Re: Moving from UNIX to Windows

Gabor Szabo wrote:

> Hi, this is my first post so let me introduce myself: My name is Gabor
> Szabo and I have been teaching Perl in the last 9 month at a hi-tech
> school in Israel.  I am teaching 4-day long beginners courses to
> corporate customers using UNIX as the platform.

Hi Gabor.

> Now for the first time I have to teach a course using Perl on NT so I
> am trying to find out what should be the differences and I wonder if
> there is a site or a few pages that explain what should I take care
> of.

I suggest you have a browse through the archives of this mailing list --
I asked exactly the same question a few months ago, and the responses
here were very useful.  Here's the thread in question:

  http://archive.develooper.com/perl-trainers%40perl.org/msg00251.html

The thing that I was most grateful for learning in advance (IE that
would have really stumped me during the course had I not been warned of
it) relates to Windows associations and redirection.

You can run a Perl script (assuming that perl.exe is in the path) like
this:

  C:\> perl Script.pl

On NT 4 and Windows 2000 (at least), ActivePerl tends to set up file
associations on the ".pl" extension so that this also works:

  C:\> Script.pl

And that's obviously nicer (and more Unixy).

Windows (well, Dos) redirection operators are similar to Unix's, so you
can do something like:

  C:\> perl Script.pl < input_data.txt

However, you _can't_ do:

  C:\> Script.pl < input_data.txt

That isn't Perl's fault.  It's something to do with Windows's
redirection breaking file associativity, and it isn't something I'd've
guessed if nobody had told me!

Good luck.

Simon
-- 
Simon Myers * GBdirect
http://www.gbdirect.co.uk/
tel: +44 1274 772277  fax: +44 1274 772281