Running Perl Scripts on Windows Systems

<< ActivePerl on Windows Systems

<< Perl Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

This section provides a tutorial example on how to run Perl scripts with ActivePerl on Windows systems. To make a Perl script file executable, you need to set the script file name extension to '.pl'.

There are many ways to run Perl scripts with ActivePerl on Windows:

1. Run the "perl" command with the Perl script included in the command line. For example, enter the following command line in a command window:

>perl -e "print 'Hello world!';"
Hello world!

Another example:

>perl -e "for ($i=0; $i<10; $i++) {print \"$i\n\";}"
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

This is a cool way to run a Perl script quickly. But you can only run programs that are small enough to fit into one command line.

Also note that double quote (") is used to put the entire program code as one command line parameter. Any double quote inside the program needs to be protected as (\").

2. Run the "perl" command with the Perl script supplied from the standard input steam. For example, enter "perl" in a command window. Then enter the program source code followed by Control-Z, which is the End Of File (EOF) indicator:

>perl
$s=0;
for ($i=0; $i<10; $i++) {
   $s+=$i;
}
print "$s\n";
^Z
45

Obviously, you can enter a much longer script in this way. But the script is not save permanently.

3. Run the "perl" command with the Perl program supplied in a file. For example, enter the following program in a file called hello.prg:

   print "Hello world!\n";

Then enter the following command in a command window:

>perl hello.prg
Hello world!

This is how you normally run Perl programs.

4. Run Perl program files as commands. You can do this, only if you name your Perl script files with ".pl" as file name extension, because ".pl" has been associated with the "perl" command during the installation. For example, enter the following program in a file called hello.pl:

   print "Hello world!\n";

Then enter the following command in a command window:

>hello.pl
Hello world!

It works!

Sections in This Chapter

What Is ActivePerl?

Installing ActivePerl v5.8.8 on Windows Systems

Running Perl Scripts on Windows Systems

Installing ActivePerl v5.6.1 on Windows Systems