comp.lang.perl.* FAQ 2/5 - Information Sources
s...@psa.pencom.com
Archive-name: perl-faq/part2
Version: $Id: part2,v 2.9 1995/05/15 15:44:29 spp Exp spp $
Posting-Frequency: bi-weekly
Last Edited: Thu Jan 11 00:54:41 1996 by spp (Stephen P Potter) on syrinx.psa.com
This posting contains answers to general information questions, mostly of
about information sources.
2.1) Is there a USENET group for Perl?
Yes there is: comp.lang.perl.misc. This group, which currently can get
up to 150 messages per day, contains all kinds of discussions about
Perl; everything from bug reports to new features to the history to
humour and trivia. This is the best source of information about
anything Perl related, especially what's new with Perl5. Because of
its vast array of topics, it functions as both a comp.lang.* style
newsgroup (providing technical information) and also as a rec.* style
newsgroup, kind of a support group for Perl addicts (PerlAnon?). There
is also the group comp.lang.perl.announce, a place specifically for
announcements related to perl (new releases, the FAQ, new modules,
etc).
Larry is a frequent poster to this group as well as most (all?) of the
seasoned Perl programmers. Questions will be answered by some of the
most knowledgable Perl Hackers, often within minutes of a question
being posted (give or take distribution times).
2.2) Have any books or magazine articles been published about Perl?
There are a number of books either available or planned. Mostly
chronologically, they are:
Programming Perl (the Camel Book):
Author: Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz
Publisher: O'Reilly and Associates
ISBN 0-937175-64-1 (English)
ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
ISBN 3-446-17257-2 (German) (Programmieren in Perl)
(translator: Hanser Verlag)
This is probably the most well known and most useful book for 4.036 and
earlier. This part of O'Reilly's hugely successful "Nutshell Handbook"
series. Besides serving as a reference guide for Perl, it also contains
tutorial material and is a great source of examples and cookbook
procedures, as well as wit and wisdom, tricks and traps, pranks and
pitfalls. The code examples contained therein are available from
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/nutshell/programming_perl/perl.tar.Z or
ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/ora/programming_perl. Corrections and
additions to the book can be found in the Perl4 man page right before
the BUGS section under the heading ERRATA AND ADDENDA.
Learning Perl (the Llama Book):
ISBN 1-56592-042-2 (English)
ISBN 4-89502-678-1 (Japanese)
ISBN 2-84177-005-2 (French)
ISBN 3-930673-08-8 (German)
Another of O'Reilly's "Nutshell Handbooks", by Randal Schwartz. This
book is a smaller, gentler introduction to perl and is based off of
Randal's perl classes. While in general this is a good book for
learning perl (like it's title), early printings did contain many typos
and don't cover some of the more interesting features of perl. Please
check the errata sheet at ftp.ora.com, as well as the on-line examples.
If you can't find these books in your local technical bookstore, they
may be ordered directly from O'Reilly by calling 1-800-998-9938 if in
North America and 1-707-829-0515 otherwise.
Johan Vromans* created a beautiful reference guide. The reference
guide comes with the Camel book in a nice, glossy format. The LaTeX
(source) and PostScript (ready to print) versions are available for FTP
from ftp.cs.ruu.nl:/pub/DOC/perlref-4.036.1.tar.Z in Europe or from
ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/doc/perlref-4.036.tar.gz in the United
States. Obsolete versions in TeX or troff may still be available, but
these versions don't print as nicely. See also:
[] ftp://ftp.uu.net/languages/perl/perlref-4.036.1.tar.gz
[] ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/DOC/perlref-4.036.1.tar.gz
[] ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/perlref-4.036.1.tar.gz
Johan has also updated and released a reference guide based on version
5.000. This is available from the same places as the 4.036 guide.
This version is also available from prep.gnu.ai.mit.edu in the /pub/gnu
section along with the perl5 source. It may be added to the standard
perl5 distribution sometime after 5.002. If you are using version
5.000, you will want to get this version rather than the 4.036 version.
Larry routinely carries around a camel stamp to use when autographing
copies of his book. If you can catch him at a conference you can
usually get him to sign your book for you.
