Perl

Our VMs have Perl 5.16.3 available as part of the base linux
VM. Licensed as open source under the GPL, it is most often used
to develop mission critical software, and has excellent integration
with markup languages such as HTML, XML, amongst others. Since it is both Object
Oriented as well as procedural, it could be used within a multitude
of programming projects. It includes built in database integration via
its DBI module. Other than DBI, it has thousands of modules, making it
one of the most extensible languages. Due to its interpreted nature,
Perl is similar to Python and would be easy to understand for those
familiar with Python.

Running Perl code

Perl has an interactive interpreter, which could be run by simply typing
perl -e <perl_code_goes here>. E.g. to print a number:
perl -e ‘print 10’
the -e flag is simply to denote that the code is not a file, but code
itself. To run a Perl script, do the following:
perl <script_name_goes_here>

Installing modules

Since Ivy VM’s do not allow outward connections to CPAN’s website, you would have to
install perl modules using the procedure below:

1. Check if CPAN is installed and configured on your VM by typing cpan into a terminal
   window:
   cpan

• If it asks you if CPAN needs to be configured, type yes
• Once it is configured, type cpan to enter the CPAN shell
• In a browser from outside the Ivy VM, search for the proper name of the Perl module you wish to download
  search.cpan.org
• E.g. if you want to install the MySQL driver for Perl, type
  install DBD::MySQL
  This would start the installation of the module. Ivy is able to download modules from CPAN using this method.

* You could manually install a module from its compressed file, once you have transferred the file into Ivy. However, using the process above downloads the modules’s dependencies as well.

Verifying if a module is installed

Run the following command after installing your module :

perldoc -l DBD::mysql

(e.g. if you installed DBD::mysql). It should output the path to the installed module.

More Information

Please visit the official Perl website for more details.