HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: manaster@yu1.yu.edu (Chaim Manaster)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: How to run a Perl under DOS?
Summary: Please explain the batch file.
Date: 7 Jan 93 23:18:38 GMT
Organization: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, UCLA

In article <1993Jan7.182209.1931@unipalm.co.uk> ian@unipalm.co.uk (Ian Phillipps) writes:
>c23mts@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Mike Scheidler) writes:
>
>
>>Could someone shed some light on how to execute a script using one of
>>the DOS ports of perl?
>
>>I've seen an example somewhere which wraps the invocation of PERL.EXE into
>>a .BAT file (using %0 through %9 to pass any parameters), but it doesn't
>>seem to exit cleanly for me when using DOS 5.0.
>
>I've recently moved over to this idiom:
>
>    @rem = '
>    some dos batch commands
>    PERL -S %0.BAT %1 %2 %3 (etc)
>    GOTO ENDOFPERL
>    ';
>    # your perl script here
>    __END__
>    :ENDOFPERL
>    some more DOS if you need it
>    rem Drop through end of Batch file
>
I am fairly new to all of this and don't quite understand how this
DOS batch (that apparently contains aPerl script) works or how it
passes the parameters from the command line to the Perl script.
How is the switch from DOS batch processing to Perl script
processing accomplished and why does the DOS batch proccessor skip
over al of the Perl script line? I am sure that its obvious to most
of you out there, but I sure don't have the finer points down quite
yet. If you could run down the above batch file with line by line
explanations, I would surely appreciate it, and hopefully
understand it too.

Thanks for the help.

Henry Manaster

-- 
***************************************************************************
	Henry Manaster          *     EMail: manaster@yu1.yu.edu
	Brooklyn, NY            *
                                *
	Disclaimer: The above is not necessarily MY opinion nor that 
				of anyone else :-)  ????!
****************************************************************************
 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: willr@.wedge.nt.com (Will Raymond)
Subject: Telnet Front End for PERL?
Organization: Northern Telecom Inc., RTP, NC
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:34:41 GMT

Is there a PD perl script to emulate
telnet sessions? I want to communicate
with a remote server via telnet from PERL.

Thanks.

Will
From: brossard@siisun.epfl.ch (Alain Brossard EPFL-SIC/SII)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Perl 4.035 on Solaris 2.1
Date: 9 Jan 93 11:51:23 GMT
Reply-To: brossard@sic.epfl.ch
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

In article <1993Jan8.203105.16916@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov>, drich@sandman.lerc.nasa.gov (Daniel Rich) writes:
|> 
|> Has anyone successfully compiled perl 4.035 on Solaris 2.1?  I managed
|> to get an executable with only a couple hours of hacking, but the
|> executable core dumps during the first test.  Can anyone offer any
|> suggestions?  I would like to get inn 1.2 running, but need perl to
|> validate my configuration....

    Make sure you use the latest gcc to compile it, the one provided
by Cygnus fails to compile Perl correctly.  Make sure that /usr/ccs/bin
is in your path, otherwise, if I remember correctly, Configure fails to
find nm.  Make sure that /usr/ucb is NOT in your path, again if I remember
correctly, Configure ends up looking in /usr/ucblib and /usr/ucbinclude.
The later is not ANSI compliant and caused problem with gcc.
    After all this, Perl failed a lot of tests related to numerical
computations.  I eventually picked up a binary that someone provided
for Solaris 2.0.
    Also, at the time I hadn't received any licences for the Sun's C
compiler so I haven't tried it.

-- 

Alain Brossard, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne,
	SIC/SII, EL-Ecublens, CH-1015 Lausanne, Suisse, +41 21 693-2211
brossard@sic.epfl.ch
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: mpotter@dacds0.lampf.lanl.gov (Michael Potter)
Subject: ftp site for VMS Perl
Reply-To: mpotter@dacds0.lampf.lanl.gov (Michael Potter)
Organization: Los Alamos National Lab
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 17:19:18 GMT

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of Perl for VMS (running 5.5-2)? 
An anonymous ftp site is preferable, but DECnet access is also a 
possibility.  Thanks!!
						Mike Potter
From: dwaddell@ipxpress.aws.waii.com (Operator)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: online-manuals with perl anywhere?
Date: 7 Jan 93 17:50:29 GMT
Organization: Atlas Wireline Services

