perlos2 - Perl under OS/2, Win0.31, Win0.95 and WinNT.
One can read this document in the following formats:
man perlos2
view perl perlos2
explorer perlos2.html
info perlos2
to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may be read as is: either as README.os2, or pod/perlos2.pod.
The target is to make OS/2 the best supported platform for using/building/developping Perl and Perl applications, as well as make Perl the best language to use under OS/2.
The current state is quite close to this target. Known limitations:
OS2::REXX extension (see OS2::REXX), and we do not have access to convinience methods of Object REXX. (Is it possible at all? I know of no Object-REXX API.)Please keep this list up-to-date by informing me about other items.
Since OS/2 port of perl uses a remarkable EMX environment, it can run (and build extensions, and - possibly - be build itself) under any environment which can run EMX. The current list is DOS, DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.31, Win0.95 and WinNT. Out of many perl flavors, only one works, see "perl_.exe".
Note that not all features of Perl are available under these environments. This depends on the features the extender - most probably RSX - decided to implement.
Cf. Prerequisites.
EMX runtime is required. Note that it is possible to make perl_.exe to run under DOS without any external support by binding emx.exe to it, see emxbind.
Only the latest runtime is supported, currently 0.9c.
One can get different parts of EMX from, say
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx0.9c/ ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/unix/gnu/
The runtime component should have the name emxrt.zip.
To run Perl on DPMS platforms one needs RSX runtime. This is needed under DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.31, Win0.95 and WinNT (see "Other OSes").
One can get RSX from, say
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx0.9c/contrib ftp://ftp.uni-bielefeld.de/pub/systems/msdos/misc
Contact the author on rainer@mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de.
Perl does not care about file systems, but to install the whole perl library intact one needs a file system which supports long file names.
Note that if you do not plan to build the perl itself, it may be possible to fool EMX to truncate file names. This is not supported, read EMX docs to see how to do it.
Start your Perl program foo.pl with arguments arg1 arg2 arg3 the same way as on any other platform, by
perl foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3
If you want to specify perl options -my_opts to the perl itself (as opposed to to your program), use
perl -my_opts foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3
Alternately, if you use OS/2-ish shell, like CMD or 4os2, put the following at the start of your perl script:
extproc perl -x -S
#!/usr/bin/perl -my_opts
rename your program to foo.cmd, and start it by typing
foo arg1 arg2 arg3
(Note that having *nixish full path to perl /usr/bin/perl is not necessary, perl would be enough, but having full path would make it easier to use your script under *nix.)
Note that because of stupid OS/2 limitations the full path of the perl script is not available when you use extproc, thus you are forced to use -S perl switch, and your script should be on path. As a plus side, if you know a full path to your script, you may still start it with
perl -x ../../blah/foo.cmd arg1 arg2 arg3
(note that the argument -my_opts is taken care of by the #! line in your script).
To understand what the above magic does, read perl docs about -S and -x switches - see perlrun, and cmdref about extproc:
view perl perlrun
man perlrun
view cmdref extproc
help extproc
or whatever method you prefer.
There are also endless possibilites to use executable extensions of 4OS2, associations of WPS and so on... However, if you use *nixish shell (like sh.exe supplied in the binary distribution), you need follow the syntax specified in "Switches" in perlrun.
This is what system() (see "system" in perlfunc), `` (see "I/O Operators" in perlop), and open pipe (see "open" in perlfunc) are for. (Avoid exec() (see "exec" in perlfunc) unless you know what you do).
Note however that to use some of these operators you need to have a sh-syntax shell installed (see "Pdksh", "Frequently asked questions"), and perl should be able to find it (see "PERL_SH_DIR").
The only cases when the shell is not used is the multi-argument system() (see "system" in perlfunc)/exec() (see "exec" in perlfunc), and one-argument version thereof without redirection and shell meta-characters.
Did you run your programs with -w switch? See "2 programs under Perl" in Starting OS.
-Zmt -Zcrtdll?If not, you need to build a stand-alone DLL for perl. Contact me, I did it once. Sockets would not work, as a lot of other stuff.
ExtUtils::Embed?I had reports it does not work. Somebody would need to fix it.
