Perl on Windows

[Naveen Reddy]

Hi all,
After I installed ActiveState Perl on Windows, all I had to do was
type "perl" on the command prompt to get started, w/o any
path-extensions to the perl.exe.

Just curious how Windows resolved "perl" with
"C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe".
Did the installer do any Unix-y alias of the sort:
alias perl "C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe"

Does Windows have any alias-like utility? Just curious.

Thanks for your time,
Reddy

 

[gnari]

After I installed ActiveState Perl on Windows, all I had to do was
type "perl" on the command prompt to get started, w/o any
path-extensions to the perl.exe.

Just curious how Windows resolved "perl" with
"C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe".

C:\>path

gnari

 

[Jürgen Exner]

Hi all,
After I installed ActiveState Perl on Windows, all I had to do was
type "perl" on the command prompt to get started, w/o any
path-extensions to the perl.exe.

Just curious how Windows resolved "perl" with
"C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe".

Try "set path". You may be surprised.

Did the installer do any Unix-y alias of the sort:
alias perl "C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe"

No, nothing of that kind.

Does Windows have any alias-like utility? Just curious.

Sure it does.

For details you may want ask in a NG that deals with Windows basics because
nothing of this has anything to do with Perl. It is basic OS knowledge.

jue

 

[Robert]

Hi all,
After I installed ActiveState Perl on Windows, all I had to do was
type "perl" on the command prompt to get started, w/o any
path-extensions to the perl.exe.

Just curious how Windows resolved "perl" with
"C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe".
Did the installer do any Unix-y alias of the sort:
alias perl "C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe"

Does Windows have any alias-like utility? Just curious.

Thanks for your time,
Reddy

If on the Windows 98 system it appends to the PATH probably in your
autoexec.bat but on 2000/XP it puts it into the ENV path. If you put the .PL
in the ENV as well you don't have to type "perl somefile.pl" only
"somefile.pl".

 

[Arvin Portlock]

Yes, when you did the install you may have noticed one of
the dialog options was to add perl to your path. It is
selected by default so perl was magically added to your
path.

Start->Settings->Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environment Variables

The ActiveState install also associates the .pl extension with
perl default. A pretty worthless and irritating thing IMO. I
always deselect that when I install.

I don't really think Windows has a Unix-like alias utility (it
would be interesting to learn this for sure). I always do things
like that with .bat files. Like setting up csh files or the like
somewhere in your path on Unix. Not nearly as nice as true aliases.

 

[Web Surfer]

[This followup was posted to comp.lang.perl.misc]

Hi all,
After I installed ActiveState Perl on Windows, all I had to do was
type "perl" on the command prompt to get started, w/o any
path-extensions to the perl.exe.

Just curious how Windows resolved "perl" with
"C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe".

Check your PATH environment variable. The installation process
must have added a reference to Perl's BIN directory to the path.

Did the installer do any Unix-y alias of the sort:
alias perl "C:\Progra~1\...\perl.exe"

Unlikely; Windows does not really have an alias facility.

 

[Naveen Reddy]

Thanks everbody for your responses.

-- Reddy