Conventions Used in This Book

Programming Conventions

Perl's compiler, like most C and C++ compilers will try to help you out, if you ask it to. Similarly, the level of help it offers is configurable by you, the programmer. Perl supports two pragmas to help developers write their code. They are the use strict and use warnings pragmas. All of the code for Pas is developed using these pragmas. Everything. That's our standard internaly, and it's our recommendation for code that you write using Pas.

Documentation Conventions

Throughout this documentation, we will often refer to "perldoc" or "man pages". When we referr to these, we are talking about the on-line documentation that comes with Perl, Perl modules, and your Unix system.

Getting Help

Besides the on-line API documentation that is provided with Pas, including this manual, there are also a developer and a users mailing list set up at SourceForge. We encourage you to subscribe to the developer's mailing list. The mailing list is perhaps the best source of help for issues relating to using and developing software with Pas.

You can subscribe to the mailing list by vising the main list page [http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pas-dev] at SourceForge.

Acknowledgments

Pas wouldn't exist without Perl, or the Apache project. It also would not have been possible without the existance of CPAN. Pas has built it's foundation on these projects and owes them its successes.

Ultimately Pas as a project will live or die based on its users. The fact that you are reading this manual means that you are at least a potential user. Thank you for deciding to give Pas a try. We look forward to your feedback.