perlwin32

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 limita-
tions 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 partic-
ular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about "Config-
ure".

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-compatible perl, but you will also need to download
and use various other build-time and run-time support 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 Win-
dows operating systems. The resulting Perl requires no additional
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 4.2 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 Microsoft Visual C++ compiler is also now being given away free in
the "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003", and also as part of the ".NET Framework
SDK". This 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://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/dmake-4.1pl1-win32.zip

(This is a fixed version of the original dmake sources obtained
from http://www.wticorp.com/ As of version 4.1PL1, the original
sources did not build as shipped and had various other problems. A
patch is included in the above fixed version.)

Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instruc-
tions in the README.NOW file).

There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
compilers. Namely, if a distribution 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 "com-
mand.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 Stu-
dio\VC98\Bin. This will set your build environment.

You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, how-
ever, 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 com-
piler and linker) requires the ".NET Framework Redistributable" to
be installed first. This can be downloaded and installed sepa-
rately, 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?display-
lang=en

Note that the "Platform SDK February 2003" download requires Inter-
net Explorer 5.0 to function. Alternatively, the very latest ver-
sion at the time of writing (called "Windows XP Service Pack 2
Platform SDK RC2") is now available as an ISO-9660 CD image file
and does not require IE5 to be downloaded but will only work on
Windows XP.

According to the download pages the Toolkit and the .NET Framework
SDK are only supported on Windows 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 environment 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 create a batch file called
lib.bat in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit
2003\bin containing:

@echo off
link /lib %*

This will work as long as "lib.exe" is invoked simply as "lib"
(which it is during the Perl build process).

* 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

Perl should now build using the win32/Makefile. You will need to
edit that file to comment-out CCTYPE = MSVC60 (since that enables
delay-loading of the Winsock DLL which the free toolkit does not
support) and to set CCHOME, CCINCDIR and CCLIBDIR as per the envi-
ronment setup above.

Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler
The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suffice for build-
ing 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

o 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 compil-
ers. The defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to build using
MinGW/gcc.

o 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 versions. Make sure the default exists and
is valid.

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/mir-
rors/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.

Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles
carefully.

o 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 exten-
sion 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 correct header files when building exten-
sions. 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 sup-
ports an option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility 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 variable: "$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 vari-
ables 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 ver-
sion 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 exten-
sion, 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::Dos-
Glob 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, environment variable expansion, and location of
the executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remain-
ing 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 behaviours 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 (use-
ful) 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 observa-
tions 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 argu-
ment 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 quoting 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 con-
sole:

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 indi-
cating 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 sup-
plied to programs. They consider it the application's job to han-
dle that. This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in
our case, perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usu-
ally 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 expansion
to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup envi-
ronment.

If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
command line wildcard expansion 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 section.

To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that con-
tains all of the ActiveState extensions and several other Win32
extensions from CPAN in source form, along with many added bug-
fixes, and with MakeMaker support. This bundle is available at:

http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Win32/libwin32-0.191.zip

See the README in that distribution for building and installation
instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
same location.

Notes on 64-bit Windows
Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on the Intel Ita-
nium architecture.

The LLP64 data model is different from the LP64 data model that is
the norm on 64-bit Unix platforms. 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 plat-
forms provides "int" as the 32-bit type, while both the "long" type
and pointers are of 64-bit precision. Note that both models pro-
vide 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 compa-
rable 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 associations 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 = *" state-
ment 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 inten-
sive 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 (without the extension), this effec-
tively runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or
"foo.bat". With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a dif-
ferent location than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is avail-
able somewhere on the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesys-
tem 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 information 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" exe-
cutable 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 manually 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 signifi-
cantly. 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 suspicious, 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 implemented 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 perlport 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/WUAd-
minTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sockets2/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 implementa-
tions of "signal()" on Win32 are severely crippled. Thus, signals may
work only for simple things like setting a flag variable in the han-
dler. Using signals under this port should currently be considered
unsupported.

Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
you may find to <perlbug@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>

This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.