perlos2 - Perl under OS/2, DOS, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT.
One can read this document in the following formats:
man perlos2
view perl perlos2
explorer perlos2.html
info perlos2to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may be read as is: either as README.os2, or pod/perlos2.pod.
To read the .INF version of documentation (very recommended) outside of OS/2, one needs an IBM's reader (may be available on IBM ftp sites (?) (URL anyone?)) or shipped with PC DOS 7.0 and IBM's Visual Age C++ 3.5.
A copy of a Win* viewer is contained in the "Just add OS/2 Warp" package
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/tools/jaow/jaow.zipin ?:\JUST_ADD\view.exe. This gives one an access to EMX's .INF docs as well (text form is available in /emx/doc in EMX's distribution).
Note that if you have lynx.exe installed, you can follow WWW links from this document in .INF format. If you have EMX docs installed correctly, you can follow library links (you need to have view emxbook working by setting EMXBOOK environment variable as it is described in EMX docs).
The target is to make OS/2 the best supported platform for using/building/developing Perl and Perl applications, as well as make Perl the best language to use under OS/2. The secondary target is to try to make this work under DOS and Win* as well (but not too hard).
The current state is quite close to this target. Known limitations:
Some *nix programs use fork() a lot, but currently fork() is not supported after useing dynamically loaded extensions.
You need a separate perl executable perl__.exe (see perl__.exe) to use PM code in your application (like the forthcoming Perl/Tk).
There is no simple way to access WPS objects. The only way I know is via OS2::REXX extension (see OS2::REXX), and we do not have access to convenience methods of Object-REXX. (Is it possible at all? I know of no Object-REXX API.)
Please keep this list up-to-date by informing me about other items.
Since OS/2 port of perl uses a remarkable EMX environment, it can run (and build extensions, and - possibly - be build itself) under any environment which can run EMX. The current list is DOS, DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT. Out of many perl flavors, only one works, see "perl_.exe".
Note that not all features of Perl are available under these environments. This depends on the features the extender - most probably RSX - decided to implement.
Cf. Prerequisites.
EMX runtime is required (may be substituted by RSX). Note that it is possible to make perl_.exe to run under DOS without any external support by binding emx.exe/rsx.exe to it, see emxbind. Note that under DOS for best results one should use RSX runtime, which has much more functions working (like fork, popen and so on). In fact RSX is required if there is no VCPI present. Note the RSX requires DPMI.
Only the latest runtime is supported, currently 0.9c. Perl may run under earlier versions of EMX, but this is not tested.
One can get different parts of EMX from, say
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx09c/
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/unix/emx09c/The runtime component should have the name emxrt.zip.
NOTE. It is enough to have emx.exe/rsx.exe on your path. One does not need to specify them explicitly (though this
emx perl_.exe -de 0will work as well.)
To run Perl on DPMI platforms one needs RSX runtime. This is needed under DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT (see "Other OSes"). RSX would not work with VCPI only, as EMX would, it requires DMPI.
Having RSX and the latest sh.exe one gets a fully functional *nix-ish environment under DOS, say, fork, `` and pipe-open work. In fact, MakeMaker works (for static build), so one can have Perl development environment under DOS.
One can get RSX from, say
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx09c/contrib
ftp://ftp.uni-bielefeld.de/pub/systems/msdos/misc
ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/devtools/emx+gcc/contribContact the author on rainer@mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de.
The latest sh.exe with DOS hooks is available at
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/sh_dos.zipPerl does not care about file systems, but to install the whole perl library intact one needs a file system which supports long file names.
Note that if you do not plan to build the perl itself, it may be possible to fool EMX to truncate file names. This is not supported, read EMX docs to see how to do it.
To start external programs with complicated command lines (like with pipes in between, and/or quoting of arguments), Perl uses an external shell. With EMX port such shell should be named <sh.exe>, and located either in the wired-in-during-compile locations (usually F:/bin), or in configurable location (see "PERL_SH_DIR").