The most convinient way of installing perl is via perl installer install.exe. Just follow the instructions, and 99% of the installation blues would go away.
Note however, that you need to have unzip.exe on your path, and EMX environment running. The latter means that if you just installed EMX, and made all the needed changes to Config.sys, you may need to reboot in between. Check EMX runtime by running
emxrev
A folder is created on your desktop which contains some useful objects.
Things not taken care of by automatic binary installation:
PERL_BADLANGmay be needed if you change your codepage after perl installation, and the new value is not supported by EMX. See "PERL_BADLANG".
PERL_BADFREEsee "PERL_BADFREE".
This file resides somewhere deep in the location you installed your perl library, find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"
While most important values in this file are updated by the binary installer, some of them may need to be hand-edited. I know no such data, please keep me informed if you find one.
As of version 5.00305, OS/2 perl binary distribution comes splitted into 11 components. Unfortunately, to enable configurable binary installation, the file paths in the zip files are not absolute, but relative to some directory.
Note that the extraction with the stored paths is still necessary (default with unzip, specify -d to pkunzip). However, you need to know where to extract the files. You need also to manually change entries in Config.sys to reflect where did you put the files.
Below is the sample of what to do to reproduce the configuration on my machine:
unzip perl_exc.zip *.exe *.ico -d f:/emx.add/bin unzip perl_exc.zip *.dll -d f:/emx.add/dll
(have the directories with *.exe on PATH, and *.dll on LIBPATH);
unzip perl_aou.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin
(have the directory on PATH);
unzip perl_utl.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin
(have the directory on PATH);
unzip perl_mlb.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
If this directory is preserved, you do not need to change anything. However, for perl to find it if it is changed, you need to set PERLLIB_PREFIX in Config.sys, see "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
unzip perl_ste.zip -d f:/perllib/lib/site_perl
If you do not change this directory, do nothing. Otherwise put this directory and subdirectory ./os2 in PERLLIB or PERL5LIB variable. Do not use PERL5LIB unless you have it set already. See "ENVIRONMENT" in perl.
unzip perl_blb.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
If this directory is preserved, you do not need to change anything. However, for perl to find it if it is changed, you need to set PERLLIB_PREFIX in Config.sys, see "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
unzip perl_man.zip -d f:/perllib/man
This directory should better be on MANPATH. You need to have a working man to access these files.
unzip perl_mam.zip -d f:/perllib/man
This directory should better be on MANPATH. You need to have a working man to access these files.
unzip perl_pod.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
This is used by by perldoc program (see perldoc), and may be used to generate HTML documentation usable by WWW browsers, and documentation in zillions of other formats: info, LaTeX, Acrobat, FrameMaker and so on.
unzip perl_inf.zip -d d:/os2/book
This directory should better be on BOOKSHELF.
unzip perl_sh.zip -d f:/bin
This is used by perl to run external commands which explicitely require shell, like the commands using redirection and shell metacharacters. It is also used instead of explicit /bin/sh.
Set PERL_SH_DIR (see "PERL_SH_DIR") if you move sh.exe from the above location.
Note. It may be possible to use some other sh-compatible shell (not tested).
After you installed the components you needed and updated the Config.sys correspondingly, you need to hand-edit Config.pm. This file resides somewhere deep in the location you installed your perl library, find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"
You need to correct all the entries which look like file paths (they currently start with f:/).
The automatic and manual perl installation leave precompiled paths inside perl executables. While these paths are overwriteable (see "PERLLIB_PREFIX", "PERL_SH_DIR"), one may get better results by binary editing of paths inside the executables/DLLs.
Depending on how you built/installed perl you may have (otherwise identical) Perl documentation in the following formats:
Most probably the most convinient form. View it as
view perl view perl perlfunc view perl less view perl ExtUtils::MakeMaker
(currently the last two may hit a wrong location, but this may improve soon).
If you want to build the docs yourself, and have OS/2 toolkit, run
pod2ipf > perl.ipf
in /perllib/lib/pod directory, then
ipfc /inf perl.ipf
(Expect a lot of errors during the both steps.) Now move it on your BOOKSHELF path.
