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Programming Perl, 3rd Edition
book

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant
July 2000
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
1104 pages
35h 1m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

Config

use Config;
if ($Config{cc} =~ /gcc/) {
    print "This perl was built by GNU C.\n";
}
use Config qw(myconfig config_sh config_vars);
print myconfig();    # like perl -V without a pattern
print config_sh();   # gives absolutely everything

config_vars qw/osname osvers archname/;

The configuration mechanism that builds and installs Perl assembles a wealth of information about your system. The Config module exports by default a tied hash variable named %Config, which provides access to over 900 different configuration values. (These values are also available through Perl's -V:PATTERN command-line switch.) Config also provides three functions that give more shell-like access to these values, as shown above. For instance, that last call might print out:

osname='openbsd';
osvers='2.6';
archname='OpenBSD.sparc-openbsd';

The module's online documentation describes the configuration variables and their possible values. Be aware that if you move your perl executable to a system other than the one on which it was built, these values may not reflect the current reality; for instance, if you're running a Linux or a Solaris binary on a BSD system.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596000278Supplemental ContentErrata