For best results use EMX pdksh. The soon-to-be-available standard binary (5.2.12?) runs under DOS (with RSX) as well, meanwhile use the binary from
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/sh_dos.zipStart your Perl program foo.pl with arguments arg1 arg2 arg3 the same way as on any other platform, by
perl foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3If you want to specify perl options -my_opts to the perl itself (as opposed to to your program), use
perl -my_opts foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3Alternately, if you use OS/2-ish shell, like CMD or 4os2, put the following at the start of your perl script:
extproc perl -S -my_optsrename your program to foo.cmd, and start it by typing
foo arg1 arg2 arg3Note that because of stupid OS/2 limitations the full path of the perl script is not available when you use extproc, thus you are forced to use -S perl switch, and your script should be on path. As a plus side, if you know a full path to your script, you may still start it with
perl ../../blah/foo.cmd arg1 arg2 arg3(note that the argument -my_opts is taken care of by the extproc line in your script, see "extproc on the first line").
To understand what the above magic does, read perl docs about -S switch - see perlrun, and cmdref about extproc:
view perl perlrun
man perlrun
view cmdref extproc
help extprocor whatever method you prefer.
There are also endless possibilities to use executable extensions of 4os2, associations of WPS and so on... However, if you use *nixish shell (like sh.exe supplied in the binary distribution), you need to follow the syntax specified in "Switches" in perlrun.
Note that -S switch enables a search with additional extensions .cmd, .btm, .bat, .pl as well.
This is what system() (see "system" in perlfunc), `` (see "I/O Operators" in perlop), and open pipe (see "open" in perlfunc) are for. (Avoid exec() (see "exec" in perlfunc) unless you know what you do).
Note however that to use some of these operators you need to have a sh-syntax shell installed (see "Pdksh", "Frequently asked questions"), and perl should be able to find it (see "PERL_SH_DIR").
The cases when the shell is used are:
One-argument system() (see "system" in perlfunc), exec() (see "exec" in perlfunc) with redirection or shell meta-characters;
Pipe-open (see "open" in perlfunc) with the command which contains redirection or shell meta-characters;
Backticks `` (see "I/O Operators" in perlop) with the command which contains redirection or shell meta-characters;
If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-open()/`` is a script with the "magic" #! line or extproc line which specifies shell;
If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-open()/`` is a script without "magic" line, and $ENV{EXECSHELL} is set to shell;
If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-open()/`` is not found;
For globbing (see "glob" in perlfunc, "I/O Operators" in perlop).
For the sake of speed for a common case, in the above algorithms backslashes in the command name are not considered as shell metacharacters.
Perl starts scripts which begin with cookies extproc or #! directly, without an intervention of shell. Perl uses the same algorithm to find the executable as pdksh: if the path on #! line does not work, and contains /, then the executable is searched in . and on PATH. To find arguments for these scripts Perl uses a different algorithm than pdksh: up to 3 arguments are recognized, and trailing whitespace is stripped.
If a script does not contain such a cooky, then to avoid calling sh.exe, Perl uses the same algorithm as pdksh: if $ENV{EXECSHELL} is set, the script is given as the first argument to this command, if not set, then $ENV{COMSPEC} /c is used (or a hardwired guess if $ENV{COMSPEC} is not set).
If starting scripts directly, Perl will use exactly the same algorithm as for the search of script given by -S command-line option: it will look in the current directory, then on components of $ENV{PATH} using the following order of appended extensions: no extension, .cmd, .btm, .bat, .pl.
Note that Perl will start to look for scripts only if OS/2 cannot start the specified application, thus system 'blah' will not look for a script if there is an executable file blah.exe anywhere on PATH.
Note also that executable files on OS/2 can have an arbitrary extension, but .exe will be automatically appended if no dot is present in the name. The workaround as as simple as that: since blah. and blah denote the same file, to start an executable residing in file n:/bin/blah (no extension) give an argument n:/bin/blah. to system().
The last note is that currently it is not straightforward to start PM programs from VIO (=text-mode) Perl process and visa versa. Either ensure that shell will be used, as in system 'cmd /c epm', or start it using optional arguments to system() documented in OS2::Process module. This is considered a bug and should be fixed soon.
Did you run your programs with -w switch? See "2 (and DOS) programs under Perl" in Starting OS.
Do you try to run internal shell commands, like `copy a b` (internal for cmd.exe), or `glob a*b` (internal for ksh)? You need to specify your shell explicitly, like `cmd /c copy a b`, since Perl cannot deduce which commands are internal to your shell.
-Zmt -Zcrtdll?If not, you need to build a stand-alone DLL for perl. Contact me, I did it once. Sockets would not work, as a lot of other stuff.
I had reports it does not work. Somebody would need to fix it.
