[Perl-beginners] Updating Perl 5.8.8 to 5.10 under MacOSX and Eclipse EPIC

Your default perl lives at /usr/bin/perl and as I recall, ActiveState's
package puts the new one in /opt. So the problem is probably that Eclipse
is not "seeing" the newly installed 5.10. I don't know how to set such a
preference in Eclipse, but this may help point you in the right direction.

Hm. I have spent the last hour or so attempting to get this to work,
but I cannot seem to get Perl to update. I have located the 5.10
directory under /usr/local/ActiveState-5.10 but I cannot get Eclipse
to recognize it. I even tried Eclipse and EasyEclipse. Does anyone
have any other IDE suggestions for Mac OSX? Perhaps something a little
more user friendly. I feel so discouraged, I can't even get it to
point to the interpreter, and all I can say is print 'hello world'
haha.

Thanks guys,
Steven

I use MacVim on OS X (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/), but that's
essentially just a gui version of vim, not a full IDE. The IDE I hear the
most about for Mac is TextMate (http://macromates.com/), but I've never
tried it.

As for Perl, you *did* install an updated version of it. By default, a
newer version won't (and probably shouldn't) simply overwrite your system's
version. The system may depend on various things being the way they are
with the Perl they ship. So, only Mac should update the Perl in /usr/bin
(don't hold your breath). However, there's nothing to stop you from
installing a newer version somewhere else, as you did, and using that
version. Probably the first thing you need to do now is update your $PATH.

If you open the .profile file in your user home directory
(/Users/your-name/.profile), you want to add a line like this to it:

export PATH=/usr/local/ActiveState-5.10/bin:$PATH

That simply prepends the new ActiveState directory to your already existing
path. When a shell looks for a perl binary, it should now find the new one
first. After you do the edit, source the new path and test it with the
command "which perl". Here's how to source it. Type this in a shell:

. .profile

This may even help the Eclipse problem, though I doubt it. I would check
its documentation and see what it says about changing your $PATH or
multiple insallations of one interpreter.

HTH, T