In article <C0EtJy.2CA@ppcger.ppc.sub.org>, sepp@ppcger.ppc.sub.org (Josef Wolf) writes:
|> Once I saw a man-package in perl which could handle all kind of special
|> things like compressed man-pages, being highly configurable, etc/pp.
|> 
|> Does anybody out there know the name of that package, and where it
|> can be found?
|> 
|> Thanx & greetings
|>     Sepp
|> 
|> 
|> -- 
|> sepp@ppcger.ppc.sub.org
|> Josef Wolf, Germersheim, Germany
|> ..!ira.uka.de!smurf.sub.org!ppcger.ppc.sub.org

From the Index on ashley.cs.widener.edu [147.31.254.132]
 * tchrist-man.shar.Z   Tom Christiansen's man set in perl (GREAT)
From: manaster@yu1.yu.edu (Chaim Manaster)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: How to run a Perl under DOS?
Date: 8 Jan 93 16:38:25 GMT
Organization: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, UCLA


In article <1993Jan8.071450.7631@netcom.com> jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton) writes:
>1  >>    @rem = '                   
>2  >>    some dos batch commands
>3  >>    PERL -S %0.BAT %1 %2 %3 (etc)
>4  >>    GOTO ENDOFPERL
>5  >>    ';
>6  >>    # your perl script here
>7  >>    __END__
>8  >>    :ENDOFPERL
>9  >>    some more DOS if you need it
>10 >>    rem Drop through end of Batch file

...

>(3), like (2), is ignored in perl, but calls the perl interpreter in batch.
>The -S options means "search the path for the script".  The "%0" expands to
>the name of the file.  The remaining things are just parameters to be
>passed to perl. 
>
>(4) is ignored in perl, but in DOS it's a GOTO command pointing to (8).
>The contents of (5)-(7) are perl commands, and probably won't be valid DOS
>commands.  The GOTO just skips over them. 

Why does Perl skip over the GOTO? That is a valid command in Perl
(even if illadvised). So in effect, both the batch and Perl
processors are interpreting the same file over again. Neat.
How does the expansion of the %0-%9 parameters work? Apparently
this is done twice, once in the batch processor and again in the
Perl processor. Is that right? Thus which meta characters must be
escaped and Once or twice?

I put all my batch files in a \bat directory which is on the path,
so the batch processor will find any bat file in it, I suppose I
still need the -s so that Perl will know to search the path as
well?

By the way, in all the Perl stuff I have read so far, I keep seeing
references to "globbing", is this just another way of saying
"command line expansion"?

>You do something similar using the -x command line  option instead of the -S
>command line option. 

What's the difference between the two?

Thanks for the help. I thought it was something along these lines,
but the details escaped me. I think I got it now.

Henry Manaster

P.S. I keep seeing references to "sockets" in the Perl docs. I have
no idea what this means, other than that it doesn't work in the DOS
versions of Perl. I assume it is a unix term. What does this mean
or do?
Thanks again.
HM

-- 
***************************************************************************
	Henry Manaster          *     EMail: manaster@yu1.yu.edu
	Brooklyn, NY            *
                                *
	Disclaimer: The above is not necessarily MY opinion nor that 
				of anyone else :-)  ????!
****************************************************************************
 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: jbence@julia.math.ucla.edu (James K. Bence)
Subject: Re: bug with "last"
Summary: I don't think so
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 16:10:34 GMT

In article <cameron-930111155241-1-06364@fuligin> cameron@cs.unsw.oz.au writes:
>This loop runs three times.
>
>	for (('a','b','c'))
>		{ print "\$_ is '$_'\n";
>		  { last; }
>		}
>
>Surely it shouldn't? This is perl 4.035.
>	- Cameron Simpson
>	  cameron@cse.unsw.edu.au, DoD 0743
>--

I think it should.  The 'last' terminates the block within which it is 
enclosed, which happens to be very short.  I point to the Camel, pg. 97:

"A BLOCK by itself (labeled or not) is equivalent to a loop that executes
once.  Thus you can use 'last' to leave the block or redo to restart
the block."       (An example follows in the text)

James Bence
Programmer/Analyst/Grad Student
Univ. of Calif, Los Angeles
Dept. of Mathematics
jbence@math.ucla.edu
From: przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov (Przemek Klosowski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: How do I do scanf() in Perl?
Date: 7 Jan 93 16:21:08 GMT
Organization: U. of Maryland/NIST
In-reply-to: davidj@Data-IO.COM's message of 4 Jan 93 17:26:56 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.172656.22413@data-io.com> davidj@Data-IO.COM (David Jablonski) writes:

   I am writing an application that needs to take records in the
   following printf-like format and split up the various fields:

   %3d,"%s",%d,%f,"%s","%s",%d,%f  (The strings may or may not contain commas.)

