Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, Second Edition

Chapter 1. Why Perl on Your Win32 Machine?

All operating systems have ways of automating procedures and tasks. Usually this is done by collecting a series of commands in a file and having some way of executing these commands. Typically, this is performed by a program called a shell. UNIX users have been fortunate to have a myriad of shells to choose from: the C shell, the Bourne shell, and the Bourne Again shell (BASH), just to name a few. These shells are rich in function and can perform some complex command processing. You could even consider these shells programming environments. In the Microsoft operating systems, however, there has only been the command processor.

The command processor is the default shell for various versions of Microsoft ...