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Starting Perl
Typically, perl is used to interpret a script. You can run a script explicitly with perl (the % is your command prompt)% perl scriptnameor
% cat scriptname | perlThat isn't convenient enough, since you'd rather not have to distinguish what is a real compiled program and what is a script. Therefore, UNIX shells have a shortcut. If a text file is executable, and the first line is of the form
#!program [optional program arguments]the shell executes
program [optional program arguments] scriptnameNote: While there is some leading whitespace to offset the code examples, all examples should not use the first <tab> - especially this example of the shell shortcut.
Example
To start off our program, edit the filemailform, add the
first line:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl(or whatever the location of your perl binary is), save, exit the editor, and make the program executable:
% chmod +x mailform
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
johnsonb@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Last modified: June 19, 1997