startperl insanity

This I do not understand. If I change config.sh so that 'startperl' is
something odd that does not m!/perl$! *then*

ext/Devel/DProf/t/DProf.t
lib/h2ph.t
lib/h2xs.t

fail, because they report errors such as:

not ok 3 - running ./perl "-I../lib" "-I../../lib" ../utils/h2xs -f -n h2xst 2>&1 
#     Failed test (lib/h2xs.t at line 168)
#          got: 512
#     expected: 0
not ok 4 - running ./perl "-I../lib" "-I../../lib" ../utils/h2xs -f -n h2xst 2>&1
#     Failed test (lib/h2xs.t at line 179)
#          got: 'Can't exec /Users/nick/Sandpit/frob/spong at ../utils/h2xs line 1.
# '
#     expected: 'Defaulting to backwards compatibility with perl 5.9.3


which somewhat makes sense, as the #! for dprofpp, h2ph and h2xs is

#!/Users/nick/Sandpit/frob/spong
    eval 'exec /Users/nick/Sandpit/blead25277/bin/perl5.9.3 -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
        if $running_under_some_shell;



If I install "/Users/nick/Sandpit/frob/spong" then all is happy.
If I change the #! line to a /Users/nick/Sandpit/frob/perl then all is happy.

Is this something to do with:

    If the #! line does not contain the word "perl", the program named after
    the #! is executed instead of the Perl interpreter.  This is slightly
    bizarre, but it helps people on machines that don't do #!, because they
    can tell a program that their SHELL is F</usr/bin/perl>, and Perl will then
    dispatch the program to the correct interpreter for them.


Is it possible to disable it with a flag?
Or should I just try cutting the code out of ponie.


Nicholas Clark

• startperl insanity by Nicholas Clark
• Re: startperl insanity by Graham Barr
• Re: startperl insanity by Nicholas Clark