PERL 5.004 Now Available on RCS

Version 5.004 of the Practical Extraction and Report Language, or PERL, is now available on RCS.

PERL, an interpreted language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information, also allows users to build full scripts for system administration tools. Intended to be practical and easy-to-use, PERL combines some of the best features of C, sed, awk, and sh, so people familiar with those languages should have little difficulty with PERL.

To run a PERL script, enter the following command at a UNIX prompt:

perl name of script

Getting More Information

For additional help in using PERL, refer to the man page on RCS by entering the command man perl at a UNIX prompt. You may also find further useful information about PERL and PERL scripts on-line at the following URLs:

http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Programming_Languages/Perl/

http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Programming/Perl_Scripts/ 

You may also find dozens of additional sites by running a search for "PERL" through your Web browser's search engine.

If you have any further questions about using PERL, please contact the consultants at the ACS Help Desk, or direct electronic mail to consult@rpi.edu.