Prentice Hall also has two perl books. The first is ``Perl by
Example'' by Ellie Quigley. (385 pages, $26.96, ISBN 0-13-122839-0) A
perl tutorial (perl4); every feature is presented via an annotated
example and sample output. Reviews of this book have varied widely.
Many new perl users have used this book with much success, while many
"veteran" programmers have had many complaints about it.
The second book is called ``Software Engineering with Perl'' by Carl
Dichter and Mark Pease. Randal Schwartz was a technical reviewer for
this book and notes this:
SEwP is not meant as instruction in the Perl language, but rather
as an example of how Perl may be used to assist in the semi-formal
software engineering development cycles. There's a lot of Perl
code that's fairly well commented, but most of the book describes
software engineering methodologies. For the perl-challenged,
there's a *light* treatment of the language as well, but they refer
to the llama and the camel for the real meat.
SAMS Publishing also has a Perl book available, as part of their "Teach
Yourself in 21 Days" series, called "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days".
ISBN 0-672-30586-0 Price: $29.95, 841 Pages. This book is the first
book to have a section devoted to version 5.000, although it was
written during an alpha stage and may not necessarily reflect current
reality.
Please note that none of the above books are perfect, all have some
inaccurances and typos. The two which Larry is directly associated
with (the O'Reilly books) are probably the most technically correct,
but also the most dated. Carefully looking over any book you are
considering purchasing will save you much time, money, and frustration.
Starting in the March, 1995 edition of ``Unix Review''. Randal
Schwartz* has been authoring a bi-monthly Perl column. This has so
far been an introductory tutorial.
Larry Wall has published a 3-part article on perl in Unix World
(August through October of 1991), and Rob Kolstad also had a 3-parter
in Unix Review (May through July of 1990). Tom Christiansen also has
a brief overview article in the trade newsletter Unix Technology
Advisor from November of 1989. You might also investigate "The Wisdom
of Perl" by Gordon Galligher from SunExpert magazine; April 1991
Volume 2 Number 4. The Dec 92 Computer Language magazine also
contains a cover article on Perl, "Perl: the Programmers Toolbox".
Many other articles on Perl have been recently published. If you
have references, especially on-line copies, please mail them to
the FAQ maintainer for inclusion is this notice.
The USENIX LISA (Large Installations Systems Administration) Conference
have for several years now included many papers of tools written in
Perl. Old proceedings of these conferences are available; look in
your current issue of ";login:" or send mail to off...@usenix.org
for further information.
Japan seems to be jumping with Perl books. If you can read japanese
here are a few you might be interested in. Thanks to Jeffrey Friedl*
and Ken Lunde* for this list (NOTE: my screen cannot handle japanese
characters, so this is all in English for the moment NOTE2: These
books are written in Japanese, these titles are just translations):
Title: Welcome to Perl Country (Perl-no Kuni-he Youkoso)
Authors: Kaoru Maeda, Hiroshi Koyama, Yasushi Saito and Arihito
Fuse
Pages: 268+9 Publisher: Science Company
Pub. Date: April 25, 1993 ISBN: 4-7819-0697-4
Price: 2472Y Author Email: ma...@src.ricoh.co.jp
Comments: Written during the time the Camel book was being
translated. A useful introduction, but uses jperl (Japanese Perl)
which is not necessarily compatible.
Title: How to Write Perl (Perl Shohou)
Author: Toshiyuki Masui
Pages: 352 Publisher: ASCII Corporation
Pub. Date: July 1, 1993 ISBN: 4-7561-0281-6
Price: 3200Y Author Email: ma...@shocsl.sharp.co.jp
Comments: More advanced than "Welcome.." and not meant as an
introduction. Uses the standard perl and has examples for handling
Japanese text.
Title: Introduction to Perl (Nyuumon Perl)
Author: Shinji Kono
Pages: 203 Publisher: ASCII Corporation
Date: July 11, 1994 ISBN: 4-7561-0292-1
Price: 1800Y Author Email: ko...@csl.sony.co.jp
Comments: Uses the interactive Perl debugger to explain how things
work.
Title: Perl Programming
Authors: L Wall & R Schwartz Translator: Yoshiyuki Kondo
Pages: 637+32 Publisher: Softbank Corporation
Pub. Date: February 28, 1993 ISBN: 4-89052-384-7
Price: 4500Y Author Email: co...@lsi-j.co.jp
Comments: Official Japanese translation of the Camel book,
"Programming Perl". Somewhat laced with translator notes to
explain the humour. The most useful book. Also includes the Perl
Quick Reference -- in Japanese!