Scanf has a lexing mechanism built in, so that split may not be up to task
doing this. However, the regular expressions are just fine, so :

   ($int1,$str1,$int2,$flt1,$str2,$str3,$int3,$flt2) = ($record =~
	/(\d{3}),?"([^"]*)",?(\d+),(\S+),?"([^"]*)",?"([^"]*)",?(\d+),?(\S+)/);
                                  ^ this comma has to be there, or else the
                           integer and the floating value would stick together

should do the trick for you. If there are several different types
of records, the line above will "zero" the variables that did not have
corresponding subexpression matches, so you should perhaps do it differently:

  if ($record =~ / .... /) {
	($int1, ...) = ($1, $2, $3, ...);
  }


--
			przemek klosowski (przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov)
			Reactor Division (bldg. 235), E111
			National Institute of Standards and Technology
			Gaithersburg, MD 20899,      USA

			(301) 975 6249
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: perl man index searching problem
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 14:22:59 GMT
Distribution: na
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of mark@drd.com (Resident.Alien):
:Which section would you like? 5
:running: more -s '+/^[  ]*S.Se.ea.ar.rc.ch.h S.St.tr.ra.at.te.eg.gy.y'   /tmp/man
:.19007
:pattern not found
:
:Is my 'more' helplessly inadequate?  I'm running SunOS Release 4.1.1.

I've heard about this, but don't have the problem myself.  The problem,
I believe, is that your macroset doesn't generate section headers aren't
being generated with the bold overstrike sequence that my program is
expecting.  It shouldn't be too hard to look at what it *is* doing and
adjust the regexp accordingly.

--tom
-- 
    Tom Christiansen      tchrist@convex.com      convex!tchrist

    "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
    flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: sepp@ppcger.ppc.sub.org (Josef Wolf)
Subject: online-manuals with perl anywhere?
Organization: PPC Cooperation
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:59:58 GMT

Once I saw a man-package in perl which could handle all kind of special
things like compressed man-pages, being highly configurable, etc/pp.

Does anybody out there know the name of that package, and where it
can be found?

Thanx & greetings
    Sepp


-- 
sepp@ppcger.ppc.sub.org
Josef Wolf, Germersheim, Germany
..!ira.uka.de!smurf.sub.org!ppcger.ppc.sub.org
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: jon@cas.org (Jon Vander Hill)
Subject: What are sockets? (was Re: How to run a Perl under DOS?)
Organization: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio
	<1993Jan8.071450.7631@netcom.com> <1270@alsys1.aecom.yu.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 14:53:47 GMT

>>>>> On 8 Jan 93 16:38:25 GMT, manaster@yu1.yu.edu (Chaim Manaster) said:

> P.S. I keep seeing references to "sockets" in the Perl docs. I have
> no idea what this means, other than that it doesn't work in the DOS
> versions of Perl. I assume it is a unix term. What does this mean
> or do?

Sockets are general mechanism for interprocess communication and
appear in most modern implementations of UNIX.  Typically they are
used for communication via the TCP/IP protocol suite, but are not
inherently restricted to one protocol or another.  See

Stevens, W. Richard, _UNIX Network Programming_.
Prentice-Hall, 1990

for all the gory details.  The progarmming examples are in C, but
are easily adapted to Perl.

Jon Vander Hill, System Engineer              Chemical Abstracts Service
internet: jon@cas.org (preferred)             P.O. Box 3012 (preferred)
          jon@cas.bitnet                      2540 Olentangy River Road
uucp:     uunet!osu-cis!chemabs!jon           Columbus, Ohio 43210
bitnet:   jon@CAS                             USA
phone:    (614) 447-3600
From: hogan@radiomail.net (Emmett Hogan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: "Secure" way to find out hostname
Date: 5 Jan 1993 22:30:00 GMT
Organization: Anterior Technology
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rfi.radiomail.net
Keywords: setuid, hostname

Hi All,

Quick and hopefully easy question:

Is there an acceptable way to find out your machine's hostname in a setuid  
PERL script?  When I try this: $host = `/bin/hostname` I get INSECURE  
path.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Emmett
From: przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov (Przemek Klosowski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: How to limit Perl memory usage?
Date: 7 Jan 93 16:03:24 GMT
Organization: U. of Maryland/NIST
In-reply-to: przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov's message of 5 Jan 93 23:18:33 GMT


Hello again!

I got some mail messages related to my problems with mysterious (to
me, at least :^) Perl memory usage. Apparently other folks have
also experienced similar problems, perhaps because we don't quite
understand Perl memory usage habits. 

