I use perl mainly for sysadmin functions on Solaris boxen and use joe (similar to pico but with more features). For Windows (which I use mostly for playing with Perl) I have been using TextPad, which you can license for a nominal fee ($27US). Normally I don't like shareware/trialware, but after using Textpad for a while, I stopped using Write/Wordpad/Notepad altogether.

The only problem I've found with TextPad is that it doesn't handle large files very well (10+MB). But then, I'm not planning on writing any Perl programs that large (not yet, anyway).

I downloaded Open Perl IDE at home last night after reading your post and liked what I saw. I'm all for freeware, particularly if it is a well written and useful product, so I'm hoping it lives up to the expectations I developed after my first impressions of it. Thanks for the tip.

Update: After using it a bit on my home Win98 box, the only problem I've encountered is that it doesn't always exit nicely. About 40% of the time I have to cancel it to remove it from my task bar.

--Jim