How Unix Servers Use Perl Page 5 | ServerWatch

How Unix Servers Use Perl Page 5

Jul 20, 2010
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Unix has always enjoyed the capability of inherently running shell scripts based on the location of the interpreter in the first magic line of the file prefixed with #! (eg #!/usr/local/bin/perl). Unfortunately, Windows NT and other Win32-based systems do not enjoy that standard. Each Win32-based Web server seems to have its own method of figuring out how and when to execute CGI/Perl scripts.

Another issue with running CGI/Perl scripts under Win32 Web servers is that not all servers preserve the current working directory of the script. This is a problem
because it is much easier to maintain CGI/Perl scripts of the paths relative to the main program. Relative paths enable the user to move the whole CGI application from
different subdirectories and still have it work.

Gunther Birznieks

Gunther Birznieks is a ServerWatch contributor.

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