🚀 go-pugleaf

kochmar@sei.cmu.edu (John Kochmar) writes:
> fwp@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters) writes:
> |> kochmar@sei.cmu.edu (John Kochmar) says:
> |> : 
> |> : OK, I'll bite: why is it that it is much easier if perl is in an
> |> : agreed upon place like /usr/bin?
> |> 
> |> Because perl is a scripting language.  That means it wants to have
> |> a #! line at the beginning with the path name to an executable.
> |> Distributing code in this situation can be an annoyance unless you
> |> can arrange to have the path to perl be the same on different systems.
> 
> You've gotta be kidding, right?  You're not advocating that perl be
> placed in /usr/bin so that scripts you pick up from who-knows-where
> will run without modification, right?
>
> I got the same response from someone else in private mail.  Since I
> don't make a habit of picking up a script and running it without
> checking it over, I don't see changing the #! at the beginning to
> be that big a deal.

That's fine if:
  1) You're the only person who uses your machine.
  2) You write scripts which you intend to run on only one machine.

In my case, neither of these are true.  I have about a dozen or so people  
who use eclipse, and I personally log into about 6 or 7 different platforms  
(that's different architectures, mind you, we have a few hundred different  
*machines* I could be logging into).

If I write a cool script that runs on my NeXT, I certainly don't want to  
edit it to run on a Sun, an HP, an RS6000, or (gasp) aix370 just because  
each platform has it's own favorite place to stuff scripting-languages like  
perl.  I have enough headaches without trying to keep synchronized 6 copies  
of every script I feel like writing, with the only difference being where  
the silly interpretter lives.

--
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =     gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer            (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;           Troy NY    USA