os-windows/1919: Perl CGI Execution (with solution)

[Adam Turoff <ad...@smginc.com>]

>Number:         1919
>Category:       os-windows
>Synopsis:       Perl CGI Execution (with solution)
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Mar  6 10:20:00 PST 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     adamt@smginc.com
>Organization:
apache
>Release:        1.3b5
>Environment:
WinNT v4sp3
MSVC
Apache 1.3b5
perl 5.004_02 for Win32 binary distribution from CPAN
>Description:
The shebang syntax #! is interpreted by Apache; the standard file association
is ignored (*.pl => c:/perl/bin/perl.exe "*.pl").

Win32 uses file associations in the registry to determine how to make 
non-executable files executable (.bat, .cmd, .pl, .tk, .py, etc.).
>How-To-Repeat:
Configure any CGI directory that has a perl script 
with a unix style #!/usr/bin/perl as the first line.
>Fix:
Apache will look for a file called /usr/bin/perl (on the default drive,
the same as Apache is installed on).  If the perl interpreter is found
there (simply by copying c:/perl/bin/perl.exe to c:/usr/bin/perl) then
Apache will load the perl interpreter and run the CGI script.

This way, CGI scripts can remain mostly unmodified between NT and Unix
hosts (CR/LF transformation may still be needed).

Note that with the 5.004_02 binary distribution, simply copying and renaming the
(8K) interpreter executable from the installed directory into c:/usr/bin
is sufficient.  The perl interpreter will find the standard installation
directory and load the required DLLs and perl library files.

The fact that NT does not see an extensionless c:/usr/bin/perl as an 
executable file does not matter
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