Win32::GetOSVersion()
    [CORE] Returns the array (STRING, MAJOR, MINOR, BUILD, ID), where
    the elements are, respectively: An arbitrary descriptive string, t
+he
    major version number of the operating system, the minor version
    number, the build number, and a digit indicating the actual
    operating system. For the ID, the values are 0 for Win32s, 1 for
    Windows 9X and 2 for Windows NT/2000/XP. In scalar context it
    returns just the ID.

    Currently known values for ID MAJOR and MINOR are as follows:

          OS                    ID    MAJOR   MINOR
          Win32s                 0      -       -
          Windows 95             1      4       0
          Windows 98             1      4      10
          Windows Me             1      4      90
          Windows NT 3.51        2      3      51
          Windows NT 4           2      4       0
          Windows 2000           2      5       0
          Windows XP             2      5       1
          Windows .NET Server    2      5       1

    Unfortunately as of June 2002 there is no way to distinguish betwe
+en
    .NET servers and XP servers without using additional modules.
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Courage, the Cowardly Dog

Thanks, that's exactly what i needed to know.
Win32::GetOSVersion() in scalar context will get the job done :)


$|=$_="1g2i1u1l2i4e2n0k",map{print"\7",chop;select$,,$,,$,,$_/7}m{..}g

I interpret it as follows:

0	Windows 3.1, 3.11, WFW	The 16 bit Windows generation
1	Win95/98/ME	Win95 and descendants
2	WinNT3.x, WinNT4.x, Win2k, WinXP	the NT family
3	WinCE	Windows Control Edition, for handheld devices.

I can't say I can even find a trace of it in Config.pm, nor in the \%Config hash it creates. I wouldn't trust those values anyway, as they are likely the values at the time perl was compiled. For example, on my system, $Config{osversion} is '4.0', even though I'm on Win98. As you can see, I should have gotten '4.1' or '4.10'.

I think using an API call, through Win32::API, would be the safest way. As for which API call... there is GetVersion(). You'll get the value of the last column, live this time, and at least one bit saying whether this is NT or not. But still, GetVersionEx() looks like the better choice.

use Win32::API;
my $tpl = 'V5Z128';
my $struc = pack $tpl, 5*4+128, (0) x 4, '';
my $GetVersionEx = new Win32::API('kernel32', 'GetVersionExA', ['P'], 
+'N');
$GetVersionEx->Call($struc);
my($OSVersionInfoSize, $MajorVersion, $MinorVersion, $BuildNumber, $Pl
+atformId,  $CSDVersion) = unpack $tpl, $struc;

print << "END";
major: $MajorVersion
minor: $MinorVersion
build: $BuildNumber
platform: $PlatformId
"$CSDVersion"
END
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s/Windows Control Edition/Windows Compact Edition/;
:)