Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc,comp.lang.perl.announce Subject: Tiny Perls for MS-DOS and Windows - how to get 'em In-Reply-To: Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 0:00:00 EST References: <5c64ct$9i5$1@mhafc.production.compuserve.com> Organization: Burton Systems Software david kettle <72756.3677@CompuServe.COM> wrote in comp.lang.perl.misc in early 1997: > I recently obtained copies of Perl V4 & V5, but when I try to run > either of them, I get the message, "Program too big to fit in > memory." Can anyone tell me what Perl's memory requirements are? > I'm trying to run it on a 386 with 8 meg of RAM, with 608K free > conventional memory. TINY PERLS FOR MS-DOS AND WINDOWS (PERL4) ========================================= About 5 years ago I rebuilt Eelco van Asperen's real-mode Perl 4.036 for MS-DOS, using a couple of different compilers. More recently, I found some old Win32 versions of Perl 4.036 at a couple of Japanese web sites. I've put a collection of these tiny, standalone Perls on our web site. The tinyperl.zip archive contains four tiny DOS Perl 4.036 executables, and a limited Win-16 version, and a Win32 console mode version. Look for tinyperl.zip on our web site at http://www.burtonsys.com/auxil/ tinyperl.zip replaces the earlier perl4dos.zip archive. TINYPERL.ZIP includes the following versions of PERL 4.036: PERL4W32.EXE (371K) is a Win32 console mode version (renamed JPERL.EXE). PERL4W.EXE (317K) is an "EZ-Win" 16-bit Windows version. It is severely crippled by being unable to shell out to other programs at all. If your Perl script quits by calling exit(), then the Window will stay open so that you can view the output. But if your Perl script just falls through the bottom, the window will close, so you may want to end your script with "sleep(3);" or similar, so that you can see the output. PERL4_1.EXE (138K) is Mr. Eelco van Asperen's DOS version, circa 1993. PERL4_2.EXE (307K) is my equivalent; its fatter RTL means that there's about 16K less memory for your running program. However, it is improved in one minor way: its sleep() function doesn't hog the CPU. Built using Borland C/C++ 4.52. PERL4S.EXE (312K) is the same thing, but with Ralf Brown's SPAWNO enabled, so that Perl will swap out of memory when shelling other programs. PERL4.EXE (181K) is a Watcom C/C++ 10.5 version for DOS, compressed with LZEXE. These are not wonderful Perl implementations. A few features might not work. But the .exe sizes are very small, only 138K-371K, and they are all single-file standalone executables, which sometimes makes these little Perls usable when Perl 5 is impractical due to its size and time-consuming installation process. E.g., you can use these Perls for little install scripts on software distribution diskettes, or bundle then with your Perl scripts for users who might not have Perl 5 installed on their computers. I made some minor source code modifications to get some of these to build; that source code is in the perl4dos.src.zip file. Also, the jperlw32.zip archive contains some source code, though I've not looked at it closely. All these files are available on our web site: http://www1.burtonsys.com/auxil/ (server #1) http://www2.burtonsys.com/auxil/ (server #2) There are no warranties, expressed nor implied. size date file name description --------- ------- ------------ -------------------------------------- 912,930 6-27-96 tinyperl.zip Perl 4.036 for DOS & Windows (6 versions) 3,144,312 6-27-96 perl4dos.src.zip Perl 4.036 source code 210,271 5-25-96 njperl45.zip Perl 4.036 for Win32 (built w/ MS) 589,054 11-24-96 jperlw32.zip Perl 4.036 for Win32 (built w/ Borland) 1,534 11-07-01 perl4w32.txt More info about the Win32 Perls 6,108 11-07-01 tinyperl.txt this file ============================================================================== From vasperen@few.eur.nl Mon Feb 17 04:38:21 1997 Received: by salzo.Cary.NC.US with uucp (FX UUCP) for dave; Mon, 17 Feb 97 04:46:24 EST Received: from sam.few.eur.nl (root@sam.few.eur.nl [130.115.112.8]) by redstone.interpath.net (8.7.5/v1.0) with ESMTP id EAA01930 for ; Mon, 17 Feb 1997 04:38:20 -0500 (EST) Received: from ia021 (ia021.facb.few.eur.nl [130.115.112.117]) by sam.few.eur.nl (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA01417 for ; Mon, 17 Feb 1997 10:43:01 +0100 (MET) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 10:47:12 +0100 (MET) From: Eelco van Asperen To: David Burton Subject: Re: Tiny Perls for MS-DOS (and Windows) - how to get 'em X-Sender: vasperen@sam.few.eur.nl In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 16 Feb 1997, David Burton wrote: > This is just FYI. I mentioned you, so I thought you should see it. Thanks. I haven't done anything on that Perl stuff since then. At the time I needed a version that could run under DOS but demands have changed here. Now, there is simply not enough time to do this sort of work. But if somebody can still use it, good luck to them. Eelco van Asperen / Erasmus University Rotterdam -----------------------/ Informatievoorziening en Automatisering FEW vanasperen@few.eur.nl / PObox 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands ==============================================================================