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2 Perl 5 README file for the EPOC operating system.
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5 Olaf Flebbe <o.flebbe@gmx.de>
6 http://members.linuxstart.com/~oflebbe/perl/perl5.html
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13 EPOC is a OS for palmtops and mobile phones. For more informations look at:
14 http://www.symbian.com/
16 This is a port of perl to EPOC. It runs on the Psion Series 5, 5mx,
17 5mx Pro, Psion Revo and on the Ericson M128. I have no report about
18 the Psion Netbook or the S7. For information about this hardware
19 please refer to http://www.psion.com.
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25 You will need ~4MB free space in order to install and run perl.
27 Install perl.sis on the EPOC machine (most likely a PSION Series 5,
28 5mx). If you do not know how to do that, you are on your own.
30 Perl itself and its standard library are using 2.5 MB disk space. I
31 left out unicode support modules and modules which will not work with
32 this version. (For details look into epoc/createpkg.pl). If you like
33 to use them, you are free to copy them from a current perl release.
35 Get ESHELL from symbian:
36 http://developer.epocworld.com/downloads/progs/Eshell.zip
38 Now you can enter: perl -de 0 in order to run the perl debugger. If
39 you are leaving perl, you get into the system screen. You have to
40 switch back manually to ESHELL. When perl is running, you will see
41 a task with the name STDOUT in the task list.
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47 You can redirect the output with the UNIX bourne shell syntax (this is
48 built into perl rather then eshell) For instance the following command
49 line will run the script test.pl with the output redirected to
50 stdout_file, the errors to stderr_file and input from stdin_file.
52 perl test.pl >stdout_file <stdin_file 2>stderr_file
54 Alternativly you can use 2>&1 in order to add the standard error
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61 ESHELL looks for executables in ?:/System/Programs. The SIS file
62 installs perl in this special folder directory. The default drive and
63 path are the same as folder the executable resides. The EPOC
64 filesystem is case-preserving, not case-sensitive.
66 EPOC uses the ?: syntax for establishing a search order: First in C: (RAM),
67 then on D: (CF Card) and last in Z: (ROM).
69 The perl @INC search path is now implemented with '?:'. Your perl
70 executable can now live on a different drive than the perl library or
73 ESHELL paths have to be written with backslashes '\', file arguments
74 to perl with slashes '/'. Remember that I/O redirection is done
75 internally in perl, so please use slashes for redirects.
77 perl.exe C:/test.pl >C:/output.txt
79 You can automatically search for file on all EPOC drives with a ? as
80 the driver letter. For instance ?:\a.txt searches for C:\a.txt,
81 D:\b.txt (and Z:\a.txt).
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87 A suitable text-editor can be downloaded
88 from symbian http://developer.epocworld.com/downloads/progs/Editor.zip
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94 The built-in function EPOC::getcwd returns the current directory.
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100 Features are left out, because of restrictions of the POSIX support in
103 + backquoting, pipes etc.
105 + system() does not inherit ressources like: file descriptors,
108 + signal, kill, alarm. Do not try to use them. This may be
109 impossible to implement on EPOC.
113 + binmode does not exist. (No CR LF to LF translation for text files)
115 + EPOC does not handle the notion of current drive and current
116 directory very well (i.e. not at all, but it tries hard to emulate
119 + You need the shell eshell.exe in order to run perl.exe and supply
122 + Heap is limited to 4MB.
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125 Compiling Perl 5 on the EPOC cross compiling envionment.
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128 Sorry, this is far too short.
130 You will need the C++ SDK from http://developer.epocworld.com/.
132 You will need to set up the cross SDK from
133 http://members.linuxstart.com/~oflebbe
135 You may have to adjust config.sh (cc, cppflags) for your epoc
138 You may have to adjust config.sh for your cross SDK location
140 Get the Perl sources from your nearest CPAN site.
144 Build a native perl from this sources...
149 cp miniperl.native miniperl
151 make ext/Errno/pm_to_blib
152 perl link.pl perlmain.o lib/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a \
153 lib/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.a \
154 lib/auto/File/Glob/Glob.a lib/auto/IO/IO.a \
155 lib/auto/Socket/Socket.a \
156 lib/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.a lib/auto/Sys/Hostname/Hostname.a \
157 perl.a `cat ext.libs`
160 wine G:/bin/makesis perl.pkg perl.sis
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167 I'm offering this port "as is". You can ask me questions, but I can't
168 guarantee I'll be able to answer them.