A Unix box, doesn't care what file type is used for a perl script, as you are always required to put the filename in full (though you can get the shell to do some of the fingerwork for you with autocomplete). With other O/S, the picture is more muddy.

Under Windows, you can associate .pl (or .plx) with the Perl executable, allowing clickable icons etc. but this is not recommended or needed. Normally, any standalone scripts you want to run as commands can be converted to .bat files with pl2bat.

VMS requires a symbol (cf alias) to be set up for everything that is run as a command, hence this can (and does) include the instruction to run perl.

In practice, there are many scripts distributed on CPAN which do not have the form *.pl:

• t/*.t are the tests for a module
• *.cgi are example CGI scripts
• Commands are often distributed with no extension at all.

I can understand and sympathise with Randall's reserving .pl for libraries. However, I can't think of the last time that I "require"d a .pl file in code I have been writing.

Hope this helps
rinceWind