Do You Need to Install Perl?

Unless you're running on your own personal Unix system where you're the owner and the only person on it, chances are really good that you don't need to install Perl at all. It would be odd if Perl hadn't already installed because it is so useful to Unix system administrators. From your Unix system prompt, try this first:

% perl
						-v
					

If you get a message that says This is perl, v5.6.0 built for sun4-solaris or some such, you're set. Stop here, and go directly to Day 1, “An Introduction to Perl,” to start working with Perl.

If you get a message that says perl: command not found, or if you get the proper version message, but it says something like This is perl, version 4, then things are going to be tougher. It means that either Perl isn't installed on your system, or Perl is installed but it's an older version (you want to be running a version of Perl 5 or higher for this book; older versions won't work). Or it could mean that Perl is installed, but it's not in your search path; you might try looking around in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.

If you still can't find Perl and if you're on a Unix machine administered by someone else (that is, a system at work, or a public ISP) your next step is to contact the system administrator or support organization for that system and ask them if they have Perl installed (and if they do, where they put it), or if they've got an old version, to upgrade it. Although you can install Perl on a system that you don't have administrator access to, it's generally a better idea for your administrator to do it for you.

And, finally, if you run your own Unix system—say, a Linux system on a partition of your Windows machine—and you cannot find Perl already installed, then you are your own system administrator, and it's your job to install Perl.