Subject: Re: Anyone using Perl for something besides web stuff?
From: [email-masked] (Michiel)

17 Dec 1996 14:08:36 -0800
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Hi,

Richard is right - scripting isn't done as much under Windows. There are
script-like interpreters available for both DOS/Console mode and GUI
Windows (these being pretty separate things until recently) but they're
kind of obscure. 

For writing utilities, people just made executables, using C or Pascal or
whatever compiled language. Batch files are seriously limited and I don't
think I ever saw them distributed alone. An advantage is that you'll have
less dependencies.

I'm a PC programmer turned Unix admin (and PC and Mac), so I kind of went
the other way.. You know what I'd really like? Windows '95 rewritten to be
Unix based (is anyone porting the Hurd yet? :) .

Michiel

At 09:09 17-12-96 GMT0, Richard Donkin wrote:
>In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]>
>> When I first started working on PC's I asked everyone I could what
>> scripting language was popular so I could learn how to use it. I
>> figured I should learn to use the tools popular in this environment
>> rather than trying to transplant my UNIX tools (you know, when in Rome
>> do as the Romans do).  A few folks mentioned that Visual Basic was
>> popular. But in general, the programmers who had a long history with
>> PC's were perplexed by my questions about scripting languages and what
>> people used. I concluded (perhaps wrongly) that writing scripts was
>> not something often done in this environment. It appears that a
>> powerful, universal scripting language with a wealth of pre-existing
>> scripts did not exist in the PC enviroment, so I continue to use perl
>> as my scripting language of choice. Which to be honest suits me just
>> fine. But given that most users of Win32 Perl seem to think its for
>> Web programming only and the lack of cohessive answers from other
>> developers about scripting languages on the PC leaves me with the
>> lingering question that I have somehow missed how people are providing
>> utilities in this enviroment.
>> 
>
>Scripting is definitely a big omission in the PC environment - I also have a 
>Unix background but have been using PCs more recently.  For some reason 
>Microsoft bundles a scripting language with its Office products (VB for 
>Applications) but not with its operating systems...  I am not counting batch 
>language because it is appalling.
>
>> John (a somewhat perplexed foreigner in the land of PC's who is
>> trying to learn the local customs, but still prefers to speak in his
>> native tounge :-)
>> 
>> P.S.: (This is not a perl question, but its related to the topic) I've
>> searched high and low for documentation on the language implemented by the
>> cmd interpreter. Either because I have at times wanted to write a .bat
>> script or because I wanted to understand how an existing script
>> worked, or because I'm still confused with the distinctions between
>> .bat, .cmd (and .com?) files. I've looked through all the Microsoft
>> documentation I have access to (including MSDN) and in bookstores for
>> 3rd party documentation books, but I've come up empty handed. Given
>> this is the "official" scripting language how can documentation for it
>> be so hard to find? Or am I totally lame and just missed it? Can
>> anyone provide a pointer? (sorry, I know this question does not
>> properly belong on the perl-win32 list)
>
>If you have access to an old DOS 6.x system, try the HELP command from DOS - 
>this puts you into a character-based online help window that does cover the 
>batch file language, although not incredibly well.  There are definitely 
>some older books that cover this - books for DOS 4 onwards should still be 
>relevant as the many misfeatures have yet to be fixed!
>
>I have just written some DOS batch file language for a tool called sh2bat 
>that converts shell scripts by wrapping them in a DOS batch file so they can 
>be executed from the DOS command.com/cmd.exe, and it is not a pretty sight.
>
>Richard
>--
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>Inside Edge Consultancy           Client/Server and Internet Applications
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