I'd like to use a perl script to apply a the contents of text data to a windows executible.
In this particular case, a Answer File to a 'Acrobat Reader' installer.

Here's an ugly way of doing it with the script below:
This outputs a answerfile to the computers hardrive and THEN applies it to the executible
It's the only thing that works...

open(ACROBAT, ">c:\\acrobat5.iss" ) || die "acrobat5.iss: $!\n";

format ACROBAT=
[InstallShield Silent]
Version=v5.00.000
File=Response File
[File Transfer]
OverwriteReadOnly=NoToAll
[DlgOrder]
Dlg0=SdWelcome-0
Count=3
Dlg1=SdAskDestPath-0
Dlg2=MessageBox-0
[SdWelcome-0]
Result=1
[SdAskDestPath-0]
szDir=C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0
Result=1
[Application]
Name=Reader
Version=5.0
Company=Adobe
Lang=0009
[MessageBox-0]
Result=1
.
write ACROBAT;

my $pkg = '\\acrobat5.exe /a /s /sms /f1_$';
system $pkg;

close ACROBAT;

unlink ("c:\\acrobat5.iss");
[download]

It would be nice not to author a seperate file, as above but the way windows executables apply text files confuses me.

Windows executibles that get instructions from whole text files, such as answerfiles and AutoIt scripts, seem to require those files have a actual location. Parsing them from __DATA__ dosn't work, as in this unssucsful example below (just starts a new instance of acrobat5.exe for each line each line of DATA)

while( <DATA> ){
   my $pkg = "c:\\acrobat5.exe /a /s /sms /f1$_";
   system $pkg;
}

__DATA__

[InstallShield Silent]
Version=v5.00.000
File=Response File
[File Transfer]
OverwriteReadOnly=NoToAll
[DlgOrder]
Dlg0=SdWelcome-0
Count=3
Dlg1=SdAskDestPath-0
Dlg2=MessageBox-0
[SdWelcome-0]
Result=1
[SdAskDestPath-0]
szDir=C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0
Result=1
[Application]
Name=Reader
Version=5.0
Company=Adobe
Lang=0009
[MessageBox-0]
Result=1
[download]

I attempted this without luck too... It was supposed to feed all the data at once, but it didn't work either;

my $answer_file = ('
[InstallShield Silent]
Version=v5.00.000
File=Response File
[File Transfer]
OverwriteReadOnly=NoToAll
[DlgOrder]
Dlg0=SdWelcome-0
Count=3
Dlg1=SdAskDestPath-0
Dlg2=MessageBox-0
[SdWelcome-0]
Result=1
[SdAskDestPath-0]
szDir=C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0
Result=1
[Application]
Name=Reader
Version=5.0
Company=Adobe
Lang=0009
[MessageBox-0]
Result=1');

my $pkg = "c:\\acrobat5.exe /a /s /sms /f1$answer_file";
system $pkg;
[download]

Ideas? It's seems it's all about tricking the installer to think the data is a file on the harddrive.
Yes, it would be easy just to keep a seperate answer file, but I'm trying to avoid the overhead and keep things compact.