`` and pipe-open do not work under DOS.This may a variant of just "I cannot run external programs", or a deeper problem. Basically: you need RSX (see "Prerequisites") for these commands to work, and you may need a port of sh.exe which understands command arguments. One of such ports is listed in "Prerequisites" under RSX. Do not forget to set variable "PERL_SH_DIR" as well.
DPMI is required for RSX.
find.exe "pattern" fileUse one of
system 'cmd', '/c', 'find "pattern" file';
`cmd /c 'find "pattern" file'`This would start find.exe via cmd.exe via sh.exe via perl.exe, but this is a price to pay if you want to use non-conforming program. In fact find.exe cannot be started at all using C library API only. Otherwise the following command-lines were equivalent:
find "pattern" file
find pattern fileThe most convenient way of installing perl is via perl installer install.exe. Just follow the instructions, and 99% of the installation blues would go away.
Note however, that you need to have unzip.exe on your path, and EMX environment running. The latter means that if you just installed EMX, and made all the needed changes to Config.sys, you may need to reboot in between. Check EMX runtime by running
emxrevA folder is created on your desktop which contains some useful objects.
Things not taken care of by automatic binary installation:
PERL_BADLANGmay be needed if you change your codepage after perl installation, and the new value is not supported by EMX. See "PERL_BADLANG".
PERL_BADFREEsee "PERL_BADFREE".
This file resides somewhere deep in the location you installed your perl library, find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"While most important values in this file are updated by the binary installer, some of them may need to be hand-edited. I know no such data, please keep me informed if you find one.
NOTE. Because of a typo the binary installer of 5.00305 would install a variable PERL_SHPATH into Config.sys. Please remove this variable and put PERL_SH_DIR instead.
As of version 5.00305, OS/2 perl binary distribution comes split into 11 components. Unfortunately, to enable configurable binary installation, the file paths in the zip files are not absolute, but relative to some directory.
Note that the extraction with the stored paths is still necessary (default with unzip, specify -d to pkunzip). However, you need to know where to extract the files. You need also to manually change entries in Config.sys to reflect where did you put the files. Note that if you have some primitive unzipper (like pkunzip), you may get a lot of warnings/errors during unzipping. Upgrade to (w)unzip.
Below is the sample of what to do to reproduce the configuration on my machine:
unzip perl_exc.zip *.exe *.ico -d f:/emx.add/bin
unzip perl_exc.zip *.dll -d f:/emx.add/dll(have the directories with *.exe on PATH, and *.dll on LIBPATH);
unzip perl_aou.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin(have the directory on PATH);
unzip perl_utl.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin(have the directory on PATH);
unzip perl_mlb.zip -d f:/perllib/libIf this directory is preserved, you do not need to change anything. However, for perl to find it if it is changed, you need to set PERLLIB_PREFIX in Config.sys, see "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
unzip perl_ste.zip -d f:/perllib/lib/site_perlIf you do not change this directory, do nothing. Otherwise put this directory and subdirectory ./os2 in PERLLIB or PERL5LIB variable. Do not use PERL5LIB unless you have it set already. See "ENVIRONMENT" in perl.
unzip perl_blb.zip -d f:/perllib/libIf this directory is preserved, you do not need to change anything. However, for perl to find it if it is changed, you need to set PERLLIB_PREFIX in Config.sys, see "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
unzip perl_man.zip -d f:/perllib/manThis directory should better be on MANPATH. You need to have a working man to access these files.
unzip perl_mam.zip -d f:/perllib/manThis directory should better be on MANPATH. You need to have a working man to access these files.
unzip perl_pod.zip -d f:/perllib/libThis is used by by perldoc program (see perldoc), and may be used to generate HTML documentation usable by WWW browsers, and documentation in zillions of other formats: info, LaTeX, Acrobat, FrameMaker and so on.
unzip perl_inf.zip -d d:/os2/bookThis directory should better be on BOOKSHELF.
unzip perl_sh.zip -d f:/binThis is used by perl to run external commands which explicitly require shell, like the commands using redirection and shell metacharacters. It is also used instead of explicit /bin/sh.
Set PERL_SH_DIR (see "PERL_SH_DIR") if you move sh.exe from the above location.
Note. It may be possible to use some other sh-compatible shell (not tested).
After you installed the components you needed and updated the Config.sys correspondingly, you need to hand-edit Config.pm. This file resides somewhere deep in the location you installed your perl library, find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"You need to correct all the entries which look like file paths (they currently start with f:/).
