Upgrading from PERL 5.6 to 5.8

[jonniethecodeprince]

Hello everyone. Bit of a general question this time around, really.

As I said previously I downloaded the compiler version of the PERL language. Having looked hard I can see that i've ended up with 5.6, having intended to actually download ActivePerl for windows. To be honest that's another story.

So now i'm on Open Perl IDE which works great for a lot of PERL programs. However of course, its not the finished article.

I just tried to do a Switch statement,

use switch;

This is not picked up by the compiler because like some other items it is only available in PERL 5.8.

What I want to know is where can I download a working patch that I can use to Upgrade Open PERL IDE? I have looked really hard at this and I still have had no look getting my computer to recognise a PERL switch statement. I'm basically finding upgrading worryingly difficult.

Thanks,

[numberwhun]

Open Perl IDE is just that, its a development environment, just like using something like Komodo from Active State. There is no upgrade to the program that will "force" it to recognize the switch statement. That is something that goes back to your version of Perl. If it is only supported in Perl 5.8 and above, then you are going to have to upgrade your Perl installation to 5.8, not your IDE software.

Regards,

Jeff

[KevinADC]

Delete/dump Open Perl IDE. Install activestate perl 5.8 and download Perl Express which is a totally free perl IDE that works quite well.

[jonniethecodeprince]

That's the main problem though. My Open Perl IDE came directly from my attempts to install Activestate.

ActivePerl

That failed. I have my perl.exe file so I can run it from my Open IDE.

I think for ActiveState the file I'm missing is the activeperl.msi file. That's why I started using Open PERL because no matter what I try ActivePERL will not install.

[KevinADC]

I have never heard anyone say that Open Perl IDE comes bundled with activestate perl, but maybe it does or did. Go here:

activestate

click on the "Verify system requirements" link from there you can download the MSI

There you will see :

If you are using an older version of Windows, you will need to download a system update in order to install ActivePerl.

click the appropriate link below the above lines:

# For Win95/98/Me
# For WinNT/2000

then install the appropriate activestate perl MSI version for your particular computer (x86 or 64-bit x64 AMD64) .

[numberwhun]

That's just it. Open Perl IDE is a seperate product, used for coding Perl. The product rely's on the fact that you have Perl, a seperate product all together, is installed. So, you are correct Kevin, it does not come bundled with Perl, even Active State, as far as I have ever seen.

Regards,

Jeff

[KevinADC]

I am 99.9999% in a agreement. But maybe some older (or special) versions of activestate perl came with Open Perl IDE. But I have never heard of that myself.

[miller]

I just tried to do a Switch statement,

Jumping on a completely different issue. Don't use switch statements. They are very useful in C and C++, but they rarely have any place in Perl development in my opinion. I've yet to see a switch statement in Perl that wasn't more clearly represented by either cascading if statements or a dispatch table. My personal preference being a dispatch table.

- Miller