If you have perl documentation in the source form, perl utilities installed, and GNU groff installed, you may use
perldoc perlfunc
perldoc less
perldoc ExtUtils::MakeMaker
to access the perl documention in the text form (note that you may get better results using perl manpages).
Alternately, try running pod2text on .pod files.
If you have man installed on your system, and you installed perl manpages, use something like this:
man perlfunc
man 3 less
man ExtUtils.MakeMaker
to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with
man perl
Note that dot (.) is used as a package separator for documentation for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - 3 above - to avoid shadowing by the less(1) manpage.
Make sure that the directory above the directory with manpages is on our MANPATH, like this
set MANPATH=c:/man;f:/perllib/man
If you have some WWW browser available, installed the Perl documentation in the source form, and Perl utilities, you can build HTML docs. Cd to directory with .pod files, and do like this
cd f:/perllib/lib/pod
pod2html
After this you can direct your browser the file perl.html in this directory, and go ahead with reading docs, like this:
explore file:///f:/perllib/lib/pod/perl.html
Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuild from CPAN.
info filesUsers of Emacs would appreciate it very much, especially with CPerl mode loaded. You need to get latest pod2info from CPAN, or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.
for Acrobat are available on CPAN (for slightly old version of perl).
LaTeX docscan be constructed using pod2latex.
Here we discuss how to build Perl under OS/2. There is an alternative (but maybe older) view on http://www.shadow.net/~troc/os2perl.html.
You need to have the latest EMX development environment, the full GNU tool suite (gawk renamed to awk, and GNU find.exe earlier on path than the OS/2 find.exe, same with sort.exe, to check use
find --version sort --version
). You need the latest version of pdksh installed as sh.exe.
Possible locations to get this from are
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/unix/gnu/ ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/unix/ ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/dev32/ ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx0.9c/
Make sure that no copies or perl are currently running. Later steps of the build may fail since an older version of perl.dll loaded into memory may be found.
Also make sure that you have /tmp directory on the current drive, and . directory in your LIBPATH. One may try to correct the latter condition by
set BEGINLIBPATH .
if you use something like CMD.EXE or latest versions of 4os2.exe.
Make sure your gcc is good for -Zomf linking: run omflibs script in /emx/lib directory.
Check that you have link386 installed. It comes standard with OS/2, but may be not installed due to customization. If typing
link386
shows you do not have it, do Selective install, and choose Link object modules in Optional system utilites/More. If you get into link386, press Ctrl-C.
You need to fetch the latest perl source (including developpers releases). With some probability it is located in
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0/unsupported
If not, you may need to dig in the indices to find it in the directory of the current maintainer.
Quick cycle of developpers release may break the OS/2 build time to time, looking into
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/os2/ilyaz/
may indicate the latest release which was publicly released by the maintainer. Note that the release may include some additional patches to apply to the current source of perl.
Extract it like this
tar vzxf perl5.00409.tar.gz
You may see a message about errors while extracting Configure. This is because there is a conflict with a similarly-named file configure.
Rename configure to configure.gnu. Extract Configure like this
tar --case-sensitive -vzxf perl5.00409.tar.gz perl5.00409/Configure
Change to the directory of extraction.
You need to apply the patches in ./os2/diff.* and ./os2/POSIX.mkfifo like this:
gnupatch -p0 < os2\POSIX.mkfifo gnupatch -p0 < os2\os2\diff.configure
You may also need to apply the patches supplied with the binary distribution of perl.
Note also that the db.lib and db.a from the EMX distribution are not suitable for multi-threaded compile (note that currently perl is not multithreaded, but is compiled as multithreaded for compatibility with XFree86-OS/2). Get a corrected one from
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/db_mt.zip
You may look into the file ./hints/os2.sh and correct anything wrong you find there. I do not expect it is needed anywhere.
sh Configure -des -D prefix=f:/perllib
Prefix means where to install the resulting perl library. Giving correct prefix you may avoid the need to specify PERLLIB_PREFIX, see "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
Ignore the message about missing ln, and about -c option to tr. In fact if you can trace where the latter spurious warning comes from, please inform me.
