in reply to PPT and Cygwin

I use Cygwin on my Windows system and yes there is a version of Perl installed under Cygwin and a separate one installed under Windows (i.e. ActiveState). I do not seem to experience any collisions except some strange DOS behavior where some MS-DOS commands do not seem to work as they used to but I think that is the fault of ActiveState.

The nice thing about Cygwin is that it seems like a complete UNIX environment purportedly with cron etc etc. So you can run your perl scripts under the Cygwin shell like this: 

     ./script.pl

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whereas under DOS, you cannot.

I admit that it would be nice to have things like grep, less, whatever under Windows/DOS so that I didn't have to go into the Cygwin shell but oh well.

metadoktor

"The doktor is in."

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Re: Re: PPT and Cygwin
by ViceRaid (Chaplain) on Feb 18, 2002 at 10:49 UTC

    If you add your "C:\path\to\cygwin\bin" directory to your Windows PATH, you'll be able to use less, grep, find and so on from the bog-standard DOS command line. The main use I've found for this is that I don't have to remember to use dir rather than ls on Windows; I seem to be a bit slow on the uptake and can never remember which is an SSH window and which is DOS.

    If you do this, and you've got both C:\path\to\cygwin\bin and C:\path\to\perl in your PATH make sure you know which perl you're pointing to when you type 'perl script.pl', because cygwin\bin usually has a perl in it. I've had multiple perl binaries (AS and Cygwin) and multiple ruby binaries (native Win32 and Cygwin) for a while now, and it never seems to cause many problems.

    update: On the original question, I'd have no hesitation in suggesting using Cygwin. Having gnu make in Windows means that you're only really limited by what source you can get your hands on, plus you can install *nix daemons as Windows Services - for example, Cygwin is the only way to get a PostgreSQL server running on Windows.

    //=\\
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      ... plus you can install *nix daemons as Windows Services ...
      ++ to ViceRaid for bringing up this point.

      I run cygwin sshd as a Service on a Windows 2000 box. For the rare occasions I need to use that box, i just ssh into it. Most of the times this (command line access to windows) is sufficient, unless I need to run command-line-challenged GUI programs.

      /prakash

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