location of application installed and executable

[juo]

Does anybody now in Perl for windows2000 how to find if a certain application is installed and were this is installed. For example : I want to launch excel or wordpad in a Perl script but in order to do that I first need to check if this application is installed and after that I need to know were it is installed so I can launch the executable. Thanks

[tachyon]

Have a look at Win32API::Registry. The registry holds all kind of deep and dark secrets. Type Start->Run->Regedit to have a browse if you are not familiar with the registry. Don't *change* anything unless you know what you are doing. Here is a short example:

use Win32API::Registry 0.21 qw( :ALL );
my @software = qw ( Excel Word Outlook PowerPoint Perl );
for my $software (@software) {
    print RegOpenKeyEx( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Offi
+ce\\$software", 0, KEY_READ, $key ) ?
    "$software has registry key\n" :
    "$software seems to be missing ".regLastError()."\n";

}
__END__
Output on my system

Excel has registry key
Word has registry key
Outlook has registry key
PowerPoint has registry key
Perl seems to be missing The system cannot find the file specified

Of course Perl is not missing but it is not registered in M$ Office!

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

[tachyon]

Here is a more complete example that gets the install root for you as well:

use Win32API::Registry 0.21 qw( :ALL );
my @software = qw ( Excel Word Outlook PowerPoint Perl );
for my $software (@software) {
    my ( $key, $type, $data );
    print RegOpenKeyEx( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Offi
+ce\\9.0\\$software\\InstallRoot", 0, KEY_READ, $key ) ?
    "$software has registry key\n" : "$software seems to be missing ".
+regLastError()."\n";
    print RegQueryValueEx( $key, "Path", [], $type, $data, [] ) ?
    "Install Root: $data\n" : "$software ".regLastError()."\n";
}
__END__
Excel has registry key
Install Root: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\
Word has registry key
Install Root: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\
Outlook has registry key
Install Root: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\
PowerPoint has registry key
Install Root: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\
Perl seems to be missing The system cannot find the file specified
Perl The configuration registry key is invalid

Note that 9.0 represents Office 2000

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

[jplindstrom]

For me, Excel is in the path and I can imagine that WordPad is always in the path, it being part of the OS.

So you can start the programs with

system("excel");
system("wordpad");

If you want to check for program existance first, try manually iterating over the parts in $ENV{PATH}.

In the case that Excel for some reason isn't in the path, there is probably some registry key for that... Try searching in your own registry (although that may differ between versions).

/J