RE: Could anyone please answer a simple PERL question.

From: Carol Stone (carol_at_carolstone.com)
Date: 07/09/04

  • Next message: Sudhindra K S: "Executing scripts from different directories" 
    To: <beginners@perl.org>
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 22:36:05 -0400

    Just for this thread, I have gone to ActiveState and learned how to use
    their search facility to find my email address to copy and update my
    response to someone way back on August 31, 2000 - this was my very
    first perl success ;-D

    I have added a note regarding Windows XP at the end of it.

    You're probably already all set by now, but if not, this solution has worked
    well for me.

    I have assumed that you have installed the Active State perl with all the
    defaults and that you have done nothing special with your windows
    installation.

    -carol
    ===========================================================================
    , but when I double-click on the Perl icon, all
    > I get is an
    > MS-DOS box that apparently doesn't allow me to do anything.

    When you edit a "perl program" in something like, oh, notepad, and save it
    to type .pl in Windows 98, in order to "test" the program, you need to be
    able to double-click on the SCRIPT - "whatever.pl" - and have it run your
    perl script for you.

    What it does is pop up a command.com window, run your script in perl, and
    close. Unless you set up your command window to NOT close until you close
    it manually.

    One way to get around this is to open a command window. Then your call to
    perl might look like this:

    c:\active state\perl\> perl c:\testing\myscript.pl
    However, I can give you instructions to be able to double click on the perl
    script, since I generally type something wrong when I use a command line.

    /* my original post didn't note that my solution will leave your command
    window open at the end*/

    You need to get to the "file types" section of windows - I'm in NT right
    now, so I might not be sending you to the right place to find it, but it's
    going to be called "file types" and you can surely find it through Windows
    Help. My instructions on this computer say to open My Computer, open the
    View menu, click Options, then click the File Types tab.

    Once you get there, scroll down until you find an entry for the extension
    PL. Edit the entry. If an action "OPEN" exists, select it and edit it to
    have the line (just paste it in there).

    command.com /k C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe "%1" %*

    /* NT4,Win2K,WinXP use cmd.exe - see notes at end of post */

    for the "application used to perform action" (or whatever it's called in
    98).

    If no action "open" exists, create one. While you're at it, you can set up
    your right click menu to allow you to edit any .pl file using notepad by
    adding an edit action. To find the correct code to put there, look for .txt
    in your file types and copy the action commands to open something in notepad
    from there.

    Hope this helps, especially since it's the *only* perl trick I've got!

    -carol

    Oh, by the way, if anyone needs this same information for NT4, the line is a
    little different (how irritating, I know):
    C:\WINNT\System32\cmd.exe /K "C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe %1 %*"

    Win2K
    I don't know if it's at c:\WINNT or c:\WINDOWS, - search for cmd.exe to find
    out.

    Win XP
    C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /K "C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe %1 %*"
    There's an Advanced button under FileTypes - go ahead and look there

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