On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I wanted to point out that vmsperl's config.sh does not know
> about _exe. It does know about exe_ext though. In looking
> at Configure it would appear that _exe is a special executable
> extension for use before .-ing a hints/$foo.sh file. Hence I suspect
> that if your patch were to go in it would have been better to use
> $Config{exe_ext} rather than $Config{_exe}.
Actually, exe_ext is just an old synonym for _exe. Originally the
variable was called exe_ext, but I thought that foo$_exe "looked better"
and so changed it accordingly in metaconfig a long long long time ago.
exe_ext and _exe should be identical, and it should suffice to only use
_exe everywhere. I left exe_ext in only in case someone had a custom
hints file that was not part of the core distribution, or in case another
package using metaconfig had hints files that used exe_ext.
Alas, people use Config{} variables without actually reading and
understanding their definitions (which are included in Config.pm, and also
in Porting/Glossary) so we're now stuck seeing both versions actively
used. Sigh.
--
Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Physics
Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042
