in reply to Simnple script not working - Perl on XP

As an anonymous monk pointed out, the following is wrong.

In a Windows environment it is sometimes(?) required to replace
 #!/usr/bin/perl
with
 #!perl
Then you can just hi.pl


Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity

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Re^2: Simnple script not working - Perl on XP
by zerocred (Beadle) on Jan 12, 2011 at 06:15 UTC
    Thanks for that I realize the line isn't really necessary, but its habit.
    Most or all my perl scripts end up being run on Linux.
    I went into the file manager > file type associations and changed the .pl to Perl, so I can just type 'hi.pl' and it runs ok.

    I think what happened was when ActivePerl got deleted before reinstalation, or my reinstall of XP, the .pl got associated with Command Interpreter cos Perl didn't exist - sounds plausible. The association was not made again when Perl was re-installed - until I manually fixed it.
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Re^2: Simnple script not working - Perl on XP
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 11, 2011 at 18:45 UTC
    That's not the case. Perl on Windows parses the line for command-line-like flags because it has to (so -w and -l and -T and so forth will work), but since Perl is already running, it doesn't care about what binary the script claims should be invoked.
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      it doesn't care about what binary the script claims should be invoked

      Interestingly enough, it *does* care about the name of the binary, but only to the extent that it matches /perl/i.
      If you try running a script that begins with #! xxxxx (where 'xxxxx' stands for any string of characters that does *not* match /perl/i) then all you'll get is a "Can't exec xxxxx ...." error.

      This wasn't always the case, but has been since at least perl-5.8.0

      Update: And if 'xxxxx' happens to be the name of a non-perl binary that *does* get found, then things might (or might not) get a little crazy: 
      C:\_32\pscrpt>type try.pl
#! gcc -w
print "ok\n";
C:\_32\pscrpt>perl try.pl

C:\_32\pscrpt>try.pl: file not recognized: File format not recognized
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

C:\_32\pscrpt>

      [download]
      Cheers,
      Rob
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[d/l]
[select]
      I believe one of the major web servers uses that info, so while the switch wouldn't help in this situation, it could help in others.
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