I was wondering if anyone knows of a good Perl method/module for detecting what Windows platform/version a Perl program is running under (the program will be Perl2exe compiled). I've done several searches here and on The Perl CD Bookshelf without finding anything consistent for the Win32 platforms.

I started out looking at $^O, but it: "Contains the name of the operating system that the current Perl binary was compiled for." (from Perl in a Nutshell). Besides the value returned in my particular test program under Win98 was "MSWin32" which is not nearly specific enough.

Then I looked through Learning Perl on Win32 Systems at the Win32::Registry modules, but there are too many inconsistencies between OS registry structures.

After much frustration with Win NT 4.0, I typed the DOS VER command from a DOS shell and thought "Hmm ..., this might work". Then I tested VER on Win95/98/2k machines and discovered that I could use them as well. So far I have the following snippet:

my $ver_str = `ver`;

   # Test strings
   # my $ver_str = 'Windows 98 [Version 4.10.1998]';
   # my $ver_str = 'Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]';
   # my $ver_str = 'Microsoft Windows 95. [Version 4.00.1111]';
   ## guessed on this one ##  my $ver_str = 'Windows NT Version 3.51';
   # my $ver_str = 'Windows NT Version 4.0';

print "VER: $ver_str\n";
$_ = $ver_str;
my $os_ver = "N/A";
$os_ver = 'win95' if m/( 95 | 95. )/;
$os_ver = 'win98' if m/ 98 /;
$os_ver = 'nt351' if m/ NT / && m/ 3.51/;
$os_ver = 'nt40'  if m/ NT / && m/ 4.0/;
$os_ver = 'win2k' if m/ 2000 /;
print "\$os_ver: $os_ver\n\n";
[download]

Since I don't have access to an NT 3.51 machine, I guessed at that one. I also need an example for Win ME as well but I can get that later at work.

The problems that I see now are:

1) I hope that all sub-versions of the VER string are consistent.
2) Will this method be relatively sufficient (sorta depends on 1).
3) There's got to be something already out there to do this (either freeware executable, or preferably, Perl based).

So if anyone here at the Monastery has any reasonable ideas or suggestions I love to ++ them for it. Thanks.

P.S., this is related to my node Small Project Definition.

"The reward of a thing well done, is to have to done it." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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