$%@_:\
        :bb=\e{:be=\e}:cb=\d\e#:ce=$:sb=\e":se=\e":\
        :kw=accept alarm atan2 bind binmode caller chdir chmod chop chown \
    chroot close closedir connect continue cos crypt defined delete die do dump \
    each else elsif eof eval exec exit exp fcntl fileno flock for foreach fork \
    format getc gmtime goto grep hex if include index int ioctl join keys kill \
    last length link listen local localtime log lstat m mkdir next oct open \
    opendir ord pack package pipe pop print printf push q qq qx rand read readdir \
    readlink recv redo rename require reset return reverse rewinddir rindex rmdir \
    s scalar seek seekdir select send shift shutdown sin sleep socket socketpair \
    sort splice split sprintf sqrt srand stat study sub substr symlink syscall \
    sysread system syswrite tell telldir time times tr truncate umask undef \
    unless unlink unpack unshift until utime values vec wait waitpid wantarray \
    warn while write y:

    If what you mean is whether there is a program that will
    reformat the program much as indent(1) will do for C, then
    the answer is no.  The complex feedback between the scanner
    and the parser (as in the things that confuse vgrind) make
    it challenging at best to write a stand-alone C parser.

1.34) Can I dynamically load C user routines?

    Yes, kinda.  One package has been released that does this, by
    Roberto Salama <[e-mail]>.  He writes:

    Here is a version of dylperl, dynamic linker for perl. The code here
    is based on Oliver Sharp's May 1993 article in Dr. Dobbs Journal
    (Dynamic Linking under Berkeley UNIX).

          dyl.h
          dyl.c - code extracted from Oliver Sharp's article

          hash.h
          hash.c - Berkeley's hash functions, should use perl's but could not
               be bothered

       dylperl.c - perl usersubs
          user.c - userinit function

        sample.c - sample code to be dyl'ed
       sample2.c -          "
         test.pl - sample perl script that dyl's sample*.o

    The Makefile assumes that uperl.o is in /usr/local/src/perl/... You
    will probable have to change this to reflect your installation. Other
    than that, just type 'make'...

    The idea behind being able to dynamnically link code into perl is that
    the linked code should become perl functions, i.e. they can be invoked
    as &foo(...).  For this to happen, the incrementally code must use the
    perl stack, look at sample.c to get a better idea.

    The few functions that make up this package are outlined below.

    &dyl("file.o"): dynamically link file.o. All functions and non-static
           variables become visible from within perl. This
           function returns a pointer to an internal hash table
           corresponding to the symbol table of the newly loaded
           code.

           eg: $ht = &dyl("sample.o")

           This function can also be called with the -L and -l ld options.

           eg: $ht = &dyl(""sample2.o", "-L/usr/lib", "-lm")
               will also pick up the math library if sample.o
               accesses any symbols there.

    &dyl_find("func"): find symbol 'func' and return its symbol table entry

    &dyl_functions($ht): print the contents of the internal hash table
    &dyl_print_symbols($f): prints the contents of the symbol returned by dyl_find()

    There is very little documentation, maybe something to do for a future
    release.  The files sample.o, and sample2.o contain code to be
    incrementally loaded, test.pl is the test perl script.

    Comments are welcome. I submit this code for public consumption and,
    basically, am not responsible for it in any way.
--
    Tom Christiansen      [e-mail]
            Consultant
    Boulder Colorado  303-444-3212