NAME

ActivePerl - ActiveState's quality-assured binary build of Perl

SYNOPSIS

  use ActivePerl;
  print "$ActivePerl::VERSION\n";

DESCRIPTION

ActivePerl is ActiveState's quality-assured binary build of Perl, available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows. ActivePerl includes:

• The binary core distribution of perl. See the perl manpage for details.

• A set of useful additional CPAN modules "out of the box".

• The Perl Package Manager, for quick and easy install of additional Perl extension modules. See the ppm manpage for details.

• Complete documentation in HTML format. This is found in the html sub directory where ActivePerl was installed.

The release notes for this version of ActivePerl is available in the activeperl-release manpage. A list of changes beween builds of ActivePerl is found in the activeperl-changes manpage.

The ActivePerl:: module

The ActivePerl module provide version information about ActivePerl. The module is built in so most of its variables and functions are available without having to require the module. The module was introduced in ActivePerl 813.1.

The following functions are available:

ActivePerl->VERSION

ActivePerl->VERSION( $VERSION )

This method returns the current version of ActivePerl. It is a number like 813.01 or 815. With argument croak if the current version is less than the given number.

This method is inherited from Perl's UNIVERSAL class, and will usually be invoked indirectly by use, for instance:

    use ActivePerl 815;

This statement ensures that the scripts runs under ActivePerl 815 or better. If this perl is not ActivePerl or is older than 815 then this statement would croak.

The version number returned is picked up from the $ActivePerl::VERSION variable. For conditional code it is usually better to test against this variable directly:

   if (($ActivePerl::VERSION || 0) >= 815) {
       ...
   }

The || 0 ensures that this code does not produce a warning if running on ActivePerl 813 or older, or running on standard perl.

ActivePerl::PRODUCT

This constant function returns "ActivePerl" for the free version and "ActivePerlEE" for the Enterprise Edition product.

ActivePerl::BUILD

The value returned is the same as found in $ActivePerl::VERSION, but the subversion number will not be padded with 0. It means that this value is suitable for printing, but unsafe for numeric comparisons.

This returns the same value as Win32::BuildNumber(), but this function is only avalable on the Windows builds of ActivePerl.

ActivePerl::perl_version

Returns a full version number that also include the version of perl this ActivePerl release is based on. It returns a string like "5.8.7.815" or "5.8.7.813.1".

This function is not directly built in and will only be avalable after 'require ActivePerl' has executed.

SEE ALSO

the activeperl-release manpage, the activeperl-changes manpage, the perl manpage