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PERLBS2000(1)


NAME

  README.BS2000 - building and installing Perl for BS2000.


SYNOPSIS

  This document will help you Configure, build, test and install Perl on
  BS2000 in the POSIX subsystem.


DESCRIPTION

  This is a ported perl for the POSIX subsystem in BS2000 VERSION OSD V3.1A
  or later.  It may work on other versions, but we started porting and
  testing it with 3.1A and are currently using Version V4.0A.

  You may need the following GNU programs in order to install perl:

  gzip on BS2000

  We used version 1.2.4, which could be installed out of the box with one
  failure during 'make check'.

  bison on BS2000

  The yacc coming with BS2000 POSIX didn't work for us.	 So we had to use
  bison.  We had to make a few changes to perl in order to use the pure
  (reentrant) parser of bison.	We used version 1.25, but we had to add a few
  changes due to EBCDIC.  See below for more details concerning yacc.

  Unpacking Perl Distribution on BS2000

  To extract an ASCII tar archive on BS2000 POSIX you need an ASCII
  filesystem (we used the mountpoint /usr/local/ascii for this).  Now you
  extract the archive in the ASCII filesystem without I/O-conversion:

  cd /usr/local/ascii export IO_CONVERSION=NO gunzip <
  /usr/local/src/perl.tar.gz | pax -r

  You may ignore the error message for the first element of the archive (this
  doesn't look like a tar archive / skipping to next file...), it's only the
  directory which will be created automatically anyway.

  After extracting the archive you copy the whole directory tree to your
  EBCDIC filesystem.  This time you use I/O-conversion:

  cd /usr/local/src IO_CONVERSION=YES cp -r /usr/local/ascii/perl5.005_02 ./

  Compiling Perl on BS2000

  There is a "hints" file for BS2000 called hints.posix-bc (because posix-bc
  is the OS name given by `uname`) that specifies the correct values for most
  things.  The major problem is (of course) the EBCDIC character set.  We
  have german EBCDIC version.

  Because of our problems with the native yacc we used GNU bison to generate
  a pure (=reentrant) parser for perly.y.  So our yacc is really the
  following script:

  -----8<-----/usr/local/bin/yacc-----8<----- #! /usr/bin/sh

  # Bison as a reentrant yacc:

  # save parameters: params="" while [[ $# -gt 1 ]]; do
      params="$params $1"
      shift done

  # add flag %pure_parser:

  tmpfile=/tmp/bison.$$.y echo %pure_parser > $tmpfile cat $1 >> $tmpfile

  # call bison:

  echo "/usr/local/bin/bison --yacc $params $1\t\t\t(Pure Parser)"
  /usr/local/bin/bison --yacc $params $tmpfile

  # cleanup:

  rm -f $tmpfile -----8<----------8<-----

  We still use the normal yacc for a2p.y though!!!  We made a softlink called
  byacc to distinguish between the two versions:

  ln -s /usr/bin/yacc /usr/local/bin/byacc

  We build perl using GNU make.	 We tried the native make once and it worked
  too.

  Testing Perl on BS2000

  We still got a few errors during "make test".	 Some of them are the result
  of using bison.  Bison prints parser error instead of syntax error, so we
  may ignore them.  The following list shows our errors, your results may
  differ:

  op/numconvert.......FAILED tests 1409-1440 op/regexp...........FAILED tests
  483, 496 op/regexp_noamp.....FAILED tests 483, 496
  pragma/overload.....FAILED tests 152-153, 170-171
  pragma/warnings.....FAILED tests 14, 82, 129, 155, 192, 205, 207
  lib/bigfloat........FAILED tests 351-352, 355 lib/bigfltpm........FAILED
  tests 354-355, 358 lib/complex.........FAILED tests 267, 487
  lib/dumper..........FAILED tests 43, 45 Failed 11/231 test scripts, 95.24%
  okay. 57/10595 subtests failed, 99.46% okay.

  Installing Perl on BS2000

  We have no nroff on BS2000 POSIX (yet), so we ignored any errors while
  installing the documentation.

  Using Perl in the Posix-Shell of BS2000

  BS2000 POSIX doesn't support the shebang notation
  ("#!/usr/local/bin/perl"), so you have to use the following lines instead:

  : # use perl
      eval 'exec /usr/local/bin/perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
	  if $running_under_some_shell;

  Using Perl in "native" BS2000

  We don't have much experience with this yet, but try the following:

  Copy your Perl executable to a BS2000 LLM using bs2cp:

  "bs2cp /usr/local/bin/perl 'bs2:perl(perl,l)'"

  Now you can start it with the following (SDF) command:

  "/START-PROG FROM-FILE=*MODULE(PERL,PERL),PROG-MODE=*ANY,RUN-MODE=*ADV"

  First you get the BS2000 commandline prompt ('*').  Here you may enter your
  parameters, e.g. "-e 'print "Hello World!\\n";'" (note the double
  backslash!) or "-w" and the name of your Perl script.	 Filenames starting
  with "/" are searched in the Posix filesystem, others are searched in the
  BS2000 filesystem.  You may even use wildcards if you put a "%" in front of
  your filename (e.g. "-w checkfiles.pl %*.c").	 Read your C/C++ manual for
  additional possibilities of the commandline prompt (look for
  PARAMETER-PROMPTING).

  Floating point anomalies on BS2000

  There appears to be a bug in the floating point implementation on BS2000
  POSIX systems such that calling int() on the product of a number and a
  small magnitude number is not the same as calling int() on the quotient of
  that number and a large magnitude number.  For example, in the following
  Perl code:

      my $x = 100000.0;
      my $y = int($x * 1e-5) * 1e5; # '0'
      my $z = int($x / 1e+5) * 1e5;  # '100000'
      print "\$y is $y and \$z is $z\n"; # $y is 0 and $z is 100000

  Although one would expect the quantities $y and $z to be the same and equal
  to 100000 they will differ and instead will be 0 and 100000 respectively.


AUTHORS

  Thomas Dorner


SEE ALSO

  INSTALL, perlport.

  Mailing list

  If you are interested in the VM/ESA, z/OS (formerly known as OS/390) and
  POSIX-BC (BS2000) ports of Perl then see the perl-mvs mailing list.  To
  subscribe, send an empty message to perl-mvs-subscribe@perl.org.

  See also:

      http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=perl-mvs

  There are web archives of the mailing list at:

      http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl-mvs/
      http://archive.develooper.com/perl-mvs@perl.org/


HISTORY

  This document was originally written by Thomas Dorner for the 5.005 release
  of Perl.

  This document was podified for the 5.6 release of perl 11 July 2000.

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