Thanks to everybody who's offered advice. I've grouped things together
in this message, because I thought that would be easier on people than
if I sent a bunch of mails to the list in a row -- apologies if this
screws up anybody's threading. Oh, and I've thought of some specific
questions (at the end).
Clinton A . Pierce wrote:
> glob() can be fun,
I think I'll avoid it -- if people don't know Unix, then they won't be
used to the concept, so using readdir() then skipping files you aren't
interested in is probably saner.
> If you're doing basic Perl, then you may not get into things like
> fork(), kill and other process handling things.
They are in there (because they are actually basic Perl -- if the
audience is Unix C programmers, then there isn't anything inherently
difficult about the way Perl does these things so it would silly not to
include them) but I think I'll skip them as not being relevant.
> Speaking of "sample text files" don't use things like /etc/passwd for
> examples.
That's a great point that I hadn't thought of. Ta.
> Otherwise, the main problem I've had is people wanting to know how to
> pop up dialog boxes. :)
Well Perl does GTK, doesn't it? And there's a GTK port for Windows
isn't there? Fortunately the audience are mostly concerned about using
Perl for CGI programming, so this won't be an issue.
Mark-Jason Dominus wrote:
> One thing that kept boning me was incompatibilities between the DOS
> shell and the Unix shell.
With a rare case of forward planning, it appears that our slides already
list both syntaxes. Those backslashed quotes are ugly though, which
provides a good example for teaching the q[] and qq[] notation.
Chris Prince-Colbath wrote:
> I use gvim for the syntax highlighting. Great to help beginners see
> when they forgot a quote or misspelled a keyword.
I don't think it's appropriate for the delegates though -- if they
haven't encountered a `Vi'-like editor before, in the middle of a Perl
course probably isn't the time to learn. I've asked for the
workstations to be set up with an "appropriate" editor, so I'll let the
client pick what they're comfortable with (then bring `Vim' on a floppy
for my own use).
> I have everyone keep a command window open and install doskey to make
> re-execution easier.
That sounds like a plan. (Why doesn't doskey /i run by default anyway?)
Peter Prymmer wrote:
> ... I would have thought that encountering a Unix LINE FEED file in a
> "Perl on Windows" class would have been an opportune time to
> introduce how to deal with them on Windows using perl.
Nice idea!
Peter Scott wrote:
> Double clicking on a program will cause the output to flash in a DOS
> window and promptly go away.
Double-clicking? I was assuming we'd be able to run scripts from the
`Command Prompt', no?
> END { print "Done, hit <RETURN>: " and <STDIN> if $^O =~ /Win32/ }
I do like that, though.
> You will spend most of your excess time going, "Ok, just grep the
> files for the line containing -- oh, wait a minute --"
Yes, I'll have to watch out for that. (It might provide the opportunity
for a small amount of Unix advocacy, but I don't want to come over as
some kind of Unix bigot who resents having to work with Windows -- the
client is very much committed to Windows, and there wouldn't be any
point in my causing offence.)
Now, here are some more specific questions that I've thought of:
I asked the client which version and port of Perl we'll be using, but
apparently it's up to me to specify it. Presumably I say ActivePerl
5.6.0.623? This seems to come in MSI and AS forms -- is this important?
What's the best way of running programs? Assuming that perl.exe is in
the path, I assume the following will work, but is there a shorter way?
C:\My Documents\Perl> perl -w Hello.pl
but is there a less verbose way, the equivalent of the Unix #! line?
Related to that, is there a way of embedding the -w flag directly in
scripts, like it can be on the Unix #! line?
Obvious I can't expect Unix manpages, but does the perldoc command work
on Windows?
What do you pass as the second parameter to the mkdir() function, since
an octal permission number doesn't make a lot of sense on Windows?
Finally, would it be worthwhile my getting the Gecko book? On the
O'Reilly site it's described as "an introduction to `the Perl way' for
Windows users", and I really want the opposite of that. The first few
chapters on hashes and regexps and the like obviously won't be anything
new, but is there anything later on that would be worth reading?
Sorry this has got so long, and thanks again for all your help.
Simon
--
Simon Myers * GBdirect
http://www.gbdirect.co.uk/
tel: +44 1274 772277 fax: +44 1274 772281