2.3) When will the Camel and Llama books be updated?
As of August, 1995, ORA has contracted with Stephen to handle the
Camel update. According to the accepted timeline, the first draft
is to be finished by the end of April, 1996. The tutorial sections
are being cut some, and the book will take on much more of a reference
style. Don't worry, it will still contain it's distinctive humor and
flair.
There are no current plans to update the Llama. For the most part,
it serves as a good introduction for both major versions of perl.
There may be some minor editing to it, but probably nothing major.
If anything, it is more likely that a third book (working title:
Learning More Perl) will be written as a tutorial for the new perl5
paradigm.
2.4) What FTP resources are available?
Since 1993, several ftp sites have sprung up for Perl and Perl related
items. The site with the biggest repository of Perl scripts right now
seems to be ftp.cis.ufl.edu [128.227.100.198] in /pub/perl. The
scripts directory has an INDEX with over 400 lines in it, each
describing what the script does. The src directory has sources and/or
binaries for a number of different perl ports, including MS-Dos,
Macintosh and Windows/NT. This is maintained by the Computing Staff at
UF*.
Note: European users please use the site src.doc.ic.ac.uk
[149.169.2.1] in /pub/computing/programming/languages/perl/
The link speed would be a lot better for all. Contact
L.McLo...@doc.ic.ac.uk for more information. It is updated
daily.
There are also a number of other sites. I'll add more of them as I get
information on them.
[site maintainers: if you want to add a blurb here, especially if you
have something unique, please let me know. -spp]
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is in heavy development.
Once the main site and its mirrors are fully operational, this answer
will change to reflect it's existance.
2.5) What WWW/gopher resources are available?
The World Wide Web is exploding with new Perl sites all the time. Some
of the more notable ones are:
http://www.cis.ufl.edu/perl
http://www.metronet.com/1h/perlinfo, which has a great section on
Perl5.
http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/perl/perl.html
http://web.nexor.co.uk/perl/perl.html, a great site for European
and UK users.
2.6) Can people who don't have access to USENET get comp.lang.perl.misc?
"Perl-Users" is the mailing list version of the comp.lang.perl.misc
newsgroup. If you're not lucky enough to be on USENET you can post to
comp.lang.perl.misc by sending to one of the following addresses.
Which one will work best for you depends on which nets your site is
hooked into. Ask your local network guru if you're not certain.
Internet: PERL-...@VIRGINIA.EDU
Perl-...@UVAARPA.VIRGINIA.EDU
BitNet: Perl@Virginia
uucp: ...!uunet!virginia!perl-users
The Perl-Users list is bidirectionally gatewayed with the USENET
newsgroup comp.lang.perl.misc. This means that VIRGINIA functions as a
reflector. All traffic coming in from the non-USENET side is
immediately posted to the newsgroup. Postings from the USENET side are
periodically digested and mailed out to the Perl-Users mailing list. A
digest is created and distributed at least once per day, more often if
traffic warrants.
All requests to be added to or deleted from this list, problems,
questions, etc., should be sent to:
Internet: Perl-User...@Virginia.EDU
Perl-User...@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU
BitNet: Perl-Req@Virginia
uucp: ...!uunet!virginia!perl-users-request
Coordinator: Marc Rouleau <me...@VIRGINIA.EDU>
2.7) Are archives of comp.lang.perl.misc available?
Yes, there are. ftp.cis.ufl.edu:/pub/perl/comp.lang.perl.*/monthly has
an almost complete collection dating back to 12/89 (missing 08/91
through 12/93). They are kept as one large file for each month.
A more sophisticated query and retrieval mechanism is desirable.
Preferably one that allows you to retrieve article using a fast-access
indices, keyed on at least author, date, subject, thread (as in "trn")
and probably keywords. Right now, the MH pick command works for this,
but it is very slow to select on 18000 articles.
If you have, or know where I can find, the missing sections, please let
per...@perl.com know.
2.8) Is there a WAIS server for comp.lang.perl.*?
