Creating a Perl program

Perl programs are generally created with a .pl extension.

Note, if you have installed Perl somewhere other than C:\Perl, then substitute your path for C:\Perl.

Open MS-DOS.
Type `cd C:\Perl\bin`.	this is where Perl is. Change path to cgi-bin?
Type `edit myprog1.pl`	this should open up the text editor
Type `#!/usr/bin/perl`	this is the path where Perl is to be found on the server
Type: `print "My first program!";`	this is the statement to be executed
Save the file	<file><save>
Exit	<file><exit>
Type: `perl myprog1.pl`	the text 'My first program' should appear.

On a Unix system, if you add execute permission to the file with a command such as $ chmod +x prog1.pl, the interpreter file can then be executed directly from the command line without including 'perl', for example: $ prog1.pl.

Type `edit myprog2.pl`	this should open up the text editor
Type the following:
`$myvariable = "mine all mine";`
`if ($myvariable eq "mine all mine") {`
`print "You're not having it!";`
`}`
Save the file	<file><save>
Exit	<file><exit>
Type: `perl myprog2.pl`	the text 'You're not having it!' should appear.

You can also type programs in using a text editor (or a word processing program if you save as text), creating files with a .pl extension.