The automatic and manual perl installation leave precompiled paths inside perl executables. While these paths are overwriteable (see "PERLLIB_PREFIX", "PERL_SH_DIR"), one may get better results by binary editing of paths inside the executables/DLLs.
Depending on how you built/installed perl you may have (otherwise identical) Perl documentation in the following formats:
Most probably the most convenient form. Under OS/2 view it as
view perl
view perl perlfunc
view perl less
view perl ExtUtils::MakeMaker(currently the last two may hit a wrong location, but this may improve soon). Under Win* see "SYNOPSIS".
If you want to build the docs yourself, and have OS/2 toolkit, run
pod2ipf > perl.ipfin /perllib/lib/pod directory, then
ipfc /inf perl.ipf(Expect a lot of errors during the both steps.) Now move it on your BOOKSHELF path.
If you have perl documentation in the source form, perl utilities installed, and GNU groff installed, you may use
perldoc perlfunc
perldoc less
perldoc ExtUtils::MakeMakerto access the perl documentation in the text form (note that you may get better results using perl manpages).
Alternately, try running pod2text on .pod files.
If you have man installed on your system, and you installed perl manpages, use something like this:
man perlfunc
man 3 less
man ExtUtils.MakeMakerto access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with
man perlNote that dot (.) is used as a package separator for documentation for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - 3 above - to avoid shadowing by the less(1) manpage.
Make sure that the directory above the directory with manpages is on our MANPATH, like this
set MANPATH=c:/man;f:/perllib/manIf you have some WWW browser available, installed the Perl documentation in the source form, and Perl utilities, you can build HTML docs. Cd to directory with .pod files, and do like this
cd f:/perllib/lib/pod
pod2htmlAfter this you can direct your browser the file perl.html in this directory, and go ahead with reading docs, like this:
explore file:///f:/perllib/lib/pod/perl.htmlAlternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from CPAN.
info filesUsers of Emacs would appreciate it very much, especially with CPerl mode loaded. You need to get latest pod2info from CPAN, or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.
for Acrobat are available on CPAN (for slightly old version of perl).
LaTeX docscan be constructed using pod2latex.
Here we discuss how to build Perl under OS/2. There is an alternative (but maybe older) view on http://www.shadow.net/~troc/os2perl.html.
You need to have the latest EMX development environment, the full GNU tool suite (gawk renamed to awk, and GNU find.exe earlier on path than the OS/2 find.exe, same with sort.exe, to check use
find --version
sort --version). You need the latest version of pdksh installed as sh.exe.
Check that you have BSD libraries and headers installed, and - optionally - Berkeley DB headers and libraries, and crypt.
Possible locations to get this from are
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/unix/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/unix/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/dev32/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx09c/It is reported that the following archives contain enough utils to build perl: gnufutil.zip, gnusutil.zip, gnututil.zip, gnused.zip, gnupatch.zip, gnuawk.zip, gnumake.zip and ksh527rt.zip. Note that all these utilities are known to be available from LEO:
ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnuMake sure that no copies or perl are currently running. Later steps of the build may fail since an older version of perl.dll loaded into memory may be found.
Also make sure that you have /tmp directory on the current drive, and . directory in your LIBPATH. One may try to correct the latter condition by
set BEGINLIBPATH .if you use something like CMD.EXE or latest versions of 4os2.exe.
Make sure your gcc is good for -Zomf linking: run omflibs script in /emx/lib directory.
Check that you have link386 installed. It comes standard with OS/2, but may be not installed due to customization. If typing
link386shows you do not have it, do Selective install, and choose Link object modules in Optional system utilities/More. If you get into link386, press Ctrl-C.
You need to fetch the latest perl source (including developers releases). With some probability it is located in
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0/unsupportedIf not, you may need to dig in the indices to find it in the directory of the current maintainer.
Quick cycle of developers release may break the OS/2 build time to time, looking into
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/os2/ilyaz/may indicate the latest release which was publicly released by the maintainer. Note that the release may include some additional patches to apply to the current source of perl.
Extract it like this
tar vzxf perl5.00409.tar.gzYou may see a message about errors while extracting Configure. This is because there is a conflict with a similarly-named file configure.
Change to the directory of extraction.
You need to apply the patches in ./os2/diff.* like this:
gnupatch -p0 < os2\diff.configureYou may also need to apply the patches supplied with the binary distribution of perl.
