Jenda Krynicky said: > From: "Paul Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> AustinTanney said: >> >> > I'm a total novice and just teaching myself perl. I'm going thru the >> > "beginning perl" book. One thing about it is that it recommends >> > using the extension *.plx rather than *.pl. I am using active state >> > 5.8 and it doesnt seem to recognise the extension. Now realistically >> > this doesnt matter in the slightest, however, i was just wondering, >> > is the book slightly outdated and should i just be using *.pl? >> >> Not a stupid question at all. >> >> .pl signifies a Perl Library. These are not seen much since Perl 5 >> introduced Perl Modules (.pm) (the first alpha of Perl 5 was nearly 10 >> years ago). >> >> .plx is the sanctioned extension if you are running on a system that >> requires an extension to identify the file type, but since Active >> State don't appear to be following the rules, people are (mis)using >> .pl. >> >> I would suggest sending a bug report to Active State. > > May I ask who set such a rule? .pl has been used for Perl scripts > widely much sooner than the .plx extension. And originaly the > difference between .pl and .plx was the interpreter used to execute > them under MS Internet Information Server (IIS).
As I mentioned, .pl originally signified a Perl Library, and it still does - Perl Libraries still work perfectly well, they are not deprecated, just superceded. And so, when Perl was ported to operating systems which required a file extension to signify the file type, the question naturally arose as to what that extension should be. As I recall, the question has been kicked around on p5p a few times over the years, though not recently IIRC, and the conclusion was that .plx was a reasonable extension where one was required. Reusing an extension which already had a perfectly good meaning was not considered sensible. I couldn't find any of these discussions after a quick web search. It's possible that p5p archives that old are not online. I don't follow MS products, but I'm sure that all this took place before MS released IIS. > It's quite possible that the author of some book suggested that the > .pl extension is not used for scripts, but I don't think this advice > is followed widely. And I would definitely not call this a bug. That last sentence was written slightly tongue in cheek, but it would be interesting to know their reasons. They have experienced p5p members working there. > Besides ... you said yourseld that Perl Libraries are very unusual to > see these days so why should we care about them and forbif the usage > of .pl for scripts? Hey, I'm not going to play King Canute, I don't even use Windows ;-) -- Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pjcj.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
