but that gives me a thought, does anyone know how to add multiple associations? ... something that will allow you to pull-up a little menu with right-click and have the choice to run, edit, copy, paste, blah... i wouldn't mind knowing how to do that if anyone knows off the top of their head

Yes, you open an explorer window and go to the view menu, then options. There should be a tab that says file types. If you select this and then highlight the file type you want to alter, it will give you a list of options. One of these will be highlighted - this is the default, it will be invoked with a double click. The other options are available though a right click on the file in explorer or it's icon.

You can edit actions that are already there, or add new ones. If you examine some of the actions on the filetypes that are already there, it will give you examples of the kind of things that you can do.

Have Fun!

P.S. Please don't tell anybody that I answered a windows question ;-)

Nuance

From explorer click view options or view Folder Options, and then click the File Types Tab

Then, locate the file type you are interested in in the "Registerd file types" list box. Unfortunately, they are listed alphabetically by description rather than extension, so this may take a bit of seaching. Clicking on a description will show the extension(s) associated with it in the "File type details" box at the bottom of the dialog.

Once you have found the type you are interested in, click the edit button. In the "Actions:" list box, you will see the currently associated actions for that file type. The one labeled "Open" and in bold is the default for double-clicking. Click the new button.

In the "Action:" text-box, type the name that you want to see in the context(right-click) menu. E.g. "Edit with Textpad", or "Open in excell"

If the program requires special command line parameters, you must use the % variable batch file standards to encode the command, with %1% being automatically set to the filename you are trying to open.
E.g. "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe" /e "%1%"
to start up excel suppressing the welcome screen and default blank workbook from displaying.

Click the Ok button, and that dialog will close, and your action will be added to the "Actions" listbox. If you are working with a source code file, I would reccomend clicking the always show extension checkbox as well. Click Ok again, and you are back to the Options dialog. One final click of OK, and you are done.

Now go to a file of the correct type, and right click. Your new action will be in the context menu, and clicking that menu option should bring the file up in the specified program if you did everything correctly.

TO ALL:::: Sorry for the non-perl discussion here, but I figured it might help others as well.