It occurred to me that there could be a way to monitor the memory
usage: doing `ps auxww` and extracting the SZ field for the Perl's
line is a slow but sure way of checking the memory; are there any
better ways? Maybe there could be a command line switch that would
warn of a rapidly growing memory requirements? or a command that woud
mark the place where _I_ believe the allocated memory should be
invariant, and issue a warning if it is not?

BTW, my perl version is 4.0 pl 35, if it matters.


--
			przemek klosowski (przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov)
			Reactor Division (bldg. 235), E111
			National Institute of Standards and Technology
			Gaithersburg, MD 20899,      USA

			(301) 975 6249
From: vhc@abacus.hgs.se (Mikael Larsson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Wanted: script for mailstat
Date: 11 Jan 93 19:32:15 GMT
Organization: Solace Computer Club, Sundsvall, Sweden


I am looking for a good perl-script that makes a nice-looking toplist of 
the users who gets and sends mots mails on this machine.

Anyone?


	MiL

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mikael Larsson         Phone: +46-26 275740          Email: vhc@abacus.hgs.se
Virus Help Centre      Fax:   +46-26 275720              or   : mikael@vhc.se
Authorized McAfee Associates Agent     FidoNet: 2:205/204 - VirNet: 9:461/101
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: mmuegel@cssmp.corp.mot.com (Michael S. Muegel)
Subject: Re: Arrgh: Looking for usenet news watcher
Organization: Corporate Information Office, Schaumburg, Illinois, Motorola, Inc.
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 23:28:44 GMT

Previously, tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) wrote:
> From the keyboard of mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us (Mitra):
> :If you find it then I'd like a pointer to it as well
>
> convex.com:/pub/perl/scripts/clip

You know what would be nice? A clip server that lets users remotely
subscribe to simple clipping service via an e-mail interface. You could
throw this on your news server and let users specify things they want
done.

Doubt it would be difficult. Just a few changes to clip and a mail server
front-end. Anyone done something like this?

-Mike

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael S. Muegel                  | Internet E-Mail:    mmuegel@mot.com   |
| UNIX Applications Startup Group    | Moto Dist E-Mail:   X10090            |
| Corporate Information Office       | Voice:              (708) 576-0507    |
| Motorola                           | ... these are my opinions, honest ... |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: csb@gdwb.oz.au (Craig Bishop)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Wanted: a perl script for IDA xaliases.
Date: 8 Jan 93 04:19:01 GMT

Has anyone have or know of a perl script which can produce a
xaliases file for use with IDA sendmail. Something which
reads the passwd file and using the gecos field produces
the list of address rewritting aliases.
-- 
Craig Bishop			Information Systems Division
Email: csb@gdwb.OZ.AU		Geelong & District Water Board
Phone: +61 52 262506		61-67 Ryrie St Geelong
Fax:   +61 52 218236		Victoria 3220 Australia
From: seb1005@mbfs.bio.cam.ac.uk (Steven Brenner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: X and Perl
Date: 10 Jan 93 15:18:55 GMT
Organization: U. of Cambridge, England


	Are there any plans to include any X window system support (for
even "trivial" things like form-fill-in dialog boxes) in Perl in the 
near future?   Alternatively, are there any perl libraries (presumably with
separate programs which actually do the X calls) which help to provide
X facilities to Perl programmers?

	Thanks for the information.

-- 
Steven E. Brenner               |  Internet    seb1005@mbfs.bio.cam.ac.uk
Department of Biochemistry      |  JANET       seb1005@uk.ac.cam.bio.mbfs
University of Cambridge         |  Laboratory  +44 223 333671
Tennis Court Road               |  Home        +44 223 314964
Cambridge CB2 1QW, UK           |  Lab Fax     +44 223 333345
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: tye@spillman.uucp (E. Tye McQueen)
Subject: Does Perl need fgets()?
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1993 01:36:50 GMT
Organization: Spillman Data Systems

Perl has two major ways of reading from a file, <handle> and sysread().
I think fgets() would be a very handy addition.

First, some review:

<handle> is buffered so it doesn't work in many cases.  For example,
when you want to use tell() to remember where the (next) line began
so you can come back to it later.  Or if you want to read the first
few lines until you get to the good part and then fork()+exec() to
let some other program handle the rest of the input.

In both cases <handle> usually reads and buffers some "random" number
of characters past the end of the line.  These characters are "lost"
to the program you fork()+exec() and tell() gives the position after
these random number of characters, not at the end of the line.

