If it's a .bat file, it's a Windows batch file. Before Windows XP, you might or might not have been able to successfully run a Perl script on windows just by running it. One solution was to convert a perl script to a batch file (the Activestate distribution still includes a script to accomplish this).

The script makes a copy of the perl script (replacing the extension with .bat) and puts a bunch of lines at the top so that if Perl is not installed, the batch file will exit gracefully. When you run the batch file, it calls perl.exe with the batch file as the argument, including the -x switch, which tells perl to skip everything until it finds a shebang line (which is #!perl).

And as JavaFan pointed out, local *MY_VAR is defining it.

Consider reading Learning Perl. It's a good read, and may be helpful to you.

--marmot

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.