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Invocation

Assuming that Perl is correctly installed and working on your system, the simplest way to run a Perl program is to type the following: perl filename.pl

The filename should be replaced by the name of the program that you are trying to run or execute. If you created a test.pl file while reading the previous section, you can run it like this: perl test.pl

This example assumes that perl is in the execution path; if not, you will need to supply the full path to perl, too. For example, on UNIX the command might be: /usr/local/bin/perl test.pl

Whereas on Windows NT, you might need to use:

c:\perl5\bin\perl test.pl

UNIX systems have another way to invoke a program. However, you need to do two things. The first is to place a line like

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

at the start of the Perl file. This tells UNIX that the rest of this script file is to be run by /usr/local/bin/perl. The second step is to make the program file itself executable by changing its mode:

chmod +x test.pl

Now you can execute the program file directly and let the program file tell the operating system what interpreter to use while running it. The new command line is simply: test


next up previous contents
Next: Comments in Your Program Up: Writing Perl Programs Previous: Creating the Program
dave@cs.cf.ac.uk