Testing your Perl installation

If you are using a school or work unix / linux server, chances are Perl is already installed and running - when in doubt, just ask your system administrator or technical staff. There are a few ways we can test our installation, but first you will need to complete two preliminary steps.

First, you must copy your 'Hello World' program to your home directory. This is usually accomplished via FTP. You can read more about FTP in some of these FTP articles from your Networking Guide.

Once your script has been copied to your server, you will need to get to a shell prompt on the machine, usually via SSH. You can read more about SSH in this article from your Linux Guide. When you have reached the command prompt, you can change into your home directory by typing the following command:

cd ~

Once there, testing your perl installation is very similar to testing on a windows system with one extra step. In order to execute the program, you must first tell the operating system that the file is OK to execute. This is done by setting the permissions on the script so that anyone can execute it. You can do this by using the chmod command:

chmod 755 hello.pl

Once you've set the permissions, you can then execute the script by simply typing it's name.

hello.pl

If that doesn't work, you might not have your home directory in your current path. As long as you are in the same directory as the script, you can tell the operating system to run the program (in the current directory) like so:

./hello.pl

If Perl is installed and running correctly, it should output the phrase 'Hello World.', and then return you to the Windows command prompt.

An alternate method of testing your Perl installation is by running the interpreter itself with the -v flag:

perl -v

If the Perl interpreter is working correctly, this should output quite a bit of information, including the current version of Perl you are running.

To find out more about using the unix shell, I would suggest going through the Linux Guide's in-depth tutorial.

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