Hello hsfrey,

As GrandFather says, there’s little likelihood that a new Perl will “clobber” existing scripts; but you don’t have to take the chance. Don’t replace your current Perl. Download the version of your choice from http://strawberryperl.com/releases.html, choosing one of the “PDL editions.” As it says at the top of that page,

PDL edition = portable edition + extra PDL related modules and external libraries

so you’re getting a portable version which is guaranteed not to conflict with your system Perl. It comes as a .zip file: unzip it to a suitable directory, then invoke it via the portableshell.bat file that comes as part of the package. (See the README.txt file for more details.) You have the Perl version of your choice, with PDL, and it won’t conflict with your default Perl.

Hope that helps,

I tried installing PDL using cpan against:

This is perl 5, version 32, subversion 0 (v5.32.0) built for MSWin32-x
+64-multi-thread
[download]

on a Windows 10 machine. My experience was similar except that I noticed lots of pointer/integer size warnings and various other issues that may be 64bit compile related. The (almost) last part of the output contains lots of stuff like:

t\40-Semaphore.t ..... Can't locate loadable object for module Win32::
+IPC in @INC (@INC contains: C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11-0\b
+lib\lib C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11-0\blib\arch C:/Strawber
+ry/perl/site/lib C:/Strawberry/perl/vendor/lib C:/Strawberry/perl/lib
+ .) at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11-0\blib\lib/Win32/IPC.pm 
+line 45.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-
+1.11-0\blib\lib/Win32/IPC.pm line 45.
Compilation failed in require at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11
+-0\blib\lib/Win32/Semaphore.pm line 29.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-
+1.11-0\blib\lib/Win32/Semaphore.pm line 29.
Compilation failed in require at t\40-Semaphore.t line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t\40-Semaphore.t line 12.
t\40-Semaphore.t ..... Dubious, test returned 2 (wstat 512, 0x200)
Failed 17/17 subtests
t\50-ChangeNotify.t .. Can't locate loadable object for module Win32::
+IPC in @INC (@INC contains: C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11-0\b
+lib\lib C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11-0\blib\arch C:/Strawber
+ry/perl/site/lib C:/Strawberry/perl/vendor/lib C:/Strawberry/perl/lib
+ .) at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11-0\blib\lib/Win32/IPC.pm 
+line 45.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-
+1.11-0\blib\lib/Win32/IPC.pm line 45.
Compilation failed in require at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-1.11
+-0\blib\lib/Win32/ChangeNotify.pm line 30.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\STRAWB~1\cpan\build\Win32-IPC-
+1.11-0\blib\lib/Win32/ChangeNotify.pm line 30.
Compilation failed in require at t\50-ChangeNotify.t line 13.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t\50-ChangeNotify.t line 13.
t\50-ChangeNotify.t .. Dubious, test returned 2 (wstat 512, 0x200)
No subtests run
[download]

which doesn't look very encouraging. Before that there is what, to my inexperienced eye, looks like a shit ton of link errors for process management code. I suspect there is no trivial fix hanging in the wings.

However, unless you have put your Perl scripts in an unfortunate place, there should be no issue of clobbering your code installing a new version of Perl so maybe the Strawberry canned PDL version is worth a try? You can always copy your Perl scripts some place safe before you start just to be sure.

maybe the Strawberry canned PDL version is worth a try?

Certainly good advice.

As regards hsfrey's test failures, I think it's just that Win32::IPC needs to be installed. (cpan -i Win32::IPC)
UPDATE: Oops ... those were GrandFather's test failures that I was looking at - and I think swl is right.

Cheers,
Rob

Force was required to install Win32::IPC. That doesn't fix things though. The PDL build badness seems to start with:

g++ Core.def -o ..\..\blib\arch\auto\PDL\Core\Core.xs.dll -mdll -s -L"
+C:\STRAWB~1\perl\lib\CORE" -L"C:\STRAWB~1\c\lib" Core.o pdlcore.o pdl
+api.o pdlhash.o pdlthread.o pdlconv.o pdlmagic.o pdlsections.o   "C:\
+STRAWB~1\perl\lib\CORE\libperl532.a" -lmoldname -lkernel32 -luser32 -
+lgdi32 -lwinspool -lcomdlg32 -ladvapi32 -lshell32 -lole32 -loleaut32 
+-lnetapi32 -luuid -lws2_32 -lmpr -lwinmm -lversion -lodbc32 -lodbccp3
+2 -lcomctl32 -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base
Core.o:Core.c:(.text+0x51): undefined reference to `Perl_get_context'
Core.o:Core.c:(.text+0x5d): undefined reference to `Perl_av_len'
Core.o:Core.c:(.text+0xab): undefined reference to `Perl_get_context'
[download]

and continues in a similar vein for about 2000 lines.

Optimising for fewest key strokes only makes sense transmitting to Pluto or beyond

It worked even better after I installed the now-required OpenGL::GLUT to get the TriD stuff going, and better again when I fixed the problems that revealed. The separate OpenGL::GLUT is something I am looking to merge into main OpenGL, because currently there is duplicated code that causes unnecessary difficulty.

EDIT: if there are problems installing PDL on Windows, we care - please open an issue on https://github.com/PDLPorters/pdl/issues with as much information as possible, including error logs and "perl -V" output.