cywin versus activestate on xp

[Guest]

Howdy. A google search "activestate versus cygwin" didn't do me much
good, so I'm asking the fine folks at comp.lang.perl.misc: any clear
reason to use one over the other? My objective, really, is as seamless as
possible an experience as I work my way through the llama book for the
first time. Many thanks! (My feelings won't be hurt by backchannel
responses if you feel it's not sufficiently on topic.)

 

[David K. Wall]

Howdy. A google search "activestate versus cygwin" didn't do me
much good, so I'm asking the fine folks at comp.lang.perl.misc:
any clear reason to use one over the other? My objective, really,
is as seamless as possible an experience as I work my way through
the llama book for the first time. Many thanks! (My feelings
won't be hurt by backchannel responses if you feel it's not
sufficiently on topic.)

Hmm, I don't recall the exercises in _Learning Perl_ having much if
any *nix-specific flavor to them, so it shouldn't really make much
difference. I learned what I know of Perl by using it mostly on win32
systems -- but I'm by no means a Perl wizard.

The unix-specific parts of Perl are mostly pretty easy to spot,
anyway. If you already have Activestate Perl installed, see the
Windows Quirks section of the ActivePerl FAQ, and check out 'perldoc
perlwin32'. (One thing that makes perldoc MUCH better under win32 is
to get a copy of the 'less' pager program and set the environment
variable PERLDOC_PAGER to point to less.)

Contrariwise, if you're used to *nix systems or cygwin, I can't think
of any reason not to use Perl under cygwin. I keep cygwin around so
that, among other reasons, I can run Perl one-liners without dealing
with silly quoting issues the windows command-line shell imposes.

Elvish advice, both no and yes... but if you're used to windows, I'd
say stick with Activestate Perl. You'll have the voluminous Perl docs
available in HTML form for browsing and printing (do yourself and us
a favor and read the FAQ after you finish LP, or at least skim it),
PPM makes it painless to install most non-core modules, and there are
some win32-specific modules bundled with Activestate Perl that
occasionally come in handy.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

The unix-specific parts of Perl are mostly pretty easy to spot,
anyway.

There used to be a degree of unix bigotry in some parts of the
documentation, but that has been wisely eased-out in recent versions.
Which well behoves a language that aims to be portable.

Nevertheless, there are still some useful features modelled on unix
paradigms which don't necessarily translate into Windows (generic)
terms, as you'd find out only too keenly if you tried to do the
related tasks in Win/9x. But Win/NT and its successors are quite
different animals, despite the superficial similarity.

If you already have Activestate Perl installed, see the
Windows Quirks section of the ActivePerl FAQ, and check out 'perldoc
perlwin32'.

Good advice, indeed

(One thing that makes perldoc MUCH better under win32 is
to get a copy of the 'less' pager program and set the environment
variable PERLDOC_PAGER to point to less.)

I must admit I find ActiveState's HTML-ified documentation to be more
approachable. Although there's just an occasional glitch where the
HTML conversion didn't quite click...

Contrariwise, if you're used to *nix systems or cygwin, I can't think
of any reason not to use Perl under cygwin. I keep cygwin around so
that, among other reasons, I can run Perl one-liners without dealing
with silly quoting issues the windows command-line shell imposes.

No dispute there.

Elvish advice, both no and yes... but if you're used to windows, I'd
say stick with Activestate Perl.

AFAICS both strands of your advice are good. (FWIW I've got both
available on Win/2K, although I do most of my serious work under unix
- or rather, nowadays it's linux).

best regards

 

[Robin]

Howdy. A google search "activestate versus cygwin" didn't do me much
good, so I'm asking the fine folks at comp.lang.perl.misc: any clear
reason to use one over the other? My objective, really, is as seamless as
possible an experience as I work my way through the llama book for the
first time. Many thanks! (My feelings won't be hurt by backchannel
responses if you feel it's not sufficiently on topic.)

cygwin is hard and tedious to download, taking many days if your on a
dial-up connection, there's nothing wrong with perl on win32. Just to tell
you if your on dial-up.
-Robin

 

[Michele Dondi]

perlwin32'. (One thing that makes perldoc MUCH better under win32 is
to get a copy of the 'less' pager program and set the environment
variable PERLDOC_PAGER to point to less.)

BTW: this is exactly what I hade done soon after installing AS perl
the very first time; I'm using less from UNXUTILS/UNXUPDATES, which is
fine. But I have some problems with some keybindings (yes, not a Perl
question!): e.g. I can't use PgUp, but I have to use 'b' instead. Not
so bad after all, but still slightly annoying...

I don't know if this is a inputrc issue or if it is possibly related
to any other cfg file: I've been thinking so many times to write to
the the collection maintainer for more info, but always been too lazy
to actually do that. So, *by any chance*, do you know how to fix that
behaviour offhand?!?


Michele

 

[David K. Wall]

BTW: this is exactly what I hade done soon after installing AS
perl the very first time; I'm using less from UNXUTILS/UNXUPDATES,
which is fine. But I have some problems with some keybindings
(yes, not a Perl question!): e.g. I can't use PgUp, but I have to
use 'b' instead. Not so bad after all, but still slightly
annoying...

I don't know if this is a inputrc issue or if it is possibly
related to any other cfg file: I've been thinking so many times to
write to the the collection maintainer for more info, but always
been too lazy to actually do that. So, *by any chance*, do you
know how to fix that behaviour offhand?!?

Nope, PageDown and PageUp work just as you would expect for me. I
normally use space and 'b' anyway because that's how I learned it
originally, plus I don't have to move my hands as much that way.

In case it helps, here's the version of less I'm using:

less 381
Copyright (C) 2002 Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Homepage: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less

I have version 340 bundled with some GNU tools compiled for win32 and
it works as expected, too. Sorry.

 

[Guest]

cygwin is hard and tedious to download, taking many days if your on a
dial-up connection, there's nothing wrong with perl on win32. Just to tell
you if your on dial-up.
-Robin

Hey, thanks to all for the input; looks like I'm fine either way I go.
Thank god I'm not on dial up! First I got activestate, then while
surfing I read a comment something like, "use cygwin for writing perl
if you want to do it the easy way." I completely failed to grok
cygwin, didn't know getting cygwin would mean having a second perl
implementation on the box. So now I've got both but will probably use
cygwin as much as possible, at least for getting through
_learning_perl_, because the feel of all-command-line-all-the-time is
what I'm trying to approximate.

Thanks again!

 

[Michele Dondi]

BTW: this is exactly what I hade done soon after installing AS
perl the very first time; I'm using less from UNXUTILS/UNXUPDATES,
which is fine. But I have some problems with some keybindings
(yes, not a Perl question!): e.g. I can't use PgUp, but I have to
use 'b' instead. Not so bad after all, but still slightly
annoying...

[snip]
Nope, PageDown and PageUp work just as you would expect for me. I
normally use space and 'b' anyway because that's how I learned it
originally, plus I don't have to move my hands as much that way.

In case it helps, here's the version of less I'm using: [snip]
I have version 340 bundled with some GNU tools compiled for win32 and
it works as expected, too. Sorry.

340 here too, and *not* working as expected! (Maybe due to non-US
settings?)


Michele