How do i run perl on windows 98

You could post the code, if it's a program with the code. One thing that I like to do is use a dos prompt and try to run the file.... you MIGHT have to load the perl Executable and pass the file as a parameter, something like:

c:\perl\bin\perl.exe myfile.pl

I have it running on my XP box, and I can just double click it, or type the name of the .pl file, as if it were an exe, com or bat. However, the first line of the perl file should be the path to your perl.exe... so:

#!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe

It might be different on your system, I'm not sure, but if none of those solutions work, post your code, and we'll check it out.

Taboo Programmer

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c:\perl\bin\perl.exe myfile.pl

where do i write that, on the run command of windows or the ppm of perl. On the ppm command, it does not recognize it while it says "file not found on the run command of windows".

c:\perl\bin\perl.exe is where mine is.

Actually, when i wrote the program in notepad, i save it on my desktop. It has the perl icon, but the problem is, when i double-click the icon for the program, the perl DOS screen pops-up with the output and disappears within a second such that you cannot see the output.
Any suggestions please.

001 :confused:

001

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Well, You could click on start, go to run, type in cmd, and then use the dos interface to run the perl program. You put the #!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe as the very first line in your perl file. I might be confused, but it sounds like you are writing a perl module, and not an actual perl script, because most perl modules end in .pm, or I'm guessing too .ppm. However, if you run the script from the command line, you will see any output that it spits out at you.

Taboo Programmer

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you will see any output that it spits out at you.

I was just wondering if it is not possible to make the output remain on the screen instead of it just spitting it out, making it difficult to see the output.

001

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This Introductions section is for members to introduce themselves, not for technical questions to be asked and answered. As we have a forum section specifically for Perl I'll move the topic to it.

Catweazle

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Thanx Catweazle, I completely missed that one! :-|

001:

By using the dos prompt, the information that gets display stays on the screen. That's the whole point behind using the dos prompt. The information displayed will stay on the screen. In windows, as soon as you run your perl file, and it finishes, it closes the spawned dos-window that runs the perl file. If you are not very proficient at using DOS, another solution that can be used for testing purposes only is to add a:

$tmpvar = <STDIN>;

Before the program terminates. However, this requires you to hit enter, before the program will quit (if you put it before an exit or die), but it's easy to forget about it being in there... and it isn't really a good method of debugging. The best solution, is to run perl from the command line, passing your program as the parameter.

Taboo Programmer

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Thanks Comatose,

It worked , but I still experience problems with the output when there are errors in the program. It justs spits out the output and its difficult to read. What do i do.

001

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Well, An Alternative Method is to use a filename for all your output, so, for example, in one program that I made, I needed all the Error Messages To Go To A Log File, So I stuck This at the top of my program:

open(STDERR, ">>log");

Then any error message that I needed to read, would be in the same folder as my script, in a file called "log". I think you can do the same for STDOUT, and have all output belonging to the screen redirected to a file also. Let me know how it turns out.

Taboo Programmer

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i tried it, but there was no error message written in the file.

001

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Thanks Comatose,

It worked , but I still experience problems with the output when there are errors in the program. It justs spits out the output and its difficult to read. What do i do.

001

You could show us what you mean by pasting the difficult to read output between CODE tags here.

Rashakil Fol

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You can try this bit of code to get the output and errors into a scrollable Tk::Text window:

#!d:\perl\bin\perl.exe -w

use strict;
use Tk;
use IPC::Open3;

my $filename="perl myfile.pl";  # change me for a different file
my $mw=Tk::MainWindow->new();  # makes a new Tk window

my $button=$mw->Button(-text => "Run $filename",
	-command => \&runme )->pack();   # this is the run button
my $text=$mw->Scrolled(qw/Text -height 20 -scrollbars e/)->pack();  # stdout goes into this window
my $texterr=$mw->Scrolled(qw/Text -height 10 -scrollbars e/)->pack();  # stderr goes into this one

MainLoop;  
# Tk's mainloop, all event processing takes place here
# if we don't reach MainLoop then the entire Tk window will be
# unresponsive.

sub runme {  
  # this subroutine is called when the button is pressed 
  my $pid = open3 (*PROG_IN, *PROG_OUT, *PROG_ERR, $filename) or die "Boom: $!\n";   # ok Boom is not best error msg. 
  close (PROG_IN);  
  # PROG_IN is for writing to programs that require input
  # see Ch16 for info on blocking and deadlock...
  foreach (<PROG_OUT>)
    { $text->insert('end',$_); $mw->update;}
   # each line is inserted into the widget, and update is called to 
   # refresh it - i was having probs not seeing anything in text
   # windows.
  foreach (<PROG_ERR>)
    { $texterr->insert('end',$_); $mw->update;}  
  }

Both Tk and IPC modules come with Activestate's perl install. The runme subroutine is mostly straight out of the Perl Cookbook Ch16. It reads the STDOUT and STDERR of the program and inserts each line into the appropriate Tk::Text window.

*.ppm's are packages to be used with Activestate's ppm utility (Programmers Package Manager) This is how modules are installed under windows. Strikes me as very similar to a Debian binary dpkg. =)

Kordaff

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then that means that there are no errors being output (which is a good thing). If you can actually paste the output here, it would help a lot.

Taboo Programmer

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