Yes there is. Set your WAIS client to
archive.orst.edu:9000/comp.lang.perl.*. According to their
introduction, they have a complete selection from 1989 on.
2.9) What other sources of information about Perl or training are available?
There is a #Perl channel on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where Tom and
Randal have been known to hang out. Here you can get immediate answers
to questions from some of the most well-known Perl Hackers.
The perl5-porters (perl5-...@nicoh.com) mailing list was created to
aid in communication among the people working on perl5. However, it
has overgrown this function and now also handles a good deal of traffic
about perl internals.
2.10) Where can I get training classes on Perl?
USENIX, LISA, SUG, WCSAS, AUUG, FedUnix and Europen sponsor tutorials
of varying lengths on Perl at the System Administration and General
Conferences. These public classes are typically taught by Tom
Christiansen*.
In part, Tom and Randal teach Perl to help keep bread on their tables
long enough while they continue their pro bono efforts of documenting
perl (Tom keeps writing more man pages for it :-) and expanding the
perl toolkit through extension libraries, work which they enjoy doing
as it's fun and helps out the whole world, but which really doesn't
pay the bills. Such is the nature of free(ly available) software.
Send mail to <perlc...@perl.com> for details and availability.
Tom is also available to teach on-site classes, included courses on
advanced perl and perl5. Classes run anywhere from one day to week
long sessions and cover a wide range of subject matter. Classes can
include lab time with exercises, a generally beneficial aspect. If you
would like more information regarding Perl classes or when the next
public appearances are, please contact Tom directly at 1.303.444.3212.
Randal Schwartz* provides a 2-day lecture-only and a 4-5 day lecture-lab
course based on his popular book "Learning Perl". For details, contact
Randal directly via email or at 1.503.777.0095.
Internet One provides a 2 day "Introduction to Perl" and 2 day
"Advanced Perl" workshop. The 50% hands-on and 50% lecture format
allow attendees to write several programs themselves. Supplied
are the user manuals, reference copies of Larry Wall's "Program-
ming Perl", and a UNIX directory of all training examples and
labs. To obtain outlines, pricing, or scheduling information, use
the following:
o Phone: 1.303.444.1993
o Email: in...@InternetOne.COM
o See our Ad in the "SysAdmin" magazine
o View the outlines via the Web: http://www.InternetOne.COM/
2.11) What companies use or ship Perl?
At this time, the known list of companies that ship Perl includes at
least the following, although some have snuck it into /usr/contrib or
its moral equivalent:
BSDI
Comdisco Systems
CONVEX Computer Corporation
Crosspoint Solutions
Data General
Dell
DRD Corporation
IBM (SP systems)
Intergraph
Kubota Pacific
Netlabs
SGI (without taintperl)
Univel
Some companies ship it on their "User Contributed Software Tape",
such as DEC and HP. Apple Computer has shipped the MPW version of
Macintosh Perl on one of their Developer CDs (Essentials*Tools*Objects
#11) (and they included it under "Essentials" :-)
Many other companies use Perl internally for purposes of tools
development, systems administration, installation scripts, and test
suites. Rumor has it that the large workstation vendors (the TLA set)
are seriously looking into shipping Perl with their standard systems
"soon".
People with support contracts with their vendors are actively
encouraged to submit enhancement requests that Perl be shipped
as part of their standard system. It would, at the very least,
reduce the FTP load on the Internet. :-)
If you know of any others, please send them in.
2.12) Is there commercial, third-party support for Perl?
Not really. Although perl is included in the GNU distribution, at last
check, Cygnus does not offer support for it. However, it's unclear
whether they've ever been offered sufficient financial incentive to do
so. Feel free to try.
On the other hand, you do have comp.lang.perl.misc as a totally gratis
support mechanism. As long as you ask "interesting" questions, you'll
probably get plenty of help. :-)
While some vendors do ship Perl with their platforms, that doesn't mean
they support it on arbitrary other platforms. And in fact, all they'll
probably do is forward any bug reports on to Larry. In practice, this
is far better support than you could hope for from nearly any vendor.
If you purchase a product from Netlabs (the company Larry works for),
you actually can get a support contract that includes Perl.
