FAQ 2.1: What machines support Perl? Where do I get it?

This message is one of several periodic postings to comp.lang.perl.misc
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common questions. The core of this message represents an excerpt
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2.1: What machines support Perl?  Where do I get it?

The standard release of Perl (the one maintained by the perl development
team) is distributed only in source code form. You can find this at
http://www.cpan.org/src/latest.tar.gz , which is in a standard Internet
format (a gzipped archive in POSIX tar format).

Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually all
known and current Unix derivatives are supported (Perl's native
platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, QNX, BeOS,
OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga.

Binary distributions for some proprietary platforms, including Apple
systems, can be found http://www.cpan.org/ports/ directory. Because
these are not part of the standard distribution, they may and in fact do
differ from the base Perl port in a variety of ways. You'll have to
check their respective release notes to see just what the differences
are. These differences can be either positive (e.g. extensions for the
features of the particular platform that are not supported in the source
release of perl) or negative (e.g. might be based upon a less current
source release of perl).



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