What output do you get if you add this to the end of your Hello_world_test.pl script?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
print "Hello, world!\n";

print "$^X\n";
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BrowserUK, thanks for the note. we may be getting somewhere, because the path shows a path to a Perl that i have in XAMPP, not in C:/perl64/bin. Ikegami said that I might have two Perls installed, and so I do. This is what I got:

C:\Perl64\bin>Hello_world_test.pl
Hello, world!
C:\xampp\perl\bin\perl.exe
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The Xampp Perl does not have the lib with the strict.pm; the Perl64 lib does. Seeing this, I tried to change the path in the Perl file to:

#!c:/perl64/bin/perl.exe
print "Hello, world!\n";
print "$^X\n";
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with the result:

'Hello_world_test_1.pl' is not recognized as an internal or external c
+ommand operable program or batch file.
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so, how do I make it go to the C:/perl64/bin/?

Thanks for any help

The Xampp Perl does not have the lib with the strict.pm;

Then it is broken by design and should be scrapped.

Seeing this, I tried to change the path in the Perl file to: #!c:/perl64/bin/perl.exe

As I told you back up there somewhere, Windows doesn't use the shebang line. (Though Apache under Windows might). That's why I though you might also have Cygwin installed.

If you use a Cygwin shell, that will emulate the *nix-style of shebang processing. Maybe the XAMPP Shell is something similar?

What output do you get from: set

What output do you see from: ftype | find "perl"?

so, how do I make it go to the C:/perl64/bin/?

Switch to an account with sufficient privileges and fix the association as you tried earlier.

C:\Perl64\bin>perl Hello_world_test.pl
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If so, you might find $^X to differ depending on whether you launch the script via the extension (no leading "perl") or via the path (with leading "perl").

* — I suspect the association is there, but the same permission issue that's preventing you changing it is also silently preventing you from seeing it.

Thanks,Ikegami, for the steer

First, I went into the Windows control panel and associated all .pl files with the perl.exe located in C:/perl64/bin and then, I put the 'perl' in the command line just so:

 C:\Perl64\bin>perl Hello_world_test.pl

Just as you said.

Then I got:

C:\Perl64\bin>Perl entities_99.pl
"my" variable $backupoutput masks earlier declaration in same scope at
+ entities_99.pl line 11.
Use of uninitialized value $backupoutput in substitution (s///) at ent
+ities_99.pl line 11.
Use of uninitialized value $backupoutput in concatenation (.) or strin
+g at entities_99.pl line 17.
print() on closed filehandle OUT at entities_99.pl line 18.
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Of course, I don't understand what that means...yet. The script that perl is trying to execute is, as I said several posts ago, is one which operates on an HTML file to change all the entities to HTML, " to “ and so on. Here is the famous strict.pm requiring script:

1 #!/usr/bin/perl -w


4 use strict;
5 use Data::Dumper;
6 $|=1;   #makes the macro produce all results at once, not in spurts

8 my $filename = "RAH99.html";
9 my $output = $filename;
10 my $backupoutput = $filename;
11 my $backupoutput =~ s{\.html*}{.entbackup.html}i;

13 open (IN, $filename);
14 my $book = join('',<IN>);
15 close IN;

17 open (OUT, ">$backupoutput");
18 print OUT $book;
19 close OUT;

22 $book =~ s/‘/&lsquo;/g;
23 $book =~ s/’/&rsquo;/g;
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Lots more exchange lines

79 $book =~ s/û/û/g;
80 $book =~ s/ü/ü/g;

82 my $utf8 = qq!<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; c
+harset=UTF-8" />!;

84 $book = "I have changed the most common Unicode characters into HTM
+L entities.\n\nUse this search term to find any leftovers: [€-ÿ]\n\nA
+lso, don't forget to add a UTF-8 meta tag to your header:\n\n$utf8\n\
+n".$book;


87 open (OUT, ">$filename");
88 print OUT $book;
89 close OUT;
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If these error messages suggest a place for me to start looking, I would appreciate it

Once again, many thanks to ikegami, BrowserUK and all that have taken the time to share their thoughts on the missing strict.pm

87 open (OUT, ">$filename");
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You are not checking for error there. This line should be:

87 open (OUT, ">$filename") or die "Couldn't create '$filename': $!";
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For the warning about $backupoutput, that means you have somewhere something like:

my $backupoutput = 1;
...
my $backupoutput = 2; # you will get the warning here

print $backupoutput;
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Usually this happens when you get trigger-happy and add my before everything that looks like a variable, and then add one my too many.