Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 14:52:03 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Jude Dashiell <dashiell AT clark DOT net>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: 3 perl questions
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Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980111145144.15603d-100000@is>
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On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Jude Dashiell wrote:

> #!/usr/local/bin/perl
> doesn't make much sense when perl actually lives in
> c:\djgpp\exe.

Actually, it does make sense: it makes your scripts portable to other
DJGPP machines and Unix platforms.  When the library functions which
launch programs see a script with such a line, they will look along
the PATH when the executable (`perl' in this case) is not found in the
named directory (`/usr/local/bin' in this case).  This feature is
disabled when the name of the interpreter includes a DOS-style drive
letter, so saying #!c:/djgpp/exe/perl.exe will produce a script that
runs only on a machine where Perl is installed in that directory.

This is described in detail in the library reference, btw (from the
DOS promt, type "info libc alpha spawn").