Note also that the db.lib and db.a from the EMX distribution are not suitable for multi-threaded compile (note that currently perl is not multithread-safe, but is compiled as multithreaded for compatibility with XFree86-OS/2). Get a corrected one from
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/db_mt.zipTo make -p filetest work, one may also need to apply the following patch to EMX headers:
--- /emx/include/sys/stat.h.orig Thu May 23 13:48:16 1996
+++ /emx/include/sys/stat.h Sun Jul 12 14:11:32 1998
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ struct stat
#endif
#if !defined (S_IFMT)
-#define S_IFMT 0160000 /* Mask for file type */
+#define S_IFMT 0170000 /* Mask for file type */
#define S_IFIFO 0010000 /* Pipe */
#define S_IFCHR 0020000 /* Character device */
#define S_IFDIR 0040000 /* Directory */You may look into the file ./hints/os2.sh and correct anything wrong you find there. I do not expect it is needed anywhere.
sh Configure -des -D prefix=f:/perllibprefix means: where to install the resulting perl library. Giving correct prefix you may avoid the need to specify PERLLIB_PREFIX, see "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
Ignore the message about missing ln, and about -c option to tr. In fact if you can trace where the latter spurious warning comes from, please inform me.
Now
makeAt some moment the built may die, reporting a version mismatch or unable to run perl. This means that most of the build has been finished, and it is the time to move the constructed perl.dll to some absolute location in LIBPATH. After this is done the build should finish without a lot of fuss. One can avoid the interruption if one has the correct prebuilt version of perl.dll on LIBPATH, but probably this is not needed anymore, since miniperl.exe is linked statically now.
Warnings which are safe to ignore: mkfifo() redefined inside POSIX.c.
If you haven't yet moved perl.dll onto LIBPATH, do it now (alternatively, if you have a previous perl installation you'd rather not disrupt until this one is installed, copy perl.dll to the t directory).
Now run
make testAll tests should succeed (with some of them skipped). Note that on one of the systems I see intermittent failures of io/pipe.t subtest 9. Any help to track what happens with this test is appreciated.
Some tests may generate extra messages similar to
bad freein database tests related to Berkeley DB. This is a confirmed bug of DB. You may disable this warnings, see "PERL_BADFREE".
There is not much we can do with it (but apparently it does not cause any real error with data).
This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications. *nix applications die in silence. It is considered a feature. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers.
However the test engine bleeds these message to screen in unexpected moments. Two messages of this kind should be present during testing.
Two lib/io_* tests may generate popups (system error SYS3175), but should succeed anyway. This is due to a bug of EMX related to fork()ing with dynamically loaded libraries.
I submitted a patch to EMX which makes it possible to fork() with EMX dynamic libraries loaded, which makes lib/io* tests pass without skipping offended tests. This means that soon the number of skipped tests may decrease yet more.
To get finer test reports, call
perl t/harnessThe report with io/pipe.t failing may look like this:
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
------------------------------------------------------------
io/pipe.t 12 1 8.33% 9
7 tests skipped, plus 56 subtests skipped.
Failed 1/195 test scripts, 99.49% okay. 1/6542 subtests failed, 99.98% okay.The reasons for most important skipped tests are:
Checks IO::Pipe module. Some feature of EMX - test fork()s with dynamic extension loaded - unsupported now.
Checks IO::Socket module. Some feature of EMX - test fork()s with dynamic extension loaded - unsupported now.
Checks stat(). Tests:
Checks atime and mtime of stat() - unfortunately, HPFS provides only 2sec time granularity (for compatibility with FAT?).
It never terminates, apparently some bug in storing the last socket from which we obtained a message.
If you haven't yet moved perl.dll onto LIBPATH, do it now.
Run
make installIt would put the generated files into needed locations. Manually put perl.exe, perl__.exe and perl___.exe to a location on your PATH, perl.dll to a location on your LIBPATH.
Run
make cmdscripts INSTALLCMDDIR=d:/ir/on/pathto convert perl utilities to .cmd files and put them on PATH. You need to put .EXE-utilities on path manually. They are installed in $prefix/bin, here $prefix is what you gave to Configure, see Making.
a.out-style buildProceed as above, but make perl_.exe (see "perl_.exe") by
make perl_test and install by
make aout_test
make aout_installManually put perl_.exe to a location on your PATH.
