WELCOME TO MPW PERL This is Perl for the Mac, ported to MPW C by Matthias Neeracher and Tim Endres . It runs every program in the test suite that you could it reasonably expect to, and some you probably didn't expect. Feel free to give this program away according to the terms stated in the README file. System Requirements Perl really likes MPW. The standalone version is not much use yet. Some of the really cool features require ToolServer, System 7, and enough RAM (Notably stuff like `CFront MacApp.cp`, while (<Å.c>) or open(XXX, "Catenate Å.c |")) Some of the files barely compile with 5 megabytes of RAM. Bugs, Suggestions, Damnations Please send your bug reports and/or fixes to (It is rather unlikely that any of the bugs are relevant to the UNIX version). Mailing list There is now a mailing list for announcing new releases, sharing scripts, and discussions about how to make MPW Perl change your life. To subscribe, send a mail to Revision History 14Mar93 4.0.7 - Upgraded to UNIX pathlevel 36 - Added &fgetinfo() and &fsetinfo() (David N. Blank-Edelman suggested these) - `pwd` or `Directory` (case is important) are hardcoded as a substitute for getcwd() - find2perl works now, thanks to Charlie Reiman - The Mac specific Perl routines are discussed in MacPerl.Specifics, as are my namespace migration plans (as suggested by numerous people). This file is still in a very rough state; suggestions for improvements are welcome. - The standalone version no longer presents a save dialog before quitting (as suggested by David N. Blank-Edelman). - Line numbers for extracted scripts (that is, practically all MPW Perl scripts) are now presented more honestly. Unfortunately, this currently seems to break the "b subroutine" function of the debugger. - GUSI related changes: - Added support for the Printer Access Protocol (PAP): You can open a connection to the currently chosen LaserWriter with open("Dev:Printer"). - Added support for Dave Peterson's forthcoming inetd. - st_nlink in statbufs used to return 1 for both files and folders. While it might be argued that this is true, it breaks some Unix programs. Therefore, the current version returns for folders either the number of items the folder contains + 2 or the number of subdirectories the folder contains + 2 (the 2 is an Unixism), depending on a flag in the configuration resource (thanks to Charlie Reiman for reporting). - fstat() used to claim that sockets were regular files. This bug had horrible consequences for Perl. Now, it correctly declares sockets to be such. - PPC sockets might work better now. 24Jan93 4.0.6 - choose() for files no longer includes the terminating null character. - rename() and TCP sockets work better (thanks to Brad Pickering for reporting these bugs). - standalone version can read scripts from its data fork and accepts more startup files. - (hopefully) improved the documentation a little. Added ObiWan support. 20Dec92 4.0.5 - Supports sockets and symbolic links. - "ask", "answer" and "pick" are now builtins with a slightly changed syntax (sorry). - A few mac scripts are now provided in :t:mac and :macscripts: - The application now always searches for a #! line first. If none is found, the script is executed anyway, but the file has to be read twice. 27Sep92 4.0.4 This release upgrades the Mac version to UNIX patchlevel 35. 08Jun92 4.0.3 This release supports opendir (In fact, I thought the last one'd already support it. Thanks to Mike Meckler for reporting this bug). dbmopen & friends are now supported. 20Jan92 4.0.2 First public release.