PERLEPOC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLEPOC(1)NAME
README.epoc - Perl for EPOC
SYNOPSIS
Perl 5 README file for the EPOC operating system.
INTRODUCTION
EPOC is a OS for palmtops and mobile phones. For more
informations look at: http://www.symbian.com/
This is a port of perl to EPOC. It runs on ER5 machines:
Psion 5mx, 5mx Pro, Psion Revo and on the Ericson M128. I
have no report about the Psion Netbook or the S7. It runs
on ER3 Hardware (Series 5 classic), too. For more informa
tion about this hardware please refer to
http://www.psion.com.
Vendors which like to have support for their devices are
free to send me a sample.
INSTALLING PERL ON EPOC
You can download a ready-to-install version from
http://www.science-computing.de/o.flebbe/perl. You may
find other versions with some CPAN modules included at
this location.
You will need at least 4MB free space in order to install
and run perl.
Install perl.sis on the EPOC machine. If you do not know
how to do that, consult your PsiWin documentation.
Perl itself and its standard library is using 2.9 MB disk
space. Unicode support and some other modules are left
out. (For details, please look into epoc/createpkg.pl). If
you like to use these modules, you are free to copy them
from a current perl release.
STARTING PERL ON EPOC
For ER5 machines, you can get the software Perlstart
http://www.science-computing.de/o.flebbe/perl. It contains
file recognizers for files with the extension .pl and .pm.
With it you can start perl with a double click on the
camel icon. Be sure to configure the perl installation
drive first. You can even provide a script with a special
commandline, if needed.
Alternativly you can get ESHELL from symbian:
http://developer.epocworld.com/downloads/progs/Eshell.zip
Running ESHELL you can enter: perl -de 0 in order to run
the perl debugger. If you are leaving perl, you get into
the system screen. You have to switch back manually to
ESHELL. When perl is running, you will see a task with the
name STDOUT in the task list.
If you have a ER3 machine (i.e. a PSION 5), you may have
to supply the full path to the perl executable C:\sys
tem\programs\perl.exe.
If you need to set the current directory of perl, please
use the command line switch '-x'. See the perlrun manpage
for details.
STOPPING PERL ON EPOC
You can stop a running perl process in the task list by
closing the application `STDOUT'. You cannot stop a run
ning perl process if it has not written anyting to stdout
or stderr! Be very cautious with I/O redirection. You will
have to reboot the PDA!
USING PERL ON EPOC
I/O Redirection
You can redirect the output with the UNIX bourne shell
syntax (this is built into perl rather then eshell) For
instance the following command line will run the script
test.pl with the output redirected to stdout_file, the
errors to stderr_file and input from stdin_file.
perl test.pl >stdout_file <stdin_file 2>stderr_file
Alternatively you can use 2>&1 in order to add the stan
dard error output to stdout.
PATH Names
ESHELL looks for executables in ?:/System/Programs. The
SIS file installs perl in this special folder directory.
The default drive and path are the same as folder the exe
cutable resides. The EPOC filesystem is case-preserving,
not case-sensitive.
The EPOC estdlib uses the ?: syntax for establishing a
search order: First in C: (RAM), then on D: (CF Card, if
present) and last in Z: (ROM). For instance ?:\a.txt
searches for C:\a.txt, D:\a.txt (and Z:\a.txt)
The perl @INC search path is implemented with '?:'. Your
perl executable can live on a different drive than the
perl library or even your scripts.
ESHELL paths have to be written with backslashes '\', file
arguments to perl with slashes '/'. Remember that I/O
redirection is done internally in perl, so please use
slashes for redirects.
perl.exe C:/test.pl >C:/output.txt
Editors
A suitable text editor can be downloaded from symbian
http://developer.epocworld.com/downloads/progs/Editor.zip
Features
The built-in function EPOC::getcwd returns the current
directory.
Restrictions
Features are left out, because of restrictions of the
POSIX support in EPOC:
backquoting, pipes etc.
system() does not inherit ressources like: file
descriptors, environment etc.
signal, kill, alarm. Do not try to use them. This may
be impossible to implement on EPOC.
select is missing.
binmode does not exist. (No CR LF to LF translation
for text files)
EPOC does not handle the notion of current drive and
current directory very well (i.e. not at all, but it
tries hard to emulate one) See PATH.
Heap is limited to 4MB.
Dynamic loading is not implemented.
Compiling Perl 5 on the EPOC cross compiling environment
Sorry, this is far too short.
You will need the C++ SDK from http://developer.epoc
world.com/.
You will need to set up the cross SDK from
http://www.science-computing.de/o.flebbe/sdk
You may have to adjust config.sh (cc, cppflags) to
reflect your epoc and SDK location.
Get the Perl sources from your nearest CPAN site.
Unpack the sources.
Build a native perl from this sources... Make sure to
save the miniperl executable as miniperl.native.
Start again from scratch
cp epoc/* .
./Configure -S
make
cp miniperl.native miniperl
make
make ext/Errno/pm_to_blib
perl link.pl perlmain.o lib/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a \
lib/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.a \
lib/auto/File/Glob/Glob.a lib/auto/IO/IO.a \
lib/auto/Socket/Socket.a \
lib/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.a lib/auto/Sys/Hostname/Hostname.a \
perl.a `cat ext.libs`
perl createpkg.pl
wine G:/bin/makesis perl.pkg perl.sis
SUPPORT STATUS
I'm offering this port "as is". You can ask me questions,
but I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer them.
AUTHOR
Olaf Flebbe <o.flebbe@science-computing.de>
http://www.science-computing.de/o.flebbe/perl/
LAST UPDATE
2001-02-26