The companies who won't use something unless they can pay money for it
will be left out. Often they're motivated by wanting someone whom they
could sue. If all they want is someone to help them out with Perl
problems, there's always the net. And if they really want to pay
someone for that help, well, any of a number of the regular Perl
"dignitaries" would appreciate the money. ;-)
If companies want "commercial support" for it badly enough, speak up --
something might be able to be arranged.
2.13) What is a JAPH? What does "Will hack perl for ..." mean?
These are the "just another perl hacker" signatures that some people
sign their postings with. About 100 of the of the earlier ones are
available from the various FTP sites.
When people started running out of tricky and interesting JAPHs, some
of them turned to writing "Will hack perl for ..." quotes. While
sometimes humourous, they just didn't have the flair of the JAPHs and
have since almost completely vanished.
2.14) Where can I get a list of Larry Wall witticisms?
Over a hundred quips by Larry, from postings of his or source code,
can be found in many of the FTP sites or through the World Wide Web at
"ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/misc/lwall-quotes"
2.15) What are the known bugs?
This is *NOT* a complete list, just some of the more common bugs that
tend to bite people.
5.001:
op.c: Inconsistent parameter definition for pad_findlex - fixed
in 5.001a, get development patches a-l.
walk.c: redeclaration of emit_split - fixed in perl5.001a, get
development patches a-l.
On linux systems "make test" fails on "op/exec Failed test 5". This
is a known bug with bash, not perl. You can get a new version
of bash.
Also on linux systems, "make test" hangs on lib/anydbm if you include
NDBM in the extentions. Do not include NDBM.
Another linux problem is getting Dynamic Loading to work. You must
use dld-2.3.6 (the newest version at the time of writing) to
use Dynamic Loading.
- All versions of h2ph previous to the one supplied with perl5.001 tended
to generate improper header files. Something such as:
#if __GNUC__
was incorrectly translated into
if ( &__GNUC__ ) {
instead of
if ( defined(&__GNUC__) ? &__GNUC__ : 0 ) {
Perl5 binaries compiled on SunOS4 exhibit strange behaviour on SunOS5.
For example, backticks do not work in the scripts. You need to
compile perl for both architectures, even with Binary Compatibility.
2.16) Where should I post bugs?
Before posting about a bug, please make sure that you are using the
most recent versions of perl (currently 4.036 and 5.001) available.
Please also check at the major archive sites to see if there are any
development patches available (usually named something like
perl5.001a.patch or patch5.001a - the patch itself, or
perl5.001a.tar.gz - a prepatched distribution). If you are not using
one of these versions, chances are you will be told to upgrade because
the bug has already been fixed.
If you are reporting a bug in perl5, the best place to send your bug
is <per...@perl.com>, which is currently just an alias for
<perl5-...@nicoh.com>. In the past, there have been problems with
the perlbug address. If you have problems with it, please send your
bug directly to <perl5-...@nicoh.com>. You may subscribe to the list
in the customary fashion via mail to <perl5-port...@nicoh.com>.
Feel free to post your bugs to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup as
well, but do make sure they still go to the mailing list.
If you are posting a bug with a non-Unix port, a non-standard Module
(such as Tk, Sx, etc) please see the documentation that came with it
to determine the correct place to post bugs.
To enhance your chances of getting any bug you report fixed:
1. Make sure you are using a production version of perl. Alpha and
Beta version problems have probably already been reported and
fixed.
2. Try to narrow the problem down to as small a piece of code as
possible. If you can get it down to 1 line of Perl then so much
the better.
3. Include a copy of the output from the myconfig script from the
Perl source distribution in your posting.
2.17) Where should I post source code?
You should post source code to whichever group is most appropriate,
but feel free to cross-post to comp.lang.perl.misc. If you want to
cross-post to alt.sources, please make sure it follows their
posting standards, including setting the Followups-To header
line to NOT include alt.sources; see their FAQ for details.
2.18) Where can I learn about object-oriented Perl programming?