Okay, no suprises there.  That is why you don't use <handle> in such
cases (okay, so it surprises me each time I run into it, but that's
not what I meant).

Now, to get around this problem you write:

    # Read 1 new-line-terminated record w/o buffering or read-ahead
    sub getline {
      local( $hndl )= @_;
      local( $rec, $cnt )= ( "", 0 );
        do {
            sysread( $hndl, $rec, 1, $cnt );
        } while(  "\n" ne substr($rec,$cnt++,1)  );
        $rec;
    }

But doing this quickly is not Perl's strong suit.  (Yes, this can
probably be tweaked for better speed, feel free to post suggestions
and timing benchmarks.)

So how about:

    fgets( handle, buf[, maxlen[, off] )

for such cases?  If maxlen wasn't specified it would call fgets()
repeatedly with some default buffer size (512 or so?) until it got
a newline.

Alternately, there could be some way to change the behavior of
<handle> so it would act this way (something like $|=1).

Any better ideas?

I wouldn't have mentioned it but this is the second time I've run
into this and a coworker also ran into it today.

Thanks,
 tye@spillman.com                         Tye McQueen, E.
----------------------------------------------------------
 Nothing is obvious unless you are overlooking something. 
----------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: drich@sandman.lerc.nasa.gov (Daniel Rich)
Subject: Perl 4.035 on Solaris 2.1
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:31:05 GMT


Has anyone successfully compiled perl 4.035 on Solaris 2.1?  I managed
to get an executable with only a couple hours of hacking, but the
executable core dumps during the first test.  Can anyone offer any
suggestions?  I would like to get inn 1.2 running, but need perl to
validate my configuration....

-- 
Dan Rich                    | drich@lerc.nasa.gov   |  (216) 433-4000
Sr. Systems Engineer        | "Danger, you haven't seen the last of me!"
RMS Technologies, Inc.      |    "No, but the first of you turns my stomach!"
NASA Lewis Research Center  | -- The Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger

Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Gertjan Koetsier <gertjan_koetsier@mentorg.com>
Subject: ftp side for latest version on MS/DOS
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d16
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1993 08:50:32 GMT
X-Xxdate: Mon, 4 Jan 93 08:50:25 GMT
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A76DB8E1B7014007@bvmac007.mentorg.com>
Organization: Mentor Graphics corporation

I would like to get hold of the latest version of perl (I have no C
compiler).
but I cannot get from jpl on anonymous (permission denied for
anonymous). Is
there another way to get it?

Greetings from somebody who wants to work with perl on DOS (in order
to be
able to learn it).

***************************************
*  Gertjan Koetsier                   *
*  Telecom Consultant                 *
*  Mentor Graphics Corporation        *
***************************************
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton)
Subject: Re: How to run a Perl under DOS?
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 17:05:23 GMT

In article <1278@alsys1.aecom.yu.edu> manaster@yu1.yu.edu (Chaim Manaster) writes:
>In article <1993Jan11.062312.323@netcom.com> jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton) writes:
>>>>>>1  >>    @rem = '                   
>>>>>>2  >>    some dos batch commands
>>>>>>3  >>    PERL -S %0.BAT %1 %2 %3 (etc)
>>>>>>4  >>    GOTO ENDOFPERL
>>>>>>5  >>    ';
>>>>>>6  >>    # your perl script here
>>>>>>7  >>    __END__
>>>>>>8  >>    :ENDOFPERL
>>>>>>9  >>    some more DOS if you need it
>>>>>>10 >>    rem Drop through end of Batch file
>>>
>What I don't see is where either the single quotes or double quotes
>you refer to, come from. The only quotes in the script above,
>enclosing lines 1-5 (single quote) are used by perl once it has
>already been invoked and for all practile purposes thrown away.

Right.

>Teh line seen by the perl line as seen by the DOS processor has NO
>quotes (of either kind) at all. So the last three or four lines of
>your reply above still confuse me.

Perhaps I was misunderstanding your question. 

>My original question was meant to be, if (for example) lastname was
>replaced by Henry$lastname would perl expand the $lastname part of
>the parameter, and would DOS either choke or expand it as well?

If you have a PC, why don't you just try it yourself?  It may be a better
way to learn.  Try both kinds of quote marks.

>And
>if you wanted to prevent expansion by either DOS or perl what would
>you do?

Perl won't expand inside single quotes.  I'm not sure how I'd escape a
percent sign in DOS because I've never needed or wanted to do so, and my
DOS manual is all the way on the other side of the room.  

-- 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Hamilton   jfh@netcom.com   P. O. Box 281107   SF, CA   94128-1107
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl