Perl Kit, Version 5
Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Larry Wall and others
All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of either:
a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
later version, or
b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this
Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one.
You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program in the file named "Copying". If not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA or visit their web page on the internet at
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License,
my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl
script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put
said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any
object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the
terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions
of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the
resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I
consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral
equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You
may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide
or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General
Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input
to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of
a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or
offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The
fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file
is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation
of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding
my intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic License
spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that.
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Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk
and shell. See the manual page for more hype. There are also many Perl
books available, covering a wide variety of topics, from various publishers.
See pod/perlbook.pod for more information.
Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
then follow them carefully.
Installation
1) Detailed instructions are in the file "INSTALL", which you should
read if you are either installing on a system resembling Unix
or porting perl to another platform. For non-Unix platforms, see the
corresponding README.
2) Read the manual entries before running perl.
3) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested
patches to perlbug@perl.org so we can keep the world in sync.
If you have a problem, there's someone else out there who either has had
or will have the same problem. See the section on "Reporting Problems"
in the INSTALL file.
The latest versions of perl are always available on the various CPAN
(Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) sites around the world.
See http://www.cpan.org/src/ .
Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this
because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your
notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)
The author.