Subject: [Perl] How to find the Perl FAQ
From: Tom Phoenix <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:24:01 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc,comp.answers,news.answers

Archive-name: perl-faq/finding-perl-faq
Posting-Frequency: weekly
Last-modified: 18 Aug 1999

[ That "Last-modified:" date above refers to this document, not to the
Perl FAQ itself! The last major update of the Perl FAQ was in Summer of
1998; of course, ongoing updates are made as needed. ]

For most people, this URL should be all you need in order to find Perl's
Frequently Asked Questions (and answers).

    http://www.cpan.org/doc/FAQs/

Please look over (but never overlook!) the FAQ and related docs before
posting anything to the comp.lang.perl.* family of newsgroups.

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Beginning with Perl version 5.004, the Perl distribution itself includes
the Perl FAQ. If everything is pro-Perl-y installed on your system, the
FAQ will be stored alongside the rest of Perl's documentation, and one
of these commands (or your local equivalents) should let you read the FAQ.

    perldoc perlfaq
    man perlfaq

If a recent version of Perl is not properly installed on your system,
you should ask your system administrator or local expert to help. If you
find that a recent Perl distribution is lacking the FAQ or other important
documentation, be sure to complain to that distribution's author.

If you have a web connection, the first and foremost source for all things
Perl, including the FAQ, is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).
CPAN also includes the Perl source code, pre-compiled binaries for many
platforms, and a large collection of freely usable modules, among its
560_986_526 bytes (give or take a little) of super-cool (give or take
a little) Perl resources.

    http://www.cpan.org/
    http://www.perl.com/CPAN/
    http://www.cpan.org/doc/FAQs/FAQ/html/
    http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/FAQ/html/

You may wish or need to access CPAN via anonymous FTP. (Within CPAN,
you will find the FAQ in the /doc/FAQs/FAQ directory. If none of these
selected FTP sites is especially good for you, a full list of CPAN sites
is in the SITES file within CPAN.)

    California     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/perl/CPAN/
    Texas          ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perl/
    South Africa   ftp://ftp.is.co.za/programming/perl/CPAN/
    Japan          ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/lang/CPAN/
    Australia      ftp://cpan.topend.com.au/pub/CPAN/
    Netherlands    ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/
    Switzerland    ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/CPAN/
    Chile          ftp://ftp.ing.puc.cl/pub/unix/perl/CPAN/

If you have no connection to the Internet at all (so sad!) you may wish
to purchase one of the commercial Perl distributions on CD-Rom or other
media. Your local bookstore should be able to help you to find one.
Another possibility is to use one of the FTP-via-email services; for
more information on doing that, send mail to <[email-masked]>
(not to me!) with these lines in the body of the message, flush left:

    setdir usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers
    send Anonymous_FTP:_Frequently_Asked_Questions_(FAQ)_List

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Comments and suggestions on the contents of this document
are always welcome. Please send them to the author at
<[email-masked]>. Of course, comments on
the docs and FAQs mentioned here should go to their respective
maintainers.

Have fun with Perl!

-- 
Tom Phoenix       Perl Training and Hacking       Esperanto
Randal Schwartz Case:     http://www.rahul.net/jeffrey/ovs/