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Looking for some tools to extend TP with regular expressions.
Am I right in thinking about Perl as the next step for me?

Took a quick look at two Perl packages for windows,
ActivePerl 5.6.1 and TinyPerl 2.0.

Which one do you reccomend when using with windows and TP?
Any other around?
Small footprint would be nice, just to follow suite with TP.

Never dealt with tinyPerl but I have the activePerl installed. Works well for me although I've seen the light and have rejoiced in Python. The AS version is a bit behind the release cycle but a good implementation as far as I can tell.
Another option, which may or may not work for you is to install cygwin and you can run its flavor of Perl although it's a smidge harder to get to.

- Tinyperl is a little to tiny, lot's of modules missing.
- ActivePerl works fine "out of the box" with TP.
- cygwin is out since they report a major problem with Perl's
install/configuration script, upper vs. lower case char's.

Any way to get a clickable Command Results window in TP?
Thx for your help!

s-r,

re: problem with cygwin: do you have a link? I downloaded and installed this day before yesterday and didn't see a problem ... but haven't really tried using Perl yet (one little test seemed to go ok)... no install probelm that I noticed...Perl is there.

I just ran "hello world" to check, and it went ok. (in fact I stripped back a longer version and made an error and it gave me my errors just fine).

mo, I just read about cygwin and the perl problem in their faq.
I did not try it out myself.
If you want to read about it, http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.txt

Are mixed-case filenames possible with Cygwin?
----------------------------------------------

Several Unix programs expect to be able to use to filenames spelled
the same way, but with different case. A prime example of this is
perl's configuration script, which wants `Makefile' and `makefile'.
WIN32 can't tell the difference between files with just different case,
so the configuration fails.

In releases prior to beta 16, mount had a special mixed case option
which renamed files in such a way as to allow mixed case filenames. We
chose to remove the support when we rewrote the path handling code for
beta 16. The standard Windows apps - explorer.exe,
cmd.exe/command.com, etc. - do not distinguish filenames that differed
only in case, resulting in some (very) undesirable behavior.

Sergey Okhapkin had maintained a mixed-case patch ('coolview') until
about B20.1, but this has not been updated to recent versions of Cygwin.

BTW. I like ActivePerl with TP, feels light and fast on my pc, I will use it
for the time it takes me to plow through the standard "begining perl"
tutorial.

s-r,

Thanks for the reply. I see I had already read that document and blissfully not-noticed the Perl reference. I think this is speaking about compiling perl separately under Cygwin, not installing the package from the download facility. In any case it works. I went this way over ActiveState because of a small familiarity with Linux, the ability to use other Linux programs and utilities, and because I heard that there were issues with the command prompt in Windows (something abut needing to process perl commands twice before actually being able to use them...something like that) (and because the Windows command prompt behaves differently than a terminal in Linux and I have only so much power to juggle different ways of handling things). I am building towards a complete switch to Linux...once there is a Textpad port...ahum (willing to pay!)

Ok, getting a bit off topic but... I did this once and it worked fine for me:
On your Windows machine install VMware and then install some Linux
distro in a window, with no X (ie. no KDE or GNOME) and you've
got a perfect terminal in Linux.
Best part is, if you don't like it, you can uninstall it like any other program.

mo wrote:I am building towards a complete switch to Linux...once there is a Textpad port...ahum (willing to pay!)

r-s,

Thanks for the suggestion,

(Re: OT: PMs seem to be disabled on this board, so OTs must be acceptable, yes?)

I checked out VMWare and it costs $Money! Shocking! This Cygwin seems to have what looks to be the solution for me in that it allows me to work in TextPad (I find that Clip Library feature an indispensable aspect of everythig I do now) save the files to /home/scripts or whatever and run them on a familiar terminal...I'm sure there must be a way to run them from within TextPad as with compiling and running C++ programs, but I havn't gotten that far yet. I don't really need (or like) anything like dual boot as I have a separate Linux box (running primarily as a web-server) and I like the separation (no file sharing). This Cygwin thing also allows me to use the gcc compiler and so gives me the ability to work in both environments with TP. And it's free.

I think I mispoke when I said complete transfer to Linux. This hybrid setup begins to look very useful all round.

Dogh! Sorry about my "goldfish" like memory, when I used VMware you
downloaded a trial and you could renew that licence once every month.
Oh happy days...

About Cygwin, last time I installed it, it "overtook" my windows machine,
is it the same today? Can I install it just to get a "linux" like shell?

Guessing you installed it in C:\\ which is not recommended. I have it in my "Utilities" partition and it doesn't seem to be bothering anyone. Not definitive (and I had great trepidation about installing it...took me months to work up the courage), but it looks benign and actually well designed.

It now sets up a package delivery system something like apt, where you download from a site and install either from saved files or from the site but either way with an up-to-date distribution. Then you go back for additional packages (perl is not in the default download, and getting the man pages is also an extra step) and it has a look at your setup and gives you the updates.