Hi there, I have just been getting into the wonderful programming language that is PERL, having used things like Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro and even BASIC and COBOL professionally!
I stumbled across CPAN whilst looking for a program to control a modem. I have struggled (and failed) in getting the Device::Modem module to work. Despite studying all the online material I could find, I am still perplexed at how to install CPAN modules properly on ActivePerl on Windows XP. I have written programs to successfully interface using the ActivePerl SMTP and POP3 PERL modules, but have hit a brick wall with CPAN ones. Specifically my problems are these: 1 - I have played about with the CPAN program which does seem to wonderfully do something, if I issue the "install Device::Modem" command. It goes away and appears to get all the relevent stuff from the Internet, unpack it and install the package - but where? Indeed doing it again in CPAN gives "Device::Modem is up to date." I tried to use it in my program, and get: "Can't locate Device/Modem.pm in @INC", (I'm using the default @INC of c:/perl/lib and c:/perl/site/lib) this led me to the second problem.... 2 - I copied the source down individually (finding the relevent dependencies one-by-one) and saved the relevent .pm in the correct folder under c:/perl/site/lib, but hit another wall with API.pm giving a "Can't locate loadable object for module Win32::API in @INC", despite the fact it exists, it's obviously telling me something else, but what? In summary, could someone tell me: 1 - In simple, step-by-step terms, how I can use the CPAN program to install modules, and use them in my programs. 2 - What's wrong with my API.pm? I'm looking forward eagerly to your replies! Cheers Andy Burgess