Now
make
At some moment the built may die, reporting a version mismatch or unable to run perl. This means that most of the build has been finished, and it is the time to move the constructed perl.dll to some absolute location in LIBPATH. After this done the build should finish without a lot of fuss. One can avoid it if one has the correct prebuilt version of perl.dll on LIBPATH.
Warnings which are safe to ignore: mkfifo() redefined inside POSIX.c.
Now run
make test
Some tests (4..6) should fail. Some perl invocations should end in a segfault (system error SYS3175). To get finer error reports,
cd t perl -I ../lib harness
The report you get may look like
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed --------------------------------------------------------------- io/fs.t 26 11 42.31% 2-5, 7-11, 18, 25 lib/io_pipe.t 3 768 6 ?? % ?? lib/io_sock.t 3 768 5 ?? % ?? op/stat.t 56 5 8.93% 3-4, 20, 35, 39 Failed 4/118 test scripts, 96.61% okay. 27/2445 subtests failed, 98.90% okay.
Note that using `make test' target two more tests may fail: op/exec:1 because of (mis)feature of pdksh, and lib/posix:15, which checks that the buffers are not flushed on _exit.
The reasons for failed tests are:
Checks file system operations. Tests:
Checks IO::Pipe module. Some feature of EMX - test fork()s with dynamic extension loaded - unsupported now.
Checks IO::Socket module. Some feature of EMX - test fork()s with dynamic extension loaded - unsupported now.
Checks stat(). Tests:
In addition to errors, you should get a lot of warnings.
in databases related to Berkeley DB. This is a confirmed bug of DB. You may disable this warnings, see "PERL_BADFREE".
This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications. *nix applications die in silence. It is considered a feature. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers.
However the test engine bleeds these message to screen in unexpected moments. Two messages of this kind should be present during testing.
ls: /dev: No such file or directoryThe last two should be self-explanatory. The test suite discovers that the system it runs on is not that much *nixish.
A lot of `bad free'... in databases, bug in DB confirmed on other platforms. You may disable it by setting PERL_BADFREE environment variable to 1.
Run
make install
It would put the generated files into needed locations. Manually put perl.exe, perl__.exe and perl___.exe to a location on your PATH, perl.dll to a location on your LIBPATH.
Run
make cmdscripts INSTALLCMDDIR=d:/ir/on/path
to convert perl utilities to .cmd files and put them on PATH. You need to put .EXE-utilities on path manually. They are installed in $prefix/bin, here $prefix is what you gave to Configure, see Making.
a.out-style buildProceed as above, but make perl_.exe (see "perl_.exe") by
make perl_
test and install by
make aout_test make aout_install
Manually put perl_.exe to a location on your PATH.
Since perl_ has the extensions prebuilt, it does not suffer from the dynamic extensions + fork() syndrom, thus the failing tests look like
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed --------------------------------------------------------------- io/fs.t 26 11 42.31% 2-5, 7-11, 18, 25 op/stat.t 56 5 8.93% 3-4, 20, 35, 39 Failed 2/118 test scripts, 98.31% okay. 16/2445 subtests failed, 99.35% okay.
Note. The build process for perl_ does not know about all the dependencies, so you should make sure that anything is up-to-date, say, by doing
make perl.dll
first.
/ became \ in pdksh.You have a very old pdksh. See Prerequisites.
'errno' - unresolved externalYou do not have MT-safe db.lib. See Prerequisites.
trreported with very old version of tr.
You have an older version of perl.dll on your LIBPATH, which broke the build of extensions.
You did not run omflibs. See Prerequisites.
You use an old version of GNU make. See Prerequisites.
setpriority, getpriorityNote that these functions are compatible with *nix, not with the older ports of '94 - 95. The priorities are absolute, go from 32 to -95, lower is quickier. 0 is the default priority.
system()Multi-argument form of system() allows an additional numeric argument. The meaning of this argument is described in OS2::Process.
OS2::Process, OS2::REXX, OS2::PrfDB, OS2::ExtAttr. This modules provide access to additional numeric argument for system, to DLLs having functions with REXX signature and to REXX runtime, to OS/2 databases in the .INI format, and to Extended Attributes.
Two additional extensions by Andread Kaiser, OS2::UPM, and OS2::FTP, are included into my ftp directory, mirrored on CPAN.