Since perl_ has the extensions prebuilt, it does not suffer from the dynamic extensions + fork() syndrome, thus the failing tests look like
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
---------------------------------------------------------------
io/fs.t 26 11 42.31% 2-5, 7-11, 18, 25
op/stat.t 56 5 8.93% 3-4, 20, 35, 39
Failed 2/118 test scripts, 98.31% okay. 16/2445 subtests failed, 99.35% okay.Note. The build process for perl_ does not know about all the dependencies, so you should make sure that anything is up-to-date, say, by doing
make perl.dllfirst.
/ became \ in pdksh.You have a very old pdksh. See Prerequisites.
'errno' - unresolved externalYou do not have MT-safe db.lib. See Prerequisites.
reported with very old version of tr and sed.
You have an older version of perl.dll on your LIBPATH, which broke the build of extensions.
You did not run omflibs. See Prerequisites.
You use an old version of GNU make. See Prerequisites.
setpriority, getpriorityNote that these functions are compatible with *nix, not with the older ports of '94 - 95. The priorities are absolute, go from 32 to -95, lower is quicker. 0 is the default priority.
system()Multi-argument form of system() allows an additional numeric argument. The meaning of this argument is described in OS2::Process.
extproc on the first lineIf the first chars of a script are "extproc ", this line is treated as #!-line, thus all the switches on this line are processed (twice if script was started via cmd.exe).
OS2::Process, OS2::REXX, OS2::PrfDB, OS2::ExtAttr. These modules provide access to additional numeric argument for system and to the list of the running processes, to DLLs having functions with REXX signature and to REXX runtime, to OS/2 databases in the .INI format, and to Extended Attributes.
Two additional extensions by Andreas Kaiser, OS2::UPM, and OS2::FTP, are included into my ftp directory, mirrored on CPAN.
File::Copy::syscopyused by File::Copy::copy, see File::Copy.
DynaLoader::mod2fnameused by DynaLoader for DLL name mangling.
Cwd::current_drive()Self explanatory.
Cwd::sys_chdir(name)leaves drive as it is.
Cwd::change_drive(name)Cwd::sys_is_absolute(name)means has drive letter and is_rooted.
Cwd::sys_is_rooted(name)means has leading [/\\] (maybe after a drive-letter:).
Cwd::sys_is_relative(name)means changes with current dir.
Cwd::sys_cwd(name)Interface to cwd from EMX. Used by Cwd::cwd.
Cwd::sys_abspath(name, dir)Really really odious function to implement. Returns absolute name of file which would have name if CWD were dir. Dir defaults to the current dir.
Cwd::extLibpath([type])Get current value of extended library search path. If type is present and true, works with END_LIBPATH, otherwise with BEGIN_LIBPATH.
Cwd::extLibpath_set( path [, type ] )Set current value of extended library search path. If type is present and true, works with END_LIBPATH, otherwise with BEGIN_LIBPATH.
(Note that some of these may be moved to different libraries - eventually).
Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not functional, it is emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set environment variable USE_PERL_FLOCK=0.
Here is the list of things which may be "broken" on EMX (from EMX docs):
The functions recvmsg(3), sendmsg(3), and socketpair(3) are not implemented.
sock_init(3) is not required and not implemented.
flock(3) is not yet implemented (dummy function). (Perl has a workaround.)
kill(3): Special treatment of PID=0, PID=1 and PID=-1 is not implemented.
WUNTRACED
Not implemented.
waitpid() is not implemented for negative values of PID.Note that kill -9 does not work with the current version of EMX.
Since sh.exe is used for globing (see "glob" in perlfunc), the bugs of sh.exe plague perl as well.
In particular, uppercase letters do not work in [...]-patterns with the current pdksh.
Perl modifies some standard C library calls in the following ways:
popenmy_popen uses sh.exe if shell is required, cf. "PERL_SH_DIR".
tmpnamis created using TMP or TEMP environment variable, via tempnam.
tmpfileIf the current directory is not writable, file is created using modified tmpnam, so there may be a race condition.
ctermida dummy implementation.
statos2_stat special-cases /dev/tty and /dev/con.
flockSince flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not functional, it is emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set environment variable USE_PERL_FLOCK=0.
