Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!convex!usenet
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: using #! for perl scripts
Message-ID: <1991May17.172744.21380@convex.com>
Date: 17 May 91 17:27:44 GMT
References: <RUSTY.91May16142743@groan.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: usenet@convex.com (news access account)
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Distribution: comp
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
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Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com

From the keyboard of rusty@groan.Berkeley.EDU (Rusty Wright):
:The man page for execve says that the pathname given after the #! can
:be at most 32 characters.  But the full pathname of perl on my machine
:is more than 32 characters.  Does anybody have recommendations on a
:good consistent way to deal with this?

You can make sh start it, then exec your own perl:

	    
    #!/bin/sh  # need to mention perl here to avoid recursion
    #
    #
    # NOTE:
    #   If you know where perl is and your system groks #!, put its
    # pathname at the top to make this a tad faster.
    #
    # The following magic is from the perl man page
    # and should work to get us to run with perl
    # even if invoked as an sh or csh or foosh script.
    # Notice we don't use full path 'cause we don't
    # know where the user has put perl on their system.
    #
    eval '(exit $?0)' && eval 'exec perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
    & eval 'exec perl -S $0 $argv:q'
	if $running_under_some_stupid_shell_instead_of_perl;


--tom
--
Tom Christiansen		tchrist@convex.com	convex!tchrist
		"So much mail, so little time."