Solving Perl Issues: Strawberry vs. ActivePerl

[Benjamin113]

I don't know if this is the right forum to be asking this, but I have been having some problems with the Strawberry Perl that I downloaded. Whenever I try to write lines of code, it will not work, and it moves on to the next line, without an error comment, or anything.

Is this because it is open source coding? Or something else?




Also, as a side question: Which is better, Strawberry Perl, or ActivePerl? Or, what's the difference?

 

[davee123]

I don't know if this is the right forum to be asking this, but I have been having some problems with the Strawberry Perl that I downloaded. Whenever I try to write lines of code, it will not work, and it moves on to the next line, without an error comment, or anything.

Is this because it is open source coding? Or something else?

I'm a little unclear on what you're doing exactly-- I tried Strawberry Perl just now, and used Notepad to write a quickie test program-- that seemed to work fine. What utility are you using to write your Perl code?

Which is better, Strawberry Perl, or ActivePerl? Or, what's the difference?

I've only ever used ActivePerl on Windows (which hasn't been all that often in itself). Looks like Strawberry Perl has some extra utilities for grabbing CPAN modules and so forth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Perl

(see the bottom for comparison to Active Perl)

DaveE

 

[Benjamin113]

When I write the most basic of codes, it will not run, per se.
Perhaps it was/is a syntax error? I'm just starting to learn Perl, so I'm not sure how exactly it (the syntax) is set up.

Give me a sample line for me to run, and I'll see if it works.It might be as basic as a PRN issue as well

 

[Benjamin113]

^I mean that I have had some issues with that before

 

[davee123]

So-- are you trying to run Perl commands on the command line? That may just be a misunderstanding of how you use Perl? Try this:

Create a file using Windows Notepad:
C:\temp\test.pl

print "hello, world!\n";

Now, bring up the command prompt, by clicking on the "Perl (command line)" link under Strawberry Perl, or by using Start -> Run ... -> cmd, or Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt. Or whatever your preference. Then type:

perl C:\temp\test.pl

Now, your test code should run.

Technically, where Strawberry Perl installs a link that says "Perl (command line)", I think all it's doing is getting you to the command prompt. You're not actually in a Perl line interpreter or anything, although I can see that it might be confusing that way. All it does is get you to the command line so that you can run Perl programs that you've written elsewhere. The only thing it MIGHT do (it seems like it doesn't need to, but I'm not sure), is set your %PATH% to include Perl, so that you don't have to bother typing out the full directory path for Perl every time (that would be annoying).

Now, what would be cool is if you could run your Perl programs without having to type "perl" before them, just like in UNIX/Linux. But I'm not sure how to do that, really. You could update the registry so that double-clicking them invoked Perl, but I'm not sure you could do the same thing on the command line? That'd be occasionally handy, if so.

DaveE