I guess that PowerShell uses double quotes like Perl does. Maybe try single quotes?

perl -e 'print $^O;'
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Right you are! How typical of Microsoft to not be consistent, atleast this is an improvement :P

PS copied many concepts from Bash and Perl. (After all it's an attempt to fix problems with cmd and bat and full of aliases to support *nix commands)

For instance

• $ as sigil for $variables
• interpolation in double-quoted strings

C:\tmp>powershell
Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.


PS C:\tmp> $x="xxx"
PS C:\tmp> echo "a${x}b"
axxxb
PS C:\tmp> echo 'a${x}b'
a${x}b
PS C:\tmp> exit

C:\tmp>
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That's why you need a single-quoted string for perl -e

the following code does not output anything:

perl -e 'print "this is a test";'

I can't figure out why, shouldn't this work?

this works though:

perl -e 'print qq(this is a test);'

my guess is that doublequotes are stripped from the input

PS C:\Windows\system32> perl -E'say @ARGV' 'say "bla"'
say bla
PS C:\Windows\system32> perl -E'say @ARGV' 'say qq(bla)'
say qq(bla)
PS C:\Windows\system32> echo 'say "bla"'
say "bla"
PS C:\Windows\system32> echo 'print "bla"' |perl
bla
PS C:\Windows\system32> echo 'print "bla"' |perl -E'say <>'
print "bla"
PS C:\Windows\system32>
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this could be an artifact of Perl trying to repair input from CMD ... (?)

(I think eyepops will soon come up with an older discussion about the Perl trying to cleverly fix CMD idiosyncrasies ;)

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

interesting finding, I tried it and.. more doubts coming out

PS C:\Users\me> Get-Host | Select-Object Version

Version
-------
5.1.19041.1682


PS C:\Users\me> C:\EX_D\ulisseDUE\perl5.24.64bit\perl\bin\perl.exe -e 
+"print $^O;"
PS C:\Users\me>                                                       
+              # no output as you noticed

PS C:\Users\me> C:\EX_D\ulisseDUE\perl5.24.64bit\perl\bin\perl.exe -e 
+'print $^O;'
MSWin32                                                               
+              # ok with single quotes.. meh
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But what happens if I cast portableshell.bat coming within my portable strawberry perl?

PS C:\Users\me> C:\EX_D\ulisseDUE\perl5.24.64bit\portableshell.bat
----------------------------------------------
 Welcome to Strawberry Perl Portable Edition!
 * URL - http://www.strawberryperl.com/
 * see README.TXT for more info
----------------------------------------------
Perl executable: C:\EX_D\ulisseDUE\perl5.24.64bit\perl\bin\perl.exe
Perl version   : 5.24.2 / MSWin32-x64-multi-thread

C:\Users\me>perl -e "print $^O;"
MSWin32                                                              #
+ good 'ol expected behaviour
C:\Users\me>
C:\Users\me>
C:\Users\me>perl -e 'print $^O;'
Can't find string terminator "'" anywhere before EOF at -e line 1.   #
+ no more single quote allowed
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More: the powershell console is no more a powershell console! Get-Host gives me command not found

L*

you have to distinguish between console/terminal-window and a shell running within°, and you can run multiple shells nested within each other.²

in your case portableshell.bat starts a fresh cmd° shell as a sub-process inside the current terminal window, after typing exit you'll be back to the outer powershell.

compare

C:\tmp>
C:\tmp>cmd                                        # new sub shell
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.2251]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

C:\tmp>exit                                       # leave sub shell

C:\tmp>
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vs

C:\tmp>start cmd                                  # new window with su
+b shell

C:\tmp>
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Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

°) that's mostly *nix speak, not sure how they call these on win

²) the motivation for the name "shell" is a surrounding process managing an environment for sub-processes

Thanks! ^^

Didn't know about the portableshell, it works fine :)
I'll keep that handy.