Because of idiosyncrasies of OS/2 one cannot have all the eggs in the same basket (though EMX environment tries hard to overcome this limitations, so the situation may somehow improve). There are 4 executables for Perl provided by the distribution:
The main workhorse. This is a chimera executable: it is compiled as an a.out-style executable, but is linked with omf-style dynamic library perl.dll, and with dynamic CRT DLL. This executable is a VIO application.
It can load perl dynamic extensions, and it can fork(). Unfortunately, with the current version of EMX it cannot fork() with dynamic extensions loaded (may be fixed by patches to EMX).
Note. Keep in mind that fork() is needed to open a pipe to yourself.
This is a statically linked a.out-style executable. It can fork(), but cannot load dynamic Perl extensions. The supplied executable has a lot of extensions prebuilt, thus there are situations when it can perform tasks not possible using perl.exe, like fork()ing when having some standard extension loaded. This executable is a VIO application.
Note. A better behaviour could be obtained from perl.exe if it were statically linked with standard Perl extensions, but dynamically linked with the Perl DLL and CRT DLL. Then it would be able to fork() with standard extensions, and would be able to dynamically load arbitrary extensions. Some changes to Makefiles and hint files should be necessary to achieve this.
This is also the only executable with does not require OS/2. The friends locked into M$ world would appreciate the fact that this executable runs under DOS, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT with an appropriate extender. See "Other OSes".
This is the same executable as perl___.exe, but it is a PM application.
Note. Usually STDIN, STDERR, and STDOUT of a PM application are redirected to nul. However, it is possible to see them if you start perl__.exe from a PM program which emulates a console window, like Shell mode of Emacs or EPM. Thus it is possible to use Perl debugger (see perldebug) to debug your PM application.
This flavor is required if you load extensions which use PM, like the forthcoming Perl/Tk.
This is an omf-style executable which is dynamically linked to perl.dll and CRT DLL. I know no advantages of this executable over perl.exe, but it cannot fork() at all. Well, one advantage is that the build process is not so convoluted as with perl.exe.
It is a VIO application.
Since Perl processes the #!-line (cf. "DESCRIPTION" in perlrun, "Switches" in perlrun, "Not a perl script" in perldiag, "No Perl script found in input" in perldiag), it should know when a program is a Perl. There is some naming convention which allows Perl to distinguish correct lines from wrong ones. The above names are almost the only names allowed by this convention which do not contain digits (which have absolutely different semantics).
Well, having several executables dynamically linked to the same huge library has its advantages, but this would not substantiate the additional work to make it compile. The reason is stupid-but-quick "hard" dynamic linking used by OS/2.
The address tables of DLLs are patched only once, when they are loaded. The addresses of entry points into DLLs are guaranteed to be the same for all programs which use the same DLL, which reduces the amount of runtime patching - once DLL is loaded, its code is read-only.
While this allows some performance advantages, this makes life terrible for developers, since the above scheme makes it impossible for a DLL to be resolved to a symbol in the .EXE file, since this would need a DLL to have different relocations tables for the executables which use it.
However, a Perl extension is forced to use some symbols from the perl executable, say to know how to find the arguments provided on the perl internal evaluation stack. The solution is that the main code of interpreter should be contained in a DLL, and the .EXE file just loads this DLL into memory and supplies command-arguments.
This greatly increases the load time for the application (as well as the number of problems during compilation). Since interpreter is in a DLL, the CRT is basically forced to reside in a DLL as well (otherwise extensions would not be able to use CRT).
Current EMX environment does not allow DLLs compiled using Unixish a.out format to export symbols for data. This forces omf-style compile of perl.dll.
Current EMX environment does not allow .EXE files compiled in omf format to fork(). fork() is needed for exactly three Perl operations:
While these operations are not questions of life and death, a lot of useful scripts use them. This forces a.out-style compile of perl.exe.
Here we list environment variables with are either OS/2- and DOS- and Win*-specific, or are more important under OS/2 than under other OSes.
PERLLIB_PREFIXSpecific for EMX port. Should have the form
path1;path2or
path1 path2If the beginning of some prebuilt path matches path1, it is substituted with path2.
Should be used if the perl library is moved from the default location in preference to PERL(5)LIB, since this would not leave wrong entries in @INC. Say, if the compiled version of perl looks for @INC in f:/perllib/lib, and you want to install the library in h:/opt/gnu, do
set PERLLIB_PREFIX=f:/perllib/lib;h:/opt/gnuPERL_BADLANGIf 1, perl ignores setlocale() failing. May be useful with some strange locales.
