A step-by-step instruction to start with Perl on Windows

1. Download the Perl interpreter for Windows from ActiveState.com and install it.

2. The quick way to pick up Perl language is to follow some free web tutorials. Here are some websites on this:

• http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Training/PerlIntro/
• http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/Perl/start.html
• http://www.pageresource.com/cgirec/index2.htm
• Lots pages like these could be easily found by a Google search.

3. And here are some introductory level Perl programming books in our Library

• Perl : a beginner's guide by R. Allen Wyke and Donald Thoma
• Learning Perl by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix
• Professional Perl programming by Peter Wainwright ; with Aldo Calpini ... [et al.] -- more advanced

4. A nice editor for Perl is EditPlus, which has built-in syntax-highlighting capability for Perl. The developer offers 30-day free trial download on their website. Script syntax-checking and execution could be invoked inside EditPlus by setting up user-defined tools.

5. To executable Perl script from the Windows CMD console. It is necessary to include the ActivePerl binary in Windows executable search path, which is specified by the PATH environment variable. Under Windows 2000/XP, environment variables could be created/modified under the advanced tab in the properties window of My Computer.