OpenVMS PERL, Build Tools, Scripting Language I. Summary: This is a port of PERL5 to VMS. It contains all the information and files that are required to build PERL5 on OpenVMS VAX and AXP systems. The readme.vms file in the [.perl5_000] directory that is unpacked explains how to start building the tool. It also provides pointers to the people who are actively porting PERL5 to VMS, and you can get on their distribution list if you desire. The zip file also contains the freeware license statement as it applies to Perl5. II. Unpacking Perl once it is on your VMS system: 1. Perl comes in a ZIP file. Define a foreign symbol to point to your ZIP executable. uzip :== $ TOOLS$:[ZIP]vmsunzip.exe; 2. Simply use the following command to unpack the zip file, $ uzip -x your_zip_file.zip 3. TROUBLE SHOOTING the ZIP file a. Sometimes the unzip image that we have for VMS will not understand a file format (or something). The UNZIP simply stops with an error. If this happens with the freeware ZIP image, the following steps will help you recover. b. Note the last file 'Inflated', it was successful. Now get a directory of the files using uzip -v zip_file.zip c. Look for the filename of the last file that was successfully unpacked before the uzip failed. d. Now look at the very next file(s) in the listing and manually uzip the next file (or several following files) then retry the next command. e. Now you should be able to run uzip as follows: uzip -xn your_zip_file.zip f. This will unpack your zip file and not overwrite existing files. Since you unpacked the problem files, unzip should progress to the end of the file. If not, manually unpack the next file after the last successful file and try this command again. f1. Don't ask me why, but this even fails sometimes no matter how many files you correctly unpack! This sequence eventually got the whole thing unpacked after numerous errors. uzip -u the_zip file uzip -o the_zip_file uzip -xno the_zip_file Now, the -o produces a command line warning that it can not be specified with -n, BUT BUT BUT, the whole thing unpacked without output statements. I couldn't believe it! Must be a weird zip image that I have used. Note that the zip image that I used may be old or buggy and if you simply make enough contortions when calling the program to unzip your file, it will hiccup the right behavior. See the bizarre sequence above as example of a contortion! Oh well... g. This is how to get through an unzip that has errors. We probably need a later version of unzip that can read these newer file types and data, or one that is compatible with the ZIP program used by the Perl folks.