Re: new perl user

Welcome :) Read perlintro

plx is a windows throwback, because windows doesn't use shebang but assoc (C:\> help assoc), and before perl5, there were no modules, so libraries were just .pl files, and perl5 includes some (now unsupported) compatibility libraries

$ perl -e " require 'ctime.pl'; print ctime()"
Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 PST 1969
[download]

so activestate (who ported perl to win32, then microsoft sponsored them) wanted to distinguish these libraries (non-executable) from programs (executable), so that if you typed pwd.pl (or clicked on pwd.pl), it opened pwd.pl in notepad (or whatever), but if you typed superfly.plx (or clicked it), it executed perl superfly.plx

I also think there was a superfly.plw which executed wperl superfly.plw (wperl is GUI version, non-console)

I don't know if this still survives in activeperl, but I don't think strawberryperl uses it .... you can manage this yourself see C:\> help ftype, it actually shows perl as the example

Comment on Re: new perl user Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: new perl user by bobr (Monk) on Mar 11, 2011 at 11:22 UTC
Just tested on ActivePerl 5.12 -- it does associate .pl extension to perl, but does not setup anything for .plx.	[reply]
Re^3: new perl user by GrandFather (Saint) on Mar 14, 2011 at 09:54 UTC
Simple. Don't use .plx - it's not conventional. Use .pl for scripts and .pm for modules. In the *nix world drop the .pl (no extension for scripts, but don't forget to use `#!/usr/bin/perl` as the first line), but carry on using .pm. True laziness is hard work	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: new perl user by Anonymous Monk on Mar 14, 2011 at 07:39 UTC
FWIW, IIRC, .PLX was also adopted as an IIS webserver convention	[reply]