An short example of how to set environment variables in the parent "shell" using Perl under Win32.
Save this to a file named "SetEnviron.bat", run "pl2bat SetEnviron.bat", then "SetEnviron whatever you want to type" will change the value of %PARENT% in the parent "shell" (command.com or cmd.exe) that you used to run the script.
Extending this to actually do something useful is very easy and is left as an exercise for Rex(Wrecks).
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
die qq[You need to run "pl2bat $0" first.\n]
unless <DATA> =~ /^:endofperl$/i;
open DATA, "+< $0"
or die "Can't update $0: $!\n";
while( <DATA> ) {
last if /^:endofperl$/i;
}
seek( DATA, 0, 1 );
@ARGV= qw( This is a test ) unless @ARGV;
print DATA "SET PARENT=@ARGV\n";
truncate( DATA, tell(DATA) );
warn "Setting %PARENT% in the parent shell's environment.\n";
exit( 0 );