File::Copy::syscopyused by File::Copy::copy, see "copy" in File::Copy.
DynaLoader::mod2fnameused by DynaLoader for DLL name mungling.
Cwd::current_drive()Self explanatory.
Cwd::sys_chdir(name)leaves drive as it is.
Cwd::change_drive(name)
Cwd::sys_is_absolute(name)means has drive letter and is_rooted.
Cwd::sys_is_rooted(name)means has leading [/\\] (maybe after a drive-letter:).
Cwd::sys_is_relative(name)means changes with current dir.
Cwd::sys_cwd(name)Interface to cwd from EMX. Used by Cwd::cwd.
Cwd::sys_abspath(name, dir)Really really odious function to implement. Returns absolute name of file which would have name if CWD were dir. Dir defaults to the current dir.
Cwd::extLibpath([type])Get current value of extended library search path. If type is present and true, works with END_LIBPATH, otherwise with BEGIN_LIBPATH.
Cwd::extLibpath_set( path [, type ] )Set current value of extended library search path. If type is present and true, works with END_LIBPATH, otherwise with BEGIN_LIBPATH.
(Note that some of these may be moved to different libraries - eventually).
In particular, uppercase letters do not work in [...]-patterns with the current pdksh.
Because of ideosyncrasies of OS/2 one cannot have all the eggs in the same basket (though EMX environment tries hard to overcome this limitations, so the situation may somehow improve). There are 4 executables for Perl provided by the distribution:
The main workhorse. This is a chimera executable: it is compiled as an a.out-style executable, but is linked with omf-style dynamic library perl.dll, and with dynamic CRT DLL. This executable is a VIO application.
It can load perl dynamic extensions, and it can fork(). Unfortunately, currently it cannot fork() with dynamic extensions loaded.
Note. Keep in mind that fork() is needed to open a pipe to yourself.
This is a statically linked a.out-style executable. It can fork(), but cannot load dynamic Perl extensions. The supplied executable has a lot of extensions prebuilt, thus there are situations when it can perform tasks not possible using perl.exe, like fork()ing when having some standard extension loaded. This executable is a VIO application.
Note. A better behaviour could be obtained from perl.exe if it were statically linked with standard Perl extensions, but dynamically linked with the Perl DLL and CRT DLL. Then it would be able to fork() with standard extensions, and would be able to dynamically load arbitrary extensions. Some changes to Makefiles and hint files should be necessary to achieve this.
This is also the only executable with does not require OS/2. The friends locked into M$ world would appreciate the fact that this executable runs under DOS, Win0.31, Win0.95 and WinNT with an appropriate extender. See "Other OSes".
This is the same executable as <perl___.exe>, but it is a PM application.
Note. Usually STDIN, STDERR, and STDOUT of a PM application are redirected to nul. However, it is possible to see them if you start perl__.exe from a PM program which emulates a console window, like Shell mode of Emacs or EPM. Thus it is possible to use Perl debugger (see perldebug) to debug your PM application.
This flavor is required if you load extensions which use PM, like the forthcoming Perl/Tk.
This is an omf-style executable which is dynamically linked to perl.dll and CRT DLL. I know no advantages of this executable over perl.exe, but it cannot fork() at all. Well, one advantage is that the build process is not so convoluted as with perl.exe.
It is a VIO application.
Since Perl processes the #!-line (cf. "DESCRIPTION" in perlrun, "Switches" in perlrun, "Not a perl script" in perldiag, "No Perl script found in input" in perldiag), it should know when a program is a Perl. There is some naming convention which allows Perl to distinguish correct lines from wrong ones. The above names are almost the only names allowed by this convension which do not contain digits (which have absolutely different semantics).
Well, having several executables dynamically linked to the same huge library has its advantages, but this would not substantiate the additional work to make it compile. The reason is stupid-but-quick "hard" dynamic linking used by OS/2.
The address tables of DLLs are patches only once, when they are loaded. The addresses of entry points into DLLs are guarantied to be the same for all programs which use the same DLL, which reduces the amount of runtime patching - once DLL is loaded, its code is read-only.
