ActiveState Perl and CGI: specifying perl path (was ASPN and CGI)

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: ASPN and CGI by Kanji (Parson) on May 28, 2002 at 16:53 UTC
`#!perl` is the most common shebang line I've seen in Windows environments and should work fine. If you want/need something more explicit, try `#!c:\perl\bin\perl` (which is the default for an ActivePerl install) or perhaps the same path but different drive letter if the server has more than one available. --k.	[reply]
Re: ASPN and CGI by emcs (Scribe) on May 28, 2002 at 17:00 UTC
My web site used to be hosted on a Win 2000 server; I always started my scripts out with: #!perl -w But my scripts would run without perfectly well without it. They worked in any location and did not have to be in the CGI directory. The dogs bark; but the caravan rolls on.	[reply]
Re: ASPN and CGI by Aristotle (Chancellor) on May 28, 2002 at 17:40 UTC
On Windows machines scripts are commonly associated with their interpreter by way of their extension. The shebang line is a Unix mechanism; you should even be able to do fine leaving it out completely; if not, `#!perl` should do. If you don't need the shebang line, I'd make it `#!/usr/bin/perl` so that your scripts run anywhere without modifications. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: ActiveState Perl and CGI: specifying perl path (was ASPN and CGI) by flounder99 (Friar) on May 28, 2002 at 19:44 UTC
You need to have .cgi associated with perl just as .pl is. That way the web server will hand .cgi files to the perl interperter. You won't need a shebang at the beginning of the .cgi file. using windows explorer: tools->folder options select the file types tab click on New type in .cgi click on OK click on Change select Perl Command Line Interpreter click Close flounder	[reply]
Re: ActiveState Perl and CGI: specifying perl path (was ASPN and CGI) by thunders (Priest) on May 28, 2002 at 21:59 UTC
In my experiance, at least for Apache server and IIS for windows a `#!perl` is necessary. this same line is not necessary for console programs, which sometime confuses new users because the console spits out valid HTML, but they get 500 errors from a browser. Generally if perl is on the path(usually the case with active state install) `#!perl` will do it, otherwise you need the full `#!C:\Perl\bin\perl` you can add .exe to that but it's not necessary. You can configure apache to recognize .cgi as a file to be interpreted by perl, but this is not general practice because cgi programs can be written in many languages. One (possibly obvious) thing to note cgi scripts usually can only be run from specific directories, commonly cgi-bin, but I've seen it be called "scripts" as well.	[reply] [d/l] [select]