ActiveState's quality-assured, ready-to-install distribution of Perl, available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows. The standard ActivePerl distribution is free.

ActivePerl contains: Perl; the Perl Package Manager (PPM) for installing CPAN packages; PerlEx, the Perl performance plug-in for IIS; popular modules; and complete online help.

New in ActivePerl 5.10.0

• Switch statement and smart-match operator
• Defined-or operator
• Many improvements to regular expressions
  • engine is no longer recursive: no more stack overflows
  • recursive patterns
  • named capture groups
  • possessive quantifiers
  • backtracking control verbs
  • relative backreferences
• new say() function
• lexical $_ variable
• _ prototype
• UNITCHECK blocks
• state variables
• stacked filetest operators
• byte-order modifiers for pack() and unpack()
• Additional core modules
• Many bug fixes
• Extended documentation

For a complete list of changes, see the release notes.

Download ActivePerl

Perl Package Manager (PPM)
ActiveState's Perl extension installer and manager. Allows for easy installation and management of modules and extensions.

More information
PPM Repository
PPM Zip Archives

Comments? Email the ActivePerl team.

Perl Tools

Komodo IDE
The first unified workspace for end-to-end dynamic web application development. Comprehensive editing and debugging. Advanced support for dynamic languages such as Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby and Tcl; and client-side AJAX languages, including JavaScript, CSS, HTML and XML. Intelligent tools for regular expressions, team development and customization. Unparalleled extensibility.

Komodo Edit
Free, multi-language editor that makes writing quality code easy. Award-winning editing for dynamic languages including Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl; plus support for browser-side code incluing including JavaScript, CSS, HTML and XML. Available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Perl Dev Kit
The essential toolkit for rapid development and delivery of professional-quality Perl applications, featuring application builders for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX; plus a suite of tools to shorten development time and improve code quality.

ActivePerl Pro Studio
Everything you need to develop, debug, and deploy professional Perl applications. ActivePerl Pro Studio includes the latest releases of Komodo IDE and Perl Dev Kit, plus online access to Safari Bookshelf, in a single, easy-to-budget subscription. Software licenses are permanent and include all upgrades for one year.

ActiveDVD
Ideal for users who have limited internet access or prefer the convenience of physical media, the ActiveDVD includes all ActiveState tools, language distributions, and a complete snapshot of the PPM repository.