On 13 Sep 2009, at 03:46, Doug McNutt wrote:

At 23:22 +0100 9/12/09, Mine wrote:
Hi,

Thanks for your excellent response, makes installing so easy assuming I did it correctly. I think everything that was required is installed, but I am not sure everything was installed
in the right location.

It appears that Perl 5.10.1 was installed and all the modules I installed are associated with Perl 5.10.1. When I try to run the get_iplayer PVR module I get the following error: Can't locate loadable object for module HTML::Parser in @INC (@INC contains: /opt/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/darwin-2level
(I have abbreviated the error message)

And when I enter perl -v  I get the following:
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for darwin-2level

So the system does not see the Perl 5.10.1 install. Can someone please tell me if there is a was to install the modules so they relate to perl, v5.8.8, or point get_iplayer to use Perl 5.10.1.



I suspect that Apple's perl is 5.8.8 and it is installed in /usr/ bin. It needs to stay there because Apple's updates may depend on it. Installing 5.10.1 in /usr/bin/ replacing 5.8.8 is not recommended.

I also suspect that perl 5.10 is installed in /usr/local/bin but that might be different like /opt/bin depending on just how you installed it.. Look around for it. /opt/local/lib/ sounds unlikely to me.

You are probably going to make a change to your PATH environment variable to make the directory that perl 5,10 resides in appear before /usr/bin.

A shell command like:
setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH  # csh

PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH   # something like this in bash
export PATH

You can also specify PATH in a startup file
$HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist.
but you'll have to create that including the .MacOSX directory unless it's already there. There are some instructions on Apple's web site. Ask if you'd like a sample.

@INC is a perl array that lists directories in which modules can be found. There are a bunch of standard locations relative to the directory that perl itself lives in but you can add more directories by setting the PERL5LIB environment variable to a PATH-like list of other directories. That too can be done in environment.plist.

It's a bit hard to understand why iplayer doesn't have an installation script or at least some less geeky instructions for users.

I am puzzled why the original poster is having problems with 'get_iplayer'. Out of curiosity I downloaded it and find it runs fine here on a standard Apple Perl install. Regrettably I have deleted the original post but I recollect the writer said he was not a frequent user of Perl? So I wondered if the following thoughts might be helpful.

'get_iplayer.pl' is just a 272KB script (272KB) which can be put anywhere convenient and there is excellent documentation for it on the download site. Just for starters it is convenient to park it on the desktop.

The first thing to do is set the executable flag by the following line in Terminal.app
        chmod +x <full_path_to_'get_iplayer'>
-- it being understood that the easiest way to get the <full_path_to_'get_iplayer'> is just to drag 'get-iplayer.pl> from where it is on the Desktop into the Terminal window.

The next thing is simply to put
        <full_path_to_'get_iplayer'>
as the command line in Terminal (on line of course) and it should then list all available BBC TV files in alphabetical order. If it does not, then some investigation is called for.

To do this it makes life very much easier if the hidden folders (containing Perl and its modules) are made visible. To this execute the following in Terminal:
        /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a v 'full-path-name'
and then:
        killall "Finder"
For 'full path name put successively, /bin, /Library, /sbin, /System and /usr. (The process can be reversed by running the line again with the lower-case 'v' replaced by an upper-case 'V'.)

Now 'get_iplayer.pl' starts with the 'shebang' "#!/usr/bin/perl". So go to '/usr/bin' (now visible) and look for 'perl' -- it will surely be there.

The script 'uses' the following:

use Env q...@path];
use Fcntl;
use File::Copy;
use File::Path;
use File::stat;
use Getopt::Long;
use HTML::Entities;
use HTTP::Cookies;
use HTTP::Headers;
use IO::Seekable;
use IO::Socket;
use LWP::ConnCache;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use POSIX qw(mkfifo);
use Time::Local;
use URI;
use POSIX qw(:termios_h);

So, go to /System/Library/Perl/5.8.8 and look down the list to see that all these things are present. I would be astonished if any are missing in an Apple standard Perl install, but in that unlikely event, I would think the simplest thing would be to download the missing module from CPAN and pop it in. (On Mac OS X 10.4.* it might be 5.8.4 (?) I think, but that shouldn't matter at all -- the script should be quite happy with that version).

The next thing to check is that /System/Library/Perl is listed in @INC. Run the following in Terminal:
        perl -e 'foreach (@INC) {print"$_\n"}'
In the unlikely event it is not in the list, then add it to @INC.

I hope these notes might be helpful to someone relatively unused to Perl and apologise if I appear, so to speak, to be trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs...

Alan Fry

(PS I am afraid I shall be away for ten days from tomorrow and unable to respond until I get back.)





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