thunders - you're completely correct about how the ActiveState installer associates the 'pl' extension with perl.exe by default. But that's not the same thing as making files with a 'pl' extension truly executable.

Notice that Paul says he tried typing the script name at the DOS prompt and got a "bad command or filename" in response.

Double-clicking the file in Windows Explorer causes the filename to be sent to the perl.exe program, which then tries to parse and execute the code in the file. On my Windows machine, the command that Explorer issues when I double-click on a *.pl file is this: 

C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe "%1" %*

[download]
You mentioned the Windows 'File Types' dialog - while you're there, find 'Perl file', click 'Edit' - select the 'Action' called 'open' and click 'Edit'. Here's where you'll see that command line.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Perl On Win 98 by mrbbking
in thread Perl On Win 98 by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.