The perlobj(1) man page is a good place to start, and then you can
check out the excellent perlbot(1) man page written by the dean of perl
o-o himself, Dean Roehrich. Areas covered include the following:
Idx Subsections in perlobj.1 Lines
1 NAME 2
2 DESCRIPTION 16
3 An Object is Simply a Reference 60
4 A Class is Simply a Package 31
5 A Method is Simply a Subroutine 34
6 Method Invocation 75
7 Destructors 14
8 Summary 7
Idx Subsections in perlbot.1 Lines
1 NAME 2
2 INTRODUCTION 9
3 Instance Variables 43
4 Scalar Instance Variables 21
5 Instance Variable Inheritance 35
6 Object Relationships 33
7 Overriding Superclass Methods 49
8 Using Relationship with Sdbm 45
9 Thinking of Code Reuse 111
The section on instance variables should prove very helpful to those
wondering how to get data inheritance in perl.
2.19) Where can I learn about linking C with Perl? [h2xs, xsubpp]
While it used to be deep magic, how to do this is now revealed in the
perlapi(1), perlguts(1), and perlcall(1) man pages, which treat with
this matter extensively. You should also check the many extensions
that people have written (see question 1.19), many of which do this
very thing.
2.20) What is perl.com?
Perl.com is just Tom's domain name, registered as dedicated to "Perl
training and consulting". While not a full ftp site (he hasn't got
the bandwidth (yet)), it does have some interesting bits, most of which
are replicated elsewhere. It serves as a clearinghouse for certain
perl related mailing lists. The following aliases work:
perl-packrats: The archivist list
perl-porters: The porters list
perlbook: The Camel/Llama/Alpaca writing committee
perlbugs: The bug list (perl-porters for now)
perlclasses: Info on Perl training
perlfaq: Submissions/Errata to the Perl FAQ
(Tom and Steve)
perlrefguide: Submissions/Errata to the Perl RefGuide
(Johan)
2.21) What do the asterisks (*) throughout the FAQ stand for?
To keep from cluttering up the FAQ and for easy reference all email
addresses have been collected in this location. For each person
listed, I offer my thanks for their input and help.
* Larry Wall <lw...@netlabs.com>
* Tom Christiansen <tch...@wraeththu.cs.colorado.edu>
* Stephen P Potter <s...@pencom.com>
* Andreas Koenig <k...@franz.ww.TU-Berlin.DE>
* Bill Eldridge <bi...@cognet.ucla.edu>
* Buzz Moschetti <bu...@bear.com>
* Casper H.S. Dik <cas...@fwi.uva.nl>
* David Muir Sharnoff <mu...@tfs.com>
* Dean Roehrich <roeh...@ironwood.cray.com>
* Dominic Giampaolo <d...@sgi.com>,
* Frederic Chauveau <f...@pasteur.fr>
* Gene Spafford <sp...@cs.purdue.edu>
* Guido van Rossum <gu...@cwi.nl>
* Henk P Penning <he...@cs.ruu.nl>
* Jeff Friedl <jfr...@omron.co.jp>
* Johan Vromans <jvro...@squirrel.nl>
* John Dallman <j...@cix.compulink.co.uk>
* John Lees <le...@pixel.cps.msu.edu>
* John Ousterhout <ous...@eng.sun.com>
* Jon Biggar <j...@netlabs.com>
* Ken Lunde <lu...@mv.us.adobe.com>
* Malcolm Beattie <mbea...@sable.ox.ac.uk>
* Matthias Neeracher <ne...@iis.ee.ethz.ch>
* Michael D'Errico <mi...@software.com>
* Nick Ing-Simmons <Nick.Ing...@tiuk.ti.com>
* Randal Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com>
* Roberto Salama <r...@fi.gs.com>
* Steven L Kunz <sk...@iastate.edu>
* Theodore C. Law <TED...@TOROLAB6.VNET.IBM.COM>
* Thomas R. Kimpton <t...@dtint.dtint.com>
* Timothy Murphy <t...@maths.tcd.ie>
* UF Computer Staff <con...@cis.ufl.edu>
--
Stephen P Potter Pencom Systems Administration Beaching It
s...@psa.pencom.com Pager: 1-800-759-8888, 547-9561 Work: 703-860-2222
Cthulhu for President in '96: When You're Tired of the Lesser of Two Evils
--
Stephen P Potter Pencom Systems Administration Beaching It
s...@psa.pencom.com Pager: 1-800-759-8888, 547-9561 Work: 703-860-2222
"I don't care whether people actually like Perl, just so long as they *think*
they like it... ;-)" -Larry Wall