Learning Perl, but how do I get 5.14 on Windows?

I haven't actually seen Learning Perl 6th edition, but I would be very surprised if you had difficulty working through it with Perl 5.12. Perl 5.14 is still too new for most people to be writing code that requires it. The book may mention some features that you can't take advantage of in 5.12, but it should still explain how to accomplish things using only 5.12 features.

I would recommend just using the current Strawberry Perl and not worrying about the version number.

Update: As Mike pointed out, here's the opening paragraph of the Preface:

Welcome to the sixth edition of Learning Perl, updated for Perl 5.14 and its latest features. This book is still good even if you are still using Perl 5.8 (although, it's been a long time since it was released; have you thought about upgrading?).

So that confirms you'll have no problem trying to use 5.12 with the 6th edition.


I moved from Windows and PHP to Linux and Perl a while ago, and haven't looked back - but I don't want to start an OS or programming language war here. My desktop is running Ubuntu, but you could stick with Windows (I have Windows available in a VirtualBox VM for those times when I need it).

You can download the Ubuntu Server ISO and attach it as a CD/DVD image via the Virtual Media Manager. You can then set up as many Ubuntu VMs as you like. I use very basic setting for mine:

  • RAM: 512MB
  • Hard Disk: 8GB dynamic
  • Network Adapter: Bridged

I have a few images configured. One is setup with Nginx + Catalyst, one with Bricolage CMS and Apache, and a few other variations (including a PHP one). The great thing with VMs is that you can create snapshots, duplicate images, experiment, and blow things away and restart if you mess things up.

How you choose to setup your development environment is down to personal choice. I use SSHMenu to open four SSH connections to my development server - this also places the terminals at predefined positions on my screen.

I use one terminal to run code, access the debugger, etc. I use another for connecting the DBMS client (PostgreSQL / MySQL). I use the other two for editing code and unit tests. I use Vim in the terminal as my editor. I was going to try Emacs too, but never got round to it.

I use git as my version control system, with bare repositories on a separate file server. I did start with Mercurial, but it appears as though much of the Perl world is using git, so I switched.

I have configured the GNOME terminal to use the beautiful Solarized colour scheme (you can find a handy script for that here).

As for the Perl version: I don't know. I agree with other comments about using a standard package rather than trying to build your own - especially if you are a Linux newbie. I've just looked on the O'Reilly preview page, and in the Preface, it says "this book is good even if you are still using Perl 5.8" - so you should be okay with an earlier version. You also need to be aware that if you are planning on doing web development in Perl, you may be limited to older versions of Perl by your chosen hosting provider.

A few more thoughts:

  • Programming Perl, despite its age, is still a great resource. One you've completed Learning Perl, and perhaps Intermediate Perl, it's well worth reading. The section on Pattern Matching (regular expressions) is fantastic.

  • Modern Perl is a really good read. It's well written, concise, and full of really useful tips.

  • cpanm is a great alternative to the standard CPAN application.

  • local::lib is very useful. I use it to create a per-application set of CPAN modules. This means that I can simply copy the entire directory structure from my development server to the application server, without having to worry about conflicts with other applications that might be using different versions of the same modules. This is probably not relevant to you at the moment, but when you've learned more and start using lots of CPAN modules, it can be really handy.

A quick local::lib example:

mkdir -p ~/myapp/extlib
cpanm --prompt -L ~/myapp/extlib CPAN::Module1 CPAN::Module2 ...
eval $(perl -Mlocal::lib=~/myapp/extlib/)

In ~/myapp/scripts/myscript.pl:

use FindBin;
use local::lib "$FindBin::Bin/../extlib";

Use ActivePerl

It is a very good product, it is free, and it has a reliable (for the most part) PPM (Perl Package Manager). I use it and have no troubles usually. It is a binary distribution just like Strawberry Perl, but you use PPM to get modules instead of CPAN.pm.

Note: If you are getting Perl 5.14 Just because of the book, don't. I got that book (I am also a beginner) and used 5.12.4. You get mostly all of the features (except for a few ;-)

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