Perl FAQ 3.7: Is there a Perl shell?

Perl FAQ 3.7

Is there a Perl shell?

Not really. Perl is a programming language, not a command interpreter. There is a very simple one called ``perlsh'' included in the Perl source distribution. It just does this: 
    $/ = '';        # set paragraph mode
    $SHlinesep = "\n";
    while ($SHcmd = <>) {
	$/ = $SHlinesep;
	eval $SHcmd; print $@ || "\n";
	$SHlinesep = $/; $/ = '';
    }
Not very interesting, eh?

Daniel Smith <dls@best.com> is working on an interactive Perl shell called SoftList. It's currently at version 3.0b7a (beta). SoftList 3.0b7a has tcsh-like command line editing, can let you define a file of aliases so that you can run chunks of perl or UNIX commands, and so on. You can pick up a copy at ftp.best.com in /pub/dls/SoftList-3.0b7a.gz.

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