When you do the install you get a number of options. You will need to select a different install directory from 5.6, say c:\perl5-8 and you will not want to add the .pl file association. Nor do you want to add perl to your PATH. After you have finished you will need to make sure that your PATH includes the path to the 5.6 perl.exe but does not include the path to the 5.8 perl.exe. To run a development program with 5.6/5.8 you would then need to:

# run with 5.6 (or double click on)
>perl my_prog.pl

# run with 5.8
>c:\perl5-8\bin\perl.exe my_prog.pl

# this should say 5.6
>perl -v

# this should say 5.8
>c:\perl5-8\bin\perl.exe -v
[download]

If all else fails (due to overwriting registry info) you could install Indigo Perl to do 5.6 and AS Perl to do 5.8. As these are separate entities you should not get into too much trouble.

In a worst case you could install perl 5.8 in a virtual machine (Vmware) on the desktop. This is guaranteed to work.

cheers

tachyon

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