How-to install POSIX.pm

[Abigail-II]

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another episode of guess what am I doing wrong, our daily quiz where the candidates can't be arsed to give any clue about their problem, yet expect to be helped by our panel anyway.

Candidate number one, what is your name?

LeeC79

LeeC79, what is your problem?

it really isn't working

LeeC79, can you give us any more hints?

I'm assuming that it's because this module has to be installed some other way.

LeeC79, that's a really helpful hint! It's going to be a piece of cake for our panel of Perl wizards.

Panel, what's your answer? Yes, Master of Regular Expressions, what's your opinion?

Master of Regular Expressions: Let's see. Yes, I know, I know. LeeC79 hasn't plugged in his computer!

LeeC79, did you plug in your computer?

Uhm, yes, I did.

Our candidate did plug in his computer! The score is now 1-0 for our candidate. Other opinions?

Pack Wizard: Could it be that LeeC79 is sitting too far from his desk, and that he can't reach the keyboard?

LeeC79?

No, I can reach the keyboard just fine.

Pack Wizard: It was worth a try...

Sure, but the score is now 2-0 for our candidate.

XS Specialist: It's clear as water to me. The candidate is trying to install the module and get it working with Python!

LeeC79, did you try installing with Python?

No snakes can be found on my computer.

Any of the other mighty wizards have a clue?

The Benchmark King: Perhaps the library was installed correctly, but the candidate expected it to do something else.

No, it isn't working!

The Benchmark King: How do you know?

It just doesn't work!

The Benchmark King: ...?

Perl wizards, you are out of time. Once again you failed to help a candidate with a very desperate problem.

Tune in tomorrow, to the next episode of guess what am I doing wrong. Same time, same channnel.

Abigail

[smitz]

Could someone knock up a script that turns all of Abigail-IIs posts in the last 24 hours into an RSS feed and host it?
This stuff is better than coffee.

[Popcorn Dave]

Boy, just add Arlene Francis, the $5.00 per question unanswered to the $50 max and you've got a new "What's my Line". I think you might be able to sell it to FOX for the summer season. ;)

Great work!

[jeffa]

I'll steer you in the right direction. Don't use POSIX!

According to POSIX.pm and Perl 5.004_02 - Compatible?, the only reason you appear to need POSIX is for the strftime function. Well, one of my favorite date/time modules, Time::Piece, has a strftime function as well:

use Time::Piece;

print localtime->strftime('%Y%m%d.%H%M%S');
print localtime->strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S');

Note that i have not tried this with Perl 5.004_02, but after looking at the source, i do not see any immediate 'flags' that indicate it won't work.

Sometimes you just have to sit back and ask yourself "is this really what i need to do, or just what i think i need to do." Please don't disrespect the Monks. If you think we are picking on you, we are not. We are just trying to help. Patience young grasshoper, your problem will be solved. :) (and read How (Not) To Ask A Question for tips on effective and uneffective posting)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

[liz]

This was already addressed in POSIX.pm and Perl 5.004_02 - Compatible?. Maybe an analogy is in order.

If you take apart a clock, you end up with a whole lot of small parts. What you are trying to do is put a small part (POSIX.pm) into another clock (your perl installation), without knowing whether that part originally belonged to the clock, is already in there, misses any other parts that it needs in order to work. etc. etc.

Get a whole, working clock in one piece. It will have all the right parts.

Liz

[Intrepid]

What's the Real Problem here?

Looking over the evolution of this thread, I decided I felt like making some observations about what happened here (besides my laughing myself silly over Abigail-II's comedy). Maybe some of it, humble as it is, might have general applicability.

The O.P. probably won't stick around to read this, but if he does, I should first point out that I think he got off relatively cheap in the ridicule department.

The reason I says so is that the O.P. states

Truth of the matter is, I taught myself Perl last week and I'm still learning. I thought this was a place to come and get help, not be ridiculed.

The immmense absurdity of the above is reason enough for normal people to find it nearly impossible to take the matter seriously. I taught myself Perl 6 years ago and I've barely begun to learn how to use the language effectively or beautifully. OK, so enough about that. It's painfully obvious to nearly everyone.

What I think really merits huge ridicule is the other dimension of the arrogance here. The O.P. came up with an idea: "install POSIX.pm by copying it into some [undisclosed] location" and then when it didn't work (of course), he responded to efforts to point out his failure of understanding, with indignation. He came up with an idea that was completely flawed and arbitrary (well, it might have worked if we'd been talking about a simple pure-Perl, stand-alone module) and then remained fixated on it. Anything but read the pertinent Perl documentation, apparently. Or re-examine his thinking process.

This fiasco of non-help (as seen by him) supplied to this new user provokes us to look, if we care to, at several questions. Some of those might be:

Read more... (5 kB)

Considered by holli: leave as it is.
Unconsidered by planetscape: keep (and edit) votes prevented reaping

[BrowserUk]

The file POSIX.pm is only the perl front end to the file POSIX.XS which is where all the real work is done. To get the POSIX package to wirk requires compileing POSIX.XS.

However, the POSIX package comes as a part of the core distribution and has done for at least the last 3 or 4 releases. Which version of perl are you using that you need to install this yourself?

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller
If I understand your problem, I can solve it! Of course, the same can be said for you.

[davorg]

If you have to install POSIX.pm then your installation of Perl is either very old or very broken. In both cases you should really consider reinstalling from scratch.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg