I can ask my cousin if she wants old tv -----Original Message----- From: "Rob Coops" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:22:04 To: David Ehresmann<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <beginners@perl.org> Subject: Re: perl version for windows On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 6:58 PM, David Ehresmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > If I want to install perl for the computer described below: > > > Windows Vista Home Premium > > Service Pack 1 > > Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2200 2.2GHz 2GB memory > > 32-bit > > > > I would go to ActivePerl and download this: > > > > ActivePerl-5.10.0.1004-MSWin32-x86-287188 > > > > > > Is this the best path or choice to install perl on windows? > > > > What is the difference between learning perl on windows vs. unix? > > > > > > > > thanks. > Hi David, Active Perl is a good choice is you ask me it is easy with good support and it has been around for a while so a lot of Perl modules etc will work or can be made to work with it. There are other flavors which I do not have much experience with so I cannot really comment on. As for is it good to learn on Windows, sure it is pretty similar to the Unix versions there are a few minor things like certain functions and calls that might not work exactly the same way as they would on a Unix system and a less extensive set of libraries but all the main libs are available on windows as well as for the others even if they are not directly available they quite often do work on Windows. The main difficulty you will run into is the fact that most examples and so on you will find assume a windows machine, which means they might not always work exactly in the same way, though these are minor things and should not cause you a major problem it's mainly things like directory separators(/ and \, etc.). Personally I would advise to grab my self a VMware player/server (both are free) or something like that with any virtual Linux installation running in it (they all have Perl installed by default or will explicitly mention they do not.) That way you can play around with Perl without having to install it on your main machine and even if you make some horrible mistake you can always simply kill the virtual machine and start over without having to worry about your machine. (it's not likely that will ever happen but then again better safe then sorry) Having a virtual Linux machine with Perl means that you can also if you like try your scripts on both Windows and Linux and figure out what the differences are, if they you find that Perl on Windows and Perl on Linux are so similar that you can just as easily work on Windows then just drop the virtual machine and only use Windows. I personally have Perl running both on Windows and on Linux, I write my code on the Windows machine where I have an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) on the Linux machine I have a version control system and a web server etc, which is where most of my code ends up. The reason my Windows machine has Perl then? Well because somethings are just easier to do in Perl regardless of the type of OS you are on. Hope this helps a bit, Rob
