 The Public Domain program EasyPerl/WinPerl v1.00 by Maxwell Nairn Andrews is a dedicated editor for creating, editing and testing Perl scripts (using a public domain Perl v4.0 written by the well-known Perl guru Larry Wall). WinPerl presents the Perl script in an easy to navigate format and incorporates a Perl engine to enable you to test scripts as they are being developed. We have found that its syntax checker and Perl engine are both very powerful and will show up potential problems in Perl scripts even though they may appear to work fine when uploaded to a Server. As a result, we have found it essential to test Perl scripts using this program before uploading to the server. WinPerl contains all of the standard commands which you would expect in an editor, with Print, Save, Load, Find and Replace functions, alongside the commands to Run the Perl script (you can even add a command line to pass to the Perl engine, it is unclear what commands this supports, other than the -w switch which turns on the Perl warnings). As you open new Perl scripts, further windows are opened within the main WinPerl program, allowing you to easily compare scripts and look at included sub-routines. It is unfortunate that this particular program is difficult to track down, and we are uncertain whether there is a later version, as we have found a few problems with v1.00, namely Highlighting blocks of text is problematic, as the highlighted area is not visible, although the standard Windows Delete, Cut, Copy and Paste commands all act on that block. Also the output is sent to a separate window, which looks similar to Microsoft's Notepad - however, if the output from the Perl script is overly long, you can only view the last page of the output and therefore will be unable to see messages generated by the start of the Perl script. The help file is also out of date and does not mention the Perl commands. Unfortunately, the program is unable to handle the larger Perl scripts and will just refuse to allow any more characters to be typed (without giving a warning) - as a result, we have had to switch to the more powerful DzSoft Perl Editor. Beware that there is another program called WinPerl available for download from the internet, although this program has similar functionality, it looks more like Microsoft's Notepad and is not as easy to use.
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(Page Last Updated 23/6/04)
