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AN S-7600A/PIC16F877 JOURNEY

Part 4: Road Testing
by Fred Eady

Start ý Janis Joplin School of Programming ý Who or What is Perl? ý Setting Up the Server ý Applying What Weýve Learned ý Internet Engine Client Code ý Get on the ýNet ý Sources and PDF

WHO OR WHAT IS PERL?

Sure, we all know Janis and remember the intense songs she belted out with Big Brother and the Holding Company. Thatýs a pearl of a different kind. The Perl youýll be dealing with is an acronym. Perl is four letters that stand for practical extraction and report language. Larry Wall spawned the Perl language while trying to produce some reports from a Usenet news-like hierarchy of files for a bug-reporting system. Larryýs objective was to create a tool he could use again. When he was done crunching code, Perl was born.

Like most other good stuff used on or by the Internet, Perl was introduced to the masses by way of Usenet. And, of course, Perl grew in popularity and was enhanced with features requested by folks on the Internet. This resulted in the Perl you have access to now. My distribution of Linux includes Perl version 5.6.0.

Perl is a go-between shell and heavy-duty C programming. Using Perl eliminates many of the hassles associated with coding in C and assembling shell scripts. Rather than write a GUI-based C or VB program for the server side of your S-7600A/PIC16F877 Internet Engine project, I decided to use Perl. Why? Well, because it was readily available on my Linux box and I could mash together some Perl code and test it quicker than doing it in C. Another reason I decided to use Perl is because it is self-documenting. At a glance, any of you can pick up the gist of a well-written Perl program. If you think everything that deals with Internet communications needs to be done in C, check out Liu Kaiýs application of Perl in his article, "Using Perl in Embedded Software Development," Circuit Cellar Online, March 2001.

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