PERL_BADFREEIf 1, perl would not warn of in case of unwarranted free(). May be useful in conjunction with the module DB_File, since Berkeley DB memory handling code is buggy.
PERL_SH_DIRSpecific for EMX port. Gives the directory part of the location for sh.exe.
USE_PERL_FLOCKSpecific for EMX port. Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not functional, it is emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set environment variable USE_PERL_FLOCK=0.
TMP or TEMPSpecific for EMX port. Used as storage place for temporary files, most notably -e scripts.
Here we list major changes which could make you by surprise.
setpriority and getpriority are not compatible with earlier ports by Andreas Kaiser. See "setpriority, getpriority".
With the release 5.003_01 the dynamically loadable libraries should be rebuilt. In particular, DLLs are now created with the names which contain a checksum, thus allowing workaround for OS/2 scheme of caching DLLs.
As of release 5.003_01 perl is linked to multithreaded CRT DLL. If perl itself is not compiled multithread-enabled, so will not be perl malloc(). However, extensions may use multiple thread on their own risk.
Needed to compile Perl/Tk for XFree86-OS/2 out-of-the-box.
Due to a popular demand the perl external program calling has been changed wrt Andreas Kaiser's port. If perl needs to call an external program via shell, the f:/bin/sh.exe will be called, or whatever is the override, see "PERL_SH_DIR".
Thus means that you need to get some copy of a sh.exe as well (I use one from pdksh). The drive F: above is set up automatically during the build to a correct value on the builder machine, but is overridable at runtime,
Reasons: a consensus on perl5-porters was that perl should use one non-overridable shell per platform. The obvious choices for OS/2 are cmd.exe and sh.exe. Having perl build itself would be impossible with cmd.exe as a shell, thus I picked up sh.exe. Thus assures almost 100% compatibility with the scripts coming from *nix. As an added benefit this works as well under DOS if you use DOS-enabled port of pdksh (see "Prerequisites").
Disadvantages: currently sh.exe of pdksh calls external programs via fork()/exec(), and there is no functioning exec() on OS/2. exec() is emulated by EMX by asyncroneous call while the caller waits for child completion (to pretend that the pid did not change). This means that 1 extra copy of sh.exe is made active via fork()/exec(), which may lead to some resources taken from the system (even if we do not count extra work needed for fork()ing).
Note that this a lesser issue now when we do not spawn sh.exe unless needed (metachars found).
One can always start cmd.exe explicitly via
system 'cmd', '/c', 'mycmd', 'arg1', 'arg2', ...If you need to use cmd.exe, and do not want to hand-edit thousands of your scripts, the long-term solution proposed on p5-p is to have a directive
use OS2::Cmd;which will override system(), exec(), ``, and open(,'...|'). With current perl you may override only system(), readpipe() - the explicit version of ``, and maybe exec(). The code will substitute the one-argument call to system() by CORE::system('cmd.exe', '/c', shift).
If you have some working code for OS2::Cmd, please send it to me, I will include it into distribution. I have no need for such a module, so cannot test it.
For the details of the current situation with calling external programs, see "2 (and DOS) programs under Perl" in Starting OS.
External scripts may be called by name. Perl will try the same extensions as when processing -S command-line switch.
Perl uses its own malloc() under OS/2 - interpreters are usually malloc-bound for speed, but perl is not, since its malloc is lightning-fast. Perl-memory-usage-tuned benchmarks show that Perl's malloc is 5 times quickier than EMX one. I do not have convincing data about memory footpring, but a (pretty random) benchmark showed that Perl one is 5% better.
Combination of perl's malloc() and rigid DLL name resolution creates a special problem with library functions which expect their return value to be free()d by system's free(). To facilitate extensions which need to call such functions, system memory-allocation functions are still available with the prefix emx_ added. (Currently only DLL perl has this, it should propagate to perl_.exe shortly.)
One can build perl with thread support enabled by providing -D usethreads option to Configure. Currently OS/2 support of threads is very preliminary.
Most notable problems:
COND_WAITmay have a race condition. Needs a reimplementation (in terms of chaining waiting threads, with linker list stored in per-thread structure?).
has a couple of static variables used in OS/2-specific functions. (Need to be moved to per-thread structure, or serialized?)
Note that these problems should not discourage experimenting, since they have a low probability of affecting small programs.
Ilya Zakharevich, ilya@math.ohio-state.edu
perl(1).
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