ActiveState's "discrimination" wrt PATHEXT?

[blazar]

I just installed AS's Python on an XP box, to use a particular application written in Python. I noticed that the installation program registered the appropriate extenstions and put them in PATHEXT too, whereas the one for ActivePerl doesn't do the latter.

The question is: any good reason for this difference?

PS: I must say that I discovered PATHEXT myself, and inferred its use just by inspection, discovering with pleasure that it did exactly what I guessed. Then I did a search both here and on the web in general and I found out that it was far from unknown, in particular pl2bat's documentation mentioned it, although it warns about possible problems with redirection, which fortunately I don't seem to have.

2006-09-07 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines

( keep:2 edit:23 reap:0 )

Original title: 'AS's "racism" wrt PATHEXT?'

[hardburn]

Using "racism" for something like this is an abuse of language.

More to the point of the article, some links to what PATHTEXT is supposed to do would be helpful.

[blazar]

Using "racism" for something like this is an abuse of language.

Gawd, even in double quotes? I wouldn't have though so. I hoped that the jokingly tone was self-evident. If really so, though, apologies.

More to the point of the article, some links to what PATHTEXT is supposed to do would be helpful.

There's an example of its use in one of the link I supplied. What it is supposed to do should be evident from that. Anyway, I just added another link to the original post.

"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.

Oops, is this a sig? Would you please make it visually distinct enough from the rest of the text?

[Anonymous Monk]

Racism is an oft-misused word, used frequently to mean simply any sort of discrimination. This is exactly how you've used it. I try not to be overly sensitive to such uses, but I can certainly understand why other people react.

[brian_d_foy]

Instead of speculating here, have you asked ActiveState? They do talk about it in their ActivePerl FAQ.

We could do without the race card, though. There's no evidence that ActiveState is purposedly trying to make ActivePython better by making ActivePerl worse. They are generally good people trying to do a good job, just like a lot of us. Just because you probably can't put a face or name along with the corporate name doesn't excuse unfounded accusations or name-calling.

Update: The original title of this node was 'AS "racism" wrt PATHEXT' Double quotes or not, words have meaning. "Racism" assigns malacious intent. "Discrimination" does much of the same thing. You immediately attack, rather than query. You could have simply asked "Does the ActivePerl installer affect PATHEXT? It doesn't seem to do it for me." First, collect information. Last, draw conclusions. You got it backwards this time.

[blazar]

There's no evidence that ActiveState is purposedly trying to make ActivePython better by making ActivePerl worse. They are generally good people trying to do a good job, just like a lot of us. Just because you probably can't put a face or name along with the corporate name doesn't excuse unfounded accusations or name-calling.

Ouch! I now regret so much having chosen the word "racism", albeit clearly in double quotes: for I did not intend to claim that "ActiveState is purposedly trying to make ActivePython better by making ActivePerl worse" nor was my comment aimed at being either an accusation or name-calling. I am aware that this may be hard to believe, since to my surprise it seems that quite about everybody here understood my post the same way you did.

OTOH I do recognize that they're trying to do a good job and I do appreciate their efforts, for one thing amongst the others, because they provide me with a pleasant and useful tool/environment, when I'm under Win, that is, for otherwise I use my Linux distro's package. FWIW I even advocated ActivePerl to some of my friends.

Anyway, the ActivePerl FAQ you pointed me to contains explanations about how to set PATHEXT suitably, but does not explain why it is not set up by the installation program itself. Granted, I don't consider such a big hassle doing so myself: indeed for simple enough software packages I'm the kind of guy who prefers manually installing them than using the automated installer, even if available, and to tweak installations, if possible. As far as (Active)Perl is concerned, I also set up an association for wperl.exe and put the corresponding extension in PATHEXT as well. However I still wonder why there's this tiny difference between the installation procedures for respectively ActivePerl and ActivePython, which IMHO are perfectly comparable products.

[Anonymous Monk]

It seems to have done so for me :/