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perlwin32(1)





NAME

       perlwin32 - Perl under Windows


SYNOPSIS

       These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP on
       the Intel x86 and Itanium architectures.


DESCRIPTION

       Before you start, you should glance through the README file found in
       the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution was extracted.
       Make sure you read and understand the terms under which this software
       is being distributed.

       Also make sure you read "BUGS AND CAVEATS" below for the known limita-
       tions of this port.

       The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
       only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems.  In partic-
       ular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about "Config-
       ure".

       You may also want to look at two other options for building a perl that
       will work on Windows NT:  the README.cygwin and README.os2 files, each
       of which give a different set of rules to build a Perl that will work
       on Win32 platforms.  Those two methods will probably enable you to
       build a more Unix-compatible perl, but you will also need to download
       and use various other build-time and run-time support software
       described in those files.

       This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native" port
       of Perl to Win32 platforms.  This includes both 32-bit and 64-bit Win-
       dows operating systems.  The resulting Perl requires no additional
       software to run (other than what came with your operating system).
       Currently, this port is capable of using one of the following compilers
       on the Intel x86 architecture:

             Borland C++           version 5.02 or later
             Microsoft Visual C++  version 2.0 or later
             MinGW with gcc        gcc version 2.95.2 or later

       The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler.  Use version
       3.2.x or later for the best results with this compiler.

       The Borland C++ and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being
       given away free.  The Borland compiler is available as "Borland C++
       Compiler Free Command Line Tools" and is the same compiler that ships
       with the full "Borland C++ Builder" product.  The Microsoft compiler is
       available as "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003", and also as part of the ".NET
       Framework SDK", and is the same compiler that ships with "Visual Studio
       .NET 2003 Professional".

       This port can also be built on the Intel IA64 using:

             Microsoft Platform SDK    Nov 2001 (64-bit compiler and tools)

       The MS Platform SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/.

       This port fully supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that is used to
       build extensions to perl).  Therefore, you should be able to build and
       install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.  See "Usage Hints for
       Perl on Win32" below for general hints about this.

       Setting Up Perl on Win32

       Make
           You need a "make" program to build the sources.  If you are using
           Visual C++ or the Platform SDK tools under Windows NT/2000/XP,
           nmake will work.  All other builds need dmake.

           dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
           and parallelability.

           A port of dmake for Windows is available from:

               http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake/

           Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path.

           There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
           compilers.  Namely, if a distribution has C files named with mixed
           case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files
           named with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked
           to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files
           again.  For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such files,
           resulting in needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked.  To
           avoid this, you may use the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful
           build.  It is available in the win32 subdirectory of the Perl
           source distribution.

       Command Shell
           Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT.  Some versions of
           the popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you
           trouble.  If the build fails under that shell, try building again
           with the cmd shell.

           The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the "com-
           mand.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x.  You will need to use
           dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.

           The surest way to build it is on Windows NT/2000/XP, using the cmd
           shell.

           Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces.
           The build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will
           fail.

       Borland C++
           If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.  (The
           make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not work
           for MakeMaker builds.)

           See "Make" above.

       Microsoft Visual C++
           The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
           You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
           like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Stu-
           dio\VC98\Bin.  This will set your build environment.

           You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, how-
           ever, you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory
           name under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your
           environment and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into
           "make=dmake".  The latter step is only essential if you want to use
           dmake as your default make for building extensions using MakeMaker.

       Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
           This free toolkit contains the same compiler and linker that ship
           with Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional, but doesn't contain
           everything necessary to build Perl.

           You will also need to download the "Platform SDK" (the "Core SDK"
           and "MDAC SDK" components are required) for header files, libraries
           and rc.exe, and ".NET Framework SDK" for more libraries and
           nmake.exe.  Note that the latter (which also includes the free com-
           piler and linker) requires the ".NET Framework Redistributable" to
           be installed first.  This can be downloaded and installed sepa-
           rately, but is included in the "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" anyway.

           These packages can all be downloaded by searching in the Download
           Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?display-
           lang=en.  (Providing exact links to these packages has proven a
           pointless task because the links keep on changing so often.)

           Try to obtain the latest version of the Platform SDK.  Sometimes
           these packages contain a particular Windows OS version in their
           name, but actually work on other OS versions too.  For example, the
           "Windows Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK" also runs on Windows XP SP2
           and Windows 2000.

           According to the download pages the Toolkit and the .NET Framework
           SDK are only supported on Windows 2000/XP/2003, so trying to use
           these tools on Windows 95/98/ME and even Windows NT probably won't
           work.

           Install the Toolkit first, then the Platform SDK, then the .NET
           Framework SDK.  Setup your environment as follows (assuming default
           installation locations were chosen):

                   SET PATH=%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\v1.1\Bin
                   SET INCLUDE=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include
                   SET LIB=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\lib;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\lib;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\lib

           Several required files will still be missing:

           *   cvtres.exe is required by link.exe when using a .res file.  It
               is actually installed by the .NET Framework SDK, but into a
               location such as the following:

                       C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322

               Copy it from there to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin

           *   lib.exe is normally used to build libraries, but link.exe with
               the /lib option also works, so change win32/config.vc to use it
               instead:

               Change the line reading:

                       ar='lib'

               to:

                       ar='link /lib'

               It may also be useful to create a batch file called lib.bat in
               C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin contain-
               ing:

                       @echo off
                       link /lib %*

               for the benefit of any naughty C extension modules that you
               might want to build later which explicitly reference "lib"
               rather than taking their value from $Config{ar}.

           *   setargv.obj is required to build perlglob.exe (and perl.exe if
               the USE_SETARGV option is enabled).  The Platform SDK supplies
               this object file in source form in C:\Program Files\Microsoft
               SDK\src\crt.  Copy setargv.c, cruntime.h and internal.h from
               there to some temporary location and build setargv.obj using

                       cl.exe /c /I. /D_CRTBLD setargv.c

               Then copy setargv.obj to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\lib

               Alternatively, if you don't need perlglob.exe and don't need to
               enable the USE_SETARGV option then you can safely just remove
               all mention of $(GLOBEXE) from win32/Makefile and setargv.obj
               won't be required anyway.

           Perl should now build using the win32/Makefile.  You will need to
           edit that file to set

                   CCTYPE = MSVC70FREE

           and to set CCHOME, CCINCDIR and CCLIBDIR as per the environment
           setup above.

       Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler
           The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suffice for build-
           ing Perl.  Make sure you are building within one of the "Build
           Environment" shells available after you install the Platform SDK
           from the Start Menu.

       MinGW release 3 with gcc
           The latest release of MinGW at the time of writing is 3.1.0, which
           contains gcc-3.2.3.  It can be downloaded here:

               http://www.mingw.org/

           Perl also compiles with earlier releases of gcc (2.95.2 and up).
           See below for notes about using earlier versions of MinGW/gcc.

           You also need dmake.  See "Make" above on how to get it.

       MinGW release 1 with gcc
           The MinGW-1.1 bundle contains gcc-2.95.3.

           Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as
           indicated in the README for the GCC bundle.  You may need to set up
           a few environment variables (usually ran from a batch file).

           There are a couple of problems with the version of
           gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe released 7 November 1999:

           *   It left out a fix for certain command line quotes.  To fix
               this, be sure to download and install the file
               fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe from the above ftp location.

           *   The definition of the fpos_t type in stdio.h may be wrong.  If
               your stdio.h has this problem, you will see an exception when
               running the test t/lib/io_xs.t.  To fix this, change the type-
               def for fpos_t from "long" to "long long" in the file
               i386-mingw32msvc/include/stdio.h, and rebuild.

           A potentially simpler to install (but probably soon-to-be-outdated)
           bundle of the above package with the mentioned fixes already
           applied is available here:

               http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
               ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip

       Building

       o   Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl
           toplevel.  This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
           versions of nmake that come with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK,
           and a dmake "makefile.mk" that will work for all supported compil-
           ers.  The defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to build using
           MinGW/gcc.

       o   Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and
           change the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP.   You can also enable
           various build flags.  These are explained in the makefiles.

           Note that it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
           with INST_DRV and INST_TOP set to a path that already exists from a
           previous build.  In particular, this may cause problems with the
           lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t test, which attempts to build a test program
           and may end up building against the installed perl's lib/CORE
           directory rather than the one being tested.

           You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
           CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.

           The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++ may
           not be correct for some versions.  Make sure the default exists and
           is valid.

           You may also need to comment out the "DELAYLOAD = ..." line in the
           Makefile if you're using VC++ 6.0 without the latest service pack
           and the linker reports an internal error.

           If you have either the source or a library that contains
           des_fcrypt(), enable the appropriate option in the makefile.  A
           ready-to-use version of fcrypt.c, based on the version originally
           written by Eric Young at ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mir-
           rors/dsi/libdes/, is bundled with the distribution and CRYPT_SRC is
           set to use it.  Alternatively, if you have built a library that
           contains des_fcrypt(), you can set CRYPT_LIB to point to the
           library name.  Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the
           crypt() builtin will fail at run time.

           If you want build some core extensions statically into perl's dll,
           specify them in the STATIC_EXT macro.

           Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles
           carefully.

       o   Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).

           This should build everything.  Specifically, it will create
           perl.exe, perl58.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other exten-
           sion dll's under the lib\auto directory.  If the build fails for
           any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly.

       Testing Perl on Win32

       Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test").  This will run most of the tests
       from the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).

       There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT/2000/XP.
       Many tests will fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior command
       shell.

       Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
       native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains spa-
       ces.  So don't do that.

       If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
       failures in op/stat.t.  Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.

       If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in
       op/taint.t arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs
       on the system default path.  You will need to copy the DLLs reported by
       the messages from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows
       system directory (usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun
       the test.

       If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run
       into problems finding the correct header files when building exten-
       sions.  For example, building the "Tk" extension may fail because both
       perl and Tk contain a header file called "patchlevel.h".  The latest
       Borland compiler (v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even sup-
       ports an option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility for using the
       old Borland search algorithm  to locate header files.

       If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for
       "link()" related tests:

           Failed Test                     Stat Wstat Total Fail  Failed  List

           ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_dup.t                    6    4  66.67%  2-5
           ../lib/File/Temp/t/mktemp.t                    9    1  11.11%  2
           ../lib/File/Temp/t/posix.t                     7    1  14.29%  3
           ../lib/File/Temp/t/security.t                 13    1   7.69%  2
           ../lib/File/Temp/t/tempfile.t                 20    2  10.00%  2 4
           comp/multiline.t                               6    2  33.33%  5-6
           io/dup.t                                       8    6  75.00%  2-7
           op/write.t                                    47    7  14.89%  1-3 6 9-11

       Testing on NTFS avoids these errors.

       Furthermore, you should make sure that during "make test" you do not
       have any GNU tool packages in your path: some toolkits like Unixutils
       include some tools ("type" for instance) which override the Windows
       ones and makes tests fail. Remove them from your path while testing to
       avoid these errors.

       Please report any other failures as described under "BUGS AND CAVEATS".

       Installation of Perl on Win32

       Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install").  This will put the newly
       built perl and the libraries under whatever "INST_TOP" points to in the
       Makefile.  It will also install the pod documentation under
       "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\lib\pod" and HTML versions of the same under
       "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\lib\pod\html".

       To use the Perl you just installed you will need to add a new entry to
       your PATH environment variable: "$INST_TOP\bin", e.g.

           set PATH=c:\perl\bin;%PATH%

       If you opted to uncomment "INST_VER" and "INST_ARCH" in the makefile
       then the installation structure is a little more complicated and you
       will need to add two new PATH components instead:
       "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin" and "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin\$ARCHNAME", e.g.

           set PATH=c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%

       Usage Hints for Perl on Win32

       Environment Variables
           The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
           into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
           using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).

           If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB to a
           list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl to look
           for libraries.  Look for descriptions of other environment vari-
           ables you can set in perlrun.

           You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
           backtick commands via PERL5SHELL.  See perlrun.

           Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain
           default values if you choose to put them there.  Perl attempts to
           read entries from "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl" and
           "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl".  Entries in the former override
           entries in the latter.  One or more of the following entries (of
           type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:

               lib-$]              version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
               lib                 standard library path to add to @INC
               sitelib-$]          version-specific site library path to add to @INC
               sitelib             site library path to add to @INC
               vendorlib-$]        version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
               vendorlib           vendor library path to add to @INC
               PERL*               fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"

           Note the $] in the above is not literal.  Substitute whatever ver-
           sion of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. 5.6.0.  Paths must
           be separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.

       File Globbing
           By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob exten-
           sion, which provides portable globbing.

           If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
           filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::Dos-
           Glob to override the internal glob() implementation.  See
           File::DosGlob for details.

       Using perl from the command line
           If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
           shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
           with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.

           The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is
           that the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl
           sees it.  First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT,
           and COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to
           handle redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of
           the executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remain-
           ing command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime
           library upon which Perl was built.

           It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the
           C runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
           wildcards need not be quoted).  Also, the quoting behaviours of the
           shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you
           are using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent).  The only (use-
           ful) quote character is the double quote (").  It can be used to
           protect spaces and other special characters in arguments.

           The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
           quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observa-
           tions based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spa-
           ces and passes them to programs in argc/argv.  Double quotes can be
           used to prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up.
           You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a
           backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes.
           The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the argu-
           ment will be stripped by the C runtime.

           The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
           double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not
           always be true).  Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the
           shell or the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just
           to make this type of quoting completely useless).  The caret "^"
           has also been observed to behave as a quoting character, but this
           appears to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from
           the command line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase
           does not treat the caret as a quote character).

           Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:

           This prints two doublequotes:

               perl -e "print '\"\"' "

           This does the same:

               perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "

           This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":

               perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch

           This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):

               perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul

           This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":

               perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch

           This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the con-
           sole:

               perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less

           This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:

               perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less

           This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file
           "blurch":

               perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less

           Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
           is left as an exercise to the reader :)

           One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
           Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indi-
           cating that environment variable expansion is needed.  Under this
           shell, it is therefore important to always double any % characters
           which you want Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even
           when they are quoted.

       Building Extensions
           The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth of
           extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.  Look in
           http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.

           Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work in
           the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
           http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
           porting modules that don't readily build.

           Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can be
           built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:

               perl Makefile.PL
               $MAKE
               $MAKE test
               $MAKE install

           where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
           use.  Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is.  Some extensions
           may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or
           fail), but most serious ones do.

           It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and ensure
           Config.pm knows about it.  If you don't have nmake, you can either
           get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an old version
           of nmake reportedly available from:

            http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/nmake15.exe

           Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
           CPAN.

               http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/

           You may also use dmake.  See "Make" above on how to get it.

           Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
           depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using.  Therefore, it is
           important that one of the following values appears in Config.pm:

               make='nmake'        # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
               make='dmake'        # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
               any other value     # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
                                       (e.g GNU make, or Perl make)

           If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use, edit
           Config.pm to fix it.

           If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported C
           compilers.  You must make sure you have set up the environment for
           the compiler for command-line compilation.

           If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for why
           it failed, and report problems to the module author.  If it looks
           like the extension building support is at fault, report that with
           full details of how the build failed using the perlbug utility.

       Command-line Wildcard Expansion
           The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems
           (such as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments sup-
           plied to programs.  They consider it the application's job to han-
           dle that.  This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in
           our case, perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usu-
           ally provide.  However, doing that results in incompatible perl
           versions (since the behavior of the argv expansion code differs
           depending on the compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers).
           Besides, it may be a source of frustration if you use such a perl
           binary with an alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.

           Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
           about it are 1) you can start using it right away; 2) it is more
           powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern like
           */*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and
           4) you can extend the method to add any customizations (or even
           entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).

                   C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
                   # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
                   use File::DosGlob;
                   @ARGV = map {
                                 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
                                 @g ? @g : $_;
                               } @ARGV;
                   1;
                   ^Z
                   C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
                   C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
                   p4view/perl/perl.c
                   p4view/perl/perlio.c
                   p4view/perl/perly.c
                   perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
                   perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
                   perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
                   perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
                   perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
                   perl5.005/win32/perllib.c

           Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
           Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
           set the PERL5OPT environment variable.  If you want argv expansion
           to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup envi-
           ronment.

           If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
           command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary.  The
           resulting binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which
           may not be what you want if you use a shell that does that for you.
           The expansion done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach
           suggested above.

       Win32 Specific Extensions
           A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
           from CPAN.  You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
           be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the
           only native port for the Win32 platform.  Since the Activeware port
           does not have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools,
           these extensions typically do not support those tools either and,
           therefore, cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the
           previous section.

           To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
           ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that con-
           tains all of the ActiveState extensions and several other Win32
           extensions from CPAN in source form, along with many added bug-
           fixes, and with MakeMaker support.  The latest version of this bun-
           dle is available at:

               http://search.cpan.org/dist/libwin32/

           See the README in that distribution for building and installation
           instructions.

       Notes on 64-bit Windows
           Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on the Intel Ita-
           nium architecture.

           The LLP64 data model is different from the LP64 data model that is
           the norm on 64-bit Unix platforms.  In the former, "int" and "long"
           are both 32-bit data types, while pointers are 64 bits wide.  In
           addition, there is a separate 64-bit wide integral type, "__int64".
           In contrast, the LP64 data model that is pervasive on Unix plat-
           forms provides "int" as the 32-bit type, while both the "long" type
           and pointers are of 64-bit precision.  Note that both models pro-
           vide for 64-bits of addressability.

           64-bit Windows running on Itanium is capable of running 32-bit x86
           binaries transparently.  This means that you could use a 32-bit
           build of Perl on a 64-bit system.  Given this, why would one want
           to build a 64-bit build of Perl?  Here are some reasons why you
           would bother:

           *   A 64-bit native application will run much more efficiently on
               Itanium hardware.

           *   There is no 2GB limit on process size.

           *   Perl automatically provides large file support when built under
               64-bit Windows.

           *   Embedding Perl inside a 64-bit application.

