NAME¶

PPerl - Make perl scripts persistent in memory

SYNOPSIS¶

  $ pperl foo.pl

DESCRIPTION¶

This program turns ordinary perl scripts into long running daemons, making subsequent executions extremely fast. It forks several processes for each script, allowing many processes to call the script at once. It works a lot like SpeedyCGI, but is written a little differently. I didn't use the SpeedyCGI codebase, because I couldn't get it to compile, and needed something ASAP. The easiest way to use this is to change your shebang line from:

  #!/usr/bin/perl -w

To use pperl instead:

  #!/usr/bin/pperl -w

WARNINGS¶

Like other persistent environments, this one has problems with things like BEGIN blocks, global variables, etc. So beware, and try checking the mod_perl guide at http://perl.apache.org/guide/ for lots of information that applies to many persistent perl environments.

Parameters¶

  $ pperl <perl params> -- <pperl params> scriptname <script params>

The perl params are sent to the perl binary the first time it is started up. See perlrun for details. The pperl params control how pperl works. Try -h for an overview. The script params are passed to the script on every invocation. The script also gets any current environment variables, the current working directory, and everything on STDIN.

Killing¶

In order to kill a currently running PPerl process, use:

  pperl -- -k <scriptname>

You need to make sure the path to the script is the same as when it was invoked. Alternatively look for a .pid file for the script in your tmp directory, and kill (with SIGINT) the process with that PID.

ENVIRONMENT¶

pperl uses the PPERL_TMP_PATH environment variable to determine the directory where to store the files used for inter-process communication. By default, the subdirectory .pperl of the user's home directory is used.

BUGS¶

The process does not reload when the script or modules change. $^S is not represented identically with respect to perl, since your script will be run within an eval block

AUTHOR¶

Matt Sergeant, matt@sergeant.org. Copyright 2001 MessageLabs Ltd.

SEE ALSO¶

perl. perlrun.