README
1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2The Perl Shell (psh)
3-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4
5
6WHAT IT IS:
7
8The Perl Shell (psh) combines aspects of bash and other shells with the power
9of Perl scripting. It aspires to be your primary login shell.
10
11
12WHERE IT CAME FROM:
13
14Numerous times when developing Perl code, the author wished for an interactive
15Perl execution environment in which to try out code snippets. After some
16looking around, there didn't appear to be a handy solution that acted enough
17like a shell to be satisfactory. It all might have ended (or rather not bugun)
18here except that while discussing the idea at lunch with his friend Denny Dahl
19the pressure finally became too much to bear. That evening, version 0.001 of
20the Perl Shell was born.
21
22Initially Perl Shell development was privately hosted, with low-tech manual
23mailing lists. Soon, however, that became too unwieldy and so the project
24was moved to Source Forge (http://www.sourceforge.net/). Source Forge provides
25a CVS repository, a release archive, mailing list management and more.
26
27
28WHO WROTE IT
29
30The original version was written by Gregor N. Purdy, but now there have been
31numerous contributors, and much of the more advanced functionality was
32actually implemented by members of the Perl Shell Core Team (see the file
33psh.pod, or the manpage for psh if you've installed the Perl Shell for more
34information).
35
36
37WHERE TO GET IT
38
39The official project home page is:
40
41 http://www.focusresearch.com/gregor/psh/index.html
42
43The Source Forge main page for the project is:
44
45 http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=475
46
47
48HOW TO USE IT
49
50Download it from one of the locations listed above, and follow the instructions
51in the INSTALL file. If you want to keep tabs on or participate in development,
52then join Source Forge and sign up for mailing list memberships. Use anonymous
53CVS access to keep an up-to-date copy of the code on your system. Become a
54core developer to get CVS write access.
55
56
README.perl5.004
1File::Spec
2----------
3
4psh has been tested on many different platforms but in order to remain as
5platform independent as possible it is necessary to use the File::Spec
6module. This allows us to abstract away from any particular system's
7directory/file separation.
8
9Unfortunately perl 5.004 does not come with this module but it will work if
10you take the File::Spec module out of the 5.005 distribution and use it.
11
12If you are not able to install this in a system-wide directory you can
13install it locally and run psh in the following manner:
14
15perl -I/home/huggie/psh/lib -I/home/huggie/.perllibs /home/huggie/psh/psh
16
17Where /home/huggie is my home directory, the first -I is for the psh libs,
18and the second points to the directory you installed FFile::Spec in.
19
20huggie@earth.li
21
22Missing regular expressions in 5.004
23------------------------------------
24
25Perl 5.004 misses several important types of regular expressions. So far,
26features needing these regexps are simply disabled in Psh. The single
27most important feature which is missing is probably the ability to escape
28white space in e.g. filenames through backslashes. Anybody's welcome
29to change this in Psh::PerlEval and Psh::OS::_escape()
30
31warp@spin.de
32
README.upgrade
1
2This file contains the most important things to know if you're upgrading
3from an earlier version. For a more complete listing of changes, please
4see CHANGES.pod
5
6Upgrading from version 0.009 or earlier:
7
8- New redirection handling!
9 We switched to rc-like syntax instead of sh-like syntax.
10 "foo 2> bar" does not work anymore - use
11 "foo >[2] bar" instead.
12
13- There's no comment strategy anymore. A line starting with # will now
14 already be ignored by the parser, so comments are mandatory.
15
16- The variables @Psh::mon and @Psh::wday were removed - please use
17 Psh::Locale::months() and Psh::Locale::weekdays() instead.
18
19- Do not use %Psh::text directly - instead use Psh::Locale::get_text and
20 Psh::Locale::set_text
21
22- The config variables
23 @Psh::executable_no_expand,
24 $Psh::executable_expand_arguments,
25 $Psh::prompt,
26 $Psh::prompt_cont,
27 $Psh::history_length,
28 $Psh::handle_segfault,
29 $Psh::save_history,
30 $Psh::echo,
31 were removed. Please use the new option builtin.
32
33- %Psh::strategy_which, %Psh::strategy_eval, @Psh::strategies,
34 @Psh::unparsed_strategies do not exist anymore.
35 Please use the strategy builtin.
36
37- %Psh::built_ins and %Psh::fallback_builtin were removed.
38
39Upgrading from version 0.007 or earlier:
40
41- The @netprograms variable in Psh::Completion is no longer supported.
42Please use the 'complete' builtin to add new command names for hostname
43completion
44- The %custom_completions variable in Psh::Completion is no longer
45supported. Please use the new 'complete' builtin
46
47