While this allows some performance advantages, this makes life terrible for developpers, since the above scheme makes it impossible for a DLL to be resolved to a symbol in the .EXE file, since this would need a DLL to have different relocations tables for the executables which use it.
However, a Perl extension is forced to use some symbols from the perl executable, say to know how to find the arguments provided on the perl internal evaluation stack. The solution is that the main code of interpreter should be contained in a DLL, and the .EXE file just loads this DLL into memory and supplies command-arguments.
This greately increases the load time for the application (as well as the number of problems during compilation). Since interpreter is in a DLL, the CRT is basically forced to reside in a DLL as well (otherwise extensions would not be able to use CRT).
Current EMX environment does not allow DLLs compiled using Unixish a.out format to export symbols for data. This forces omf-style compile of perl.dll.
Current EMX environment does not allow .EXE files compiled in omf format to fork(). fork() is needed for exactly three Perl operations:
While these operations are not questions of life and death, a lot of useful scripts use them. This forces a.out-style compile of perl.exe.
Here we list environment variables with are either OS/2-specific, or are more important under OS/2 than under other OSes.
PERLLIB_PREFIXSpecific for OS/2. Should have the form
path1;path2
or
path1 path2
If the beginning of some prebuilt path matches path1, it is substituted with path2.
Should be used if the perl library is moved from the default location in preference to PERL(5)LIB, since this would not leave wrong entries in <@INC>.
PERL_BADLANGIf 1, perl ignores setlocale() failing. May be useful with some strange locales.
PERL_BADFREEIf 1, perl would not warn of in case of unwarranted free(). May be useful in conjunction with the module DB_File, since Berkeley DB memory handling code is buggy.
PERL_SH_DIRSpecific for OS/2. Gives the directory part of the location for sh.exe.
TMP or TEMPSpecific for OS/2. Used as storage place for temporary files, most notably -e scripts.
Here we list major changes which could make you by surprise.
setpriority and getpriority are not compatible with earlier ports by Andreas Kaiser. See "setpriority, getpriority".
With the release 5.003_01 the dynamically loadable libraries should be rebuilt. In particular, DLLs are now created with the names which contain a checksum, thus allowing workaround for OS/2 scheme of caching DLLs.
As of release 5.003_01 perl is linked to multithreaded CRT DLL. Perl itself is not multithread-safe, as is not perl malloc(). However, extensions may use multiple thread on their own risk.
Needed to compile Perl/Tk for XFreeOS/2 out-of-the-box.
Due to a popular demand the perl external program calling has been changed wrt Andread Kaiser's port. If perl needs to call an external program via shell, the f:/bin/sh.exe will be called, or whatever is the override, see "PERL_SH_DIR".
Thus means that you need to get some copy of a sh.exe as well (I use one from pdksh). The drive F: above is set up automatically during the build to a correct value on the builder machine, but is overridable at runtime,
Reasons: a consensus on perl5-porters was that perl should use one non-overridable shell per platform. The obvious choices for OS/2 are cmd.exe and sh.exe. Having perl build itself would be impossible with cmd.exe as a shell, thus I picked up sh.exe. Thus assures almost 100% compatibility with the scripts coming from *nix.
Disadvantages: currently sh.exe of pdksh calls external programs via fork()/exec(), and there is no functioning exec() on OS/2. exec() is emulated by EMX by asyncroneous call while the caller waits for child completion (to pretend that the pid did not change). This means that 1 extra copy of sh.exe is made active via fork()/exec(), which may lead to some resources taken from the system (even if we do not count extra work needed for fork()ing).
One can always start cmd.exe explicitely via
system 'cmd', '/c', 'mycmd', 'arg1', 'arg2', ...
If you need to use cmd.exe, and do not want to hand-edit thousends of your scripts, the long-term solution proposed on p5-p is to have a directive
use OS2::Cmd;
which will override system(), exec(), ``, and open(,'...|'). With current perl you may override only system(), readpipe() - the explicit version of ``, and maybe exec(). The code will substitute the one-argument call to system() by CORE::system('cmd.exe', '/c', shift).
If you have some working code for OS2::Cmd, please send it to me, I will include it into distribution. I have no need for such a module, so cannot test it.
Ilya Zakharevich, ilya@math.ohio-state.edu
perl(1).
