Coding with Funtoo Linux/Perl 5 Tutorial

This Perl programming tutorial is a great scripting guide to help you get started with programming in Perl under Funtoo Linux. We will list more Perl tutorials and programming examples to master your knowledge of Perl Scripting later in this tutorial.

Perl, a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl is noted for its idiomatically rich syntax, its extensive use of regular expressions and the large module archive CPAN.

Perl was created by Larry Wall in 1987. It was originally developed to process text and produce reports . As a result, a backronym has been formed from its name: Practical Extraction and Report Language.

Installing Perl

Funtoo Linux stages come with Perl included. So there is nothing to install to get you started per se. You can check which version of Perl is installed by running:

root # perl -v

This will display which version of Perl you have installed on your computer, if you want to install a different version of Perl Funtoo Linux has them sorted in kits. Don't worry if you don't understand kits and what kits are. Let me just tell you there are two versions of Perl available in Funtoo Linux now, those are 5.26 and 5.28.

So let's switch from 5.26 default version to 5.28 latest stable version by adding following lines in your /etc/ego.conf:

   /etc/ego.conf

[kits]
perl-kit=5.28-prime

Now run:

root # ego sync && emerge -avuDN @world

First script

To see where perl interpreter is installed you can run:

root # which perl

   Note

Every script starts with shebang:"#!" which is not read as a comment. The first line is aactually a place where you put your interpreter which in this case is going to be perl.

   hello.pl (perl source code) - Hello world Perl script

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello Funtoo!\n";

Now make the script executable and you can run it.

root # chmod +x hello.pl
root # ./hello.pl
Hello Funtoo!
root #