The -s switch is a little problematic on Win32, at least with AS 5.6. perl -s script -VAR=1 works fine but without the -s on the command line (ie with #!perl -s) it does not work. In other words it seems to me that while -w is read off the shebang on Win32 -s is not. Anyway -s implements a very simple mechanism. I would suggest using one of the Getopt modules is a better way to go but you can fake its behaviour with a handful of lines:

C:\>type test.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
our ( $HELLO, $WORLD );

# fake the behaviour of -s
{
    no strict;
    my @other = ();
    while(my $term = shift @ARGV) {
        $term =~ s/^\-/\$/ ? eval $term : push @other, $term;
    }
    @ARGV = @other;
}

print "Got $HELLO $WORLD\n";
print "\@ARGV = ( @ARGV )\n";

C:\>perl test.pl -HELLO=hello -WORLD=world other arguments
Got hello world
@ARGV = ( other arguments )
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Note that this code does a trusting string eval which is dangerous but on Win32 your security is already shot ;-). You should probably make it more secure by validating the $term string before the eval but as whoever executes it already has a shell in which to execute arbitrary commands (and the script will exec with their perms) I don't really see it as a major security issue.

There are several ways of avoiding the need to use -s on the command line:

P:\test>assoc .pl
.pl=Perl

P:\test>ftype Perl
Perl="c:\perl\bin\perl.exe" -sw "%1" %*

P:\test>type test.pl
#! perl -slw
use strict;

print 'hello' if our $hello;
print 'world' if our $world;

P:\test>test -hello -world
hello
world

P:\test>ftype Perl="c:\perl\bin\perl.exe" -w "%1" %*
Perl="c:\perl\bin\perl.exe" -w "%1" %*

P:\test>set PERL5OPTS=-s

P:\test>test -hello -world
hello
world
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Whether either method would work for the op's problem I have no idea as I've never used perl2exe. Of the two, I would think that setting PERL5OPTS=-s is the more likely to work if either do.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

Thanks for your help. I've done somthing like this in the past, and I didn't really wont to change the code at this stage but needs must.

The good people at Indigostar also came up with this


use Getopt::Long;
my ($verbose, $quiet, $test, $debug, $help) = (0,0,0,0,0);
GetOptions ('verbose' => \$verbose, 'quiet' => \$quiet, 'test' =>
\$test, 'help' => \$help, 'debug' => \$debug);
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Thanks again

Aside from not wanting to change your code, why would you use perl's -s over Getopt::Std or Getopt::Long?