       Running Perl Scripts

       Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to indicate to
       the OS that it should execute the file using perl.  Win32 has no compa-
       rable means to indicate arbitrary files are executables.

       Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on Win32
       rely on the file "extension".  There are three methods to use this to
       execute perl scripts:

       1       There is a facility called "file extension associations" that
               will work in Windows NT 4.0.  This can be manipulated via the
               two commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Win-
               dows NT 4.0.  Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to
               set this up for perl scripts (Say what?  You thought Windows NT
               wasn't perl-ready? :).

       2       Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
               reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
               old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
               regular batch file to the OS, may be used.  The install process
               makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to
               wrap perl scripts into batch files.  For example:

                       pl2bat foo.pl

               will create the file "FOO.BAT".  Note "pl2bat" strips any .pl
               suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.

               If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
               "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
               refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to
               make sure that construct works in batch files.  As of this
               writing, 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" state-
               ment in their 4NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*"
               in the 4DOS/NT startup file to enable this to work.

       3       Using "pl2bat" has a few problems:  the file name gets changed,
               so scripts that rely on $0 to find what they must do may not
               run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
               original script, and so this process can be maintenance inten-
               sive if the originals get updated often.  A different approach
               that avoids both problems is possible.

               A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
               to any filename (along with the .bat suffix).  For example, if
               you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
               executed.  Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms
               simply by typing the name (without the extension), this effec-
               tively runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or
               "foo.bat".  With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a dif-
               ferent location than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is avail-
               able somewhere on the PATH.  If your scripts are on a filesys-
               tem that allows symbolic links, you can even avoid copying
               "runperl.bat".

               Here's a diversion:  copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
               "runperl".  Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
               Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH

       Miscellaneous Things

       A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be able to
       use it if you have a web browser installed on your system.

       "perldoc" is also a useful tool for browsing information contained in
       the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager like "less"
       (recent versions of which have Win32 support).  You may have to set the
       PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.  "perldoc -f foo"
       will print information about the perl operator "foo".

       One common mistake when using this port with a GUI library like "Tk" is
       assuming that Perl's normal behavior of opening a command-line window
       will go away.  This isn't the case.  If you want to start a copy of
       "perl" without opening a command-line window, use the "wperl" exe-
       cutable built during the installation process.  Usage is exactly the
       same as normal "perl" on Win32, except that options like "-h" don't
       work (since they need a command-line window to print to).

       If you find bugs in perl, you can run "perlbug" to create a bug report
       (you may have to send it manually if "perlbug" cannot find a mailer on
       your system).


BUGS AND CAVEATS

       Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if set
       to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened". Unlike large applications the
       perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files. Having the the
       AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process signifi-
       cantly.  Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar
       messages as the virus checker interacts badly with miniperl.exe writing
       configure files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat
       it as suspicious, or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which
       inhibits miniperl updating it). The build does complete with

          set PERLIO=perlio

       but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar
       issues.

       Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
       perlfunc, and a few are not implemented at all.  To avoid surprises,
       particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl in other operating
       environments or if you intend to write code that will be portable to
       other environments, see perlport for a reasonably definitive list of
       these differences.

       Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly in
       the Win32 environment.  See "Building Extensions".

       Most "socket()" related calls are supported, but they may not behave as
       on Unix platforms.  See perlport for the full list.  Perl requires
       Winsock2 to be installed on the system. If you're running Win95, you
       can download Winsock upgrade from here:

       http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUAd-
       minTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sockets2/Default.asp

       Later OS versions already include Winsock2 support.

       Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it doesn't
       exactly "behave", either :).  For instance, calling "die()" or "exit()"
       from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most implementa-
       tions of "signal()" on Win32 are severely crippled.  Thus, signals may
       work only for simple things like setting a flag variable in the han-
       dler.  Using signals under this port should currently be considered
       unsupported.

       Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
       you may find to <perlbug@perl.org>, along with the output produced by
       "perl -V".


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       The use of a camel with the topic of Perl is a trademark of O'Reilly
       and Associates, Inc. Used with permission.


AUTHORS

       Gary Ng <71564.1743@CompuServe.COM>
       Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@activestate.com>
       Nick Ing-Simmons <nick@ing-simmons.net>
       Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
       Steve Hay <steve.hay@uk.radan.com>

       This document is maintained by Jan Dubois.


SEE ALSO

       perl


HISTORY

       This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24, and
       borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available at the
       time.  Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks since then.

       Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).

       GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).

       Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).

       Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).

       Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).

       Support for 64-bit Windows added in 5.8 (ActiveState Corp).

       Last updated: 30 September 2005

perl v5.8.8                       2006-06-14                      PERLWIN32(1)

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