CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perlcommand-line-interface
George 2.0 Hope
George 2.0 Hope

Reputation: 648

Perl - How do you type/execute/run Perl statements directly in the Perl shell/interpreter?

How do you type and then (execute/run) Perl statements directly in the Perl shell/interpreter?

First, I'm on Windows... and I have Strawberry Perl (v5.32.1) built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread installed.

So, if I type at the command line, just :

perl

... it appears to enter into a Perl "shell/interpreter", but if I enter some Perl statements :

my $greeting = "Hello World :-)\n";
print($greeting);

... how do I make it then "execute/run" those two statements?

If I Ctrlc, then it just says: Terminating on signal SIGINT(2)

If it matters, the reason I'd like to do this is so that I can just test Perl language as I'm learning about Perl.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2285

Answers (3)

Shawn
Shawn

Reputation: 52344

You can get a REPL using the debugger:

$ perl -d -e 1

Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.49
Editor support available.

Enter h or 'h h' for help, or 'man perldebug' for more help.

main::(-e:1):   1
  DB<1> x "blah" x 5
0  'blahblahblahblahblah'

Use x expression or p expression to evaluate an expression and display the result in different ways.

Upvotes: 3

TLP
TLP

Reputation: 67900

You can just use a so-called one-liner (*) and type code directly into the shell. It is the idiomatic way to test Perl statements:

perl -we"my $greeting = qq(Hello World :-)\n); print $greeting;"

Note that in Windows cmd shell you need to surround the code with double quotes, hence you use qq() for double quoted strings inside the code.

I always use the -l switch on the command line, so that I don't have to add line endings to print:

perl -lwe"my $greeting = 'Hello World :-)'; print $greeting;"

You may also consider using -E and say, which adds a newline as well:

perl -wE"say 'Hello world :-)'"

You can even use multiple lines, in some shells, though not in Windows.

(*) = Don't be fooled by the word "one-liner". That is not the number of statements you can use, that is just a way to name a statement that is on "one line". In Perl you can add multiple statements on a single line if you like.

Upvotes: 1

choroba
choroba

Reputation: 241808

Entering Ctrl + Z (final Enter still needed) corresponds to Ctrl + D on *nix and means End of file. You can also enter __END__.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions