Re^2: installing strawberry and activeperl

[BrowserUk]

Yet another fallacious conclusion draw on the basis of a near complete misunderstanding of random, irrelevant information found on the web.

The path is always used to locate an executable when a process is started, regardless of whether it is started by the command line, the shell, or another application. Unless it's name is prefixed by the full pathname, just as in *nix.

The path is also used to locate dynamic libraries, com objects, device drivers; font libraries and a bunch of other things.

The only time associations come into play is when the system is asked to locate an appropriate executable to process a named data file. A perl (or other interpreter) source file is just a data file for the interpreter executable.

The associations mechanism is just a convenience to allow you to have the system find an appropriate executable to process a given data file. As such, it mirrors the function of the *nix shebang mechanism, but is more flexible because it works with any type of data file--graphics files; music files; video files; whatever.

You cannot go stuffing a shebang line on the front of any of those file types, hence the reason linux, OS-X, and probably others, have adopted similar mechanisms based around Mime-types.

You even misinterpreted the random page you found and linked to. In a nutshell it simply says that if you screw up configuration, things go wrong. And that's true whether that configuration is stored in Windows registry, or *nix's myriad small text files strewn about all over the file system(s). If users don't follow safe working practices (backups) when modifying configuration through either mechanism, they can break things. What's new.

Was it worth your effort?

[sundialsvc4]

Ouch!!   What a strangely hostile and disrespectful reply ... and in such a public place ...

I endeavored to answer the question, nothing more or less.   I thought my reply was accurate and relevant.   Maybe it was not.   If I am wrong, then, please, just correct me.   “I stand corrected.”   If the post was taken to be Windows-bashing, that was not my intention.   The influence of the Registry values on a Windows system can be deep and unexpected.   I thought that a pitfall might apply here.   Maybe I am totally wrong.   Just correct me; don’t mock me.   Thanks.

[orange]

this is what i do when installing a new perl version and want to retain the old one: suppose i have perl 5.8 installed in c:\perl , now when i want to install perl 5.10, first i rename c:\perl to c:\perl58, then installing 5.10 as usual to c:\perl , and when i want to use the old 5.8 i rename the new c:\perl to c:\perl510 and c:\perl58 to c:\perl , and if i want to install strawberry, rename first the activestate perl to perl510 and perl58 then install strawberry, now if you want to use perl 510 rename strawberry to something like strawberry512 and perl510 to perl. the same if you want to install camelbox to enjoy its Gtk2. this is a successfull approach, i am using it from long time ago.
so this way you will not bother of what is the first in the Path, because you have renamed the folders you do not want to access now but the strawberry folder as an example
my path like this:
c:\perl\site\bin;c:\perl\bin;c:\strawberry\c\bin;c:\strawberry\perl\bin;C:\camelbox;C:\camelbox\bin;
the only restriction is the ENV variables which a few modules may use.
and we can automate this naming and renaming using Bat files.

[Mr. Muskrat]

I think you read too much into BrowserUK's response. I see no mocking. I see no hostility or disrespect. I simply see a desire to lay out the correct information.