You were all testing me... right? Well, instead of searching for PRON pictures tonight, I figured out this DAMN perl/cgi/apache stuff and best of all
IT WORKS!
The path was right, but I needed to specify the .exe file as well.
Apache provides an emulation of the UNIX shebang (#!/path/to/perl) syntax, so the next step is easy. You can put you Perl scripts into your cgi-bin directory, as long as you have a path to a valid interpreter at the top. For example:
#!C:\PERL\perl.exe
DUH!
For those who find this later using the search function, here is a list of links and snips you may (or may not) find helpful:
The really helpful stuff
velocity.activestate.com/docs/ActivePerl
velocity.activestate.com/docs/ActivePerl/faq/Windows/ActivePerl-Winfaq6.html
How do I use ActivePerl under Apache?
If you want to put all of your CGI scripts into one directory, add the following line to your srm.conf file (You can choose any directory you'd like, but make sure it exists):
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache/cgi-bin/"
After you have made this change, stop and restart the Apache service.
Apache provides an emulation of the UNIX shebang (#!/path/to/perl) syntax, so the next step is easy. You can put you Perl scripts into your cgi-bin directory, as long as you have a path to a valid interpreter at the top. For example:
#!C:\PERL\5.00464\bin\MSWin32-x86\perl.exe
use CGI qw

standard) ;
print header();
print "Hello, world";
If you want to enable CGI scripts based on an extension, such as .pl, you need to add the following line to srm.conf:
AddHandler cgi-script .pl
By default, CGI scripts are not allowed in your DocumentRoot directory, but they are allowed in other document directories. Document directories are created with the Alias command in srm.conf:
Alias /ResourceKit/ "E:/utilsamp/"
You can then include files that end in .pl within a document directory. You will still need to include the #! line with the full path to the perl.exe interpreter, as shown earlier.
If you want to allow CGI scripts in the DocumentRoot directory, add the ExecCGI option to the Options directive between the <Directory> and </Directory> entry for your DocumentRoot in access.conf (these appear directly after the comment titled:
# This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to.
After you have updated it, your Options directive may look something like:
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
perl.apache.org/
and other stuff
www.postino.com/aldham/cgi.html
www.cpan.org/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html
www.jmarshall.com/easy/cgi/
What are these codes in the perl script:
1. The first line tell the shell how to run perl on your computer- since we have the perl.exe files in the same directory as the *.pl program scripts this line is actually not necessary.
#!perl.exe
www.pconline.com/~erc/perl95.htm
Add \perl\bin (or \perl5\bin) to your PATH
www.pconline.com/~erc/perlwin.htm
Even though it may seem different at first, you run your Perl scripts on Windows the same way you do on UNIX: from a command line. On Windows, this means you run your Perl scripts from an MS-DOS Prompt window. For example:
C:\> perl hello.pl
Paths
Windows uses a backslash character, \, to separate directories. UNIX uses a forward slash character, /. To make matters worse, the backslash is a special character in Perl. Because of this, you need to use two backslashes (the first "escapes" the second) for paths on Windows. For example:
C:\\PERL
Because of this, you have to be careful how you put together paths on Windows.
************** further more ************
On UNIX and Linux, you can change a Perl script into an executable file with two steps:
Mark the file as executable.
Place a special comment into the first line of the Perl script. This comment identifies the shell program that should be run on the script, for example:
#!/usr/bin/perl
This won't work on Windows!
Why? Because Windows does not provide shells like UNIX. The special comment #!/usr/bin/perl works because UNIX shell programs have code that looks at a specially-formatted comment in the first line of the script to determine which program to launch to handle the script.
Since MS-DOS doesn't support these special comments, this technique won't work on Windows.
The way around this is to convert your Perl files into DOS batch files.
************ and finishes by saying ***********
Note: The latest Perl for Win32 no longer needs to convert Perl scripts to DOS batch files, since Perl now sets up entries in the Windows registry.
The neat-o pl2bat.bat batch file can convert your Perl script into a DOS batch file. This takes advantage of the fact that DOS and Perl can interpret the same instructions--if carefully formatted--differently.
The command:
C:\> pl2bat hello.pl
converts hello.pl to hello.bat, a DOS batch file. If you look in this file, you'll see your Perl script wrapped inside a DOS batch file. You can then simply invoke the batch file, by typing the name of your file (without the .bat extension) as you do with normal DOS batch files.
The script takes advantage of a clever idea. The following lines are both valid Perl (setting the @rem array to a multi-line string) and DOS batch syntax (comments):
@rem = '
@rem ';
In between the two lines, the pl2bat.bat script places a set of DOS batch commands that invoke the Perl command with the rest of the file.
Try it out and look at the resulting file. It's really quite clever.
On Windows, double-clock on any file in the Perl Doc directory. (The Windows Perl manual pages are in HTML Web format.)