Actually it could easily do without the greps - or I could use perl for the same task.

Also note that on no system is $PATH searched recursively. Your code does, so may find the wrong binary.

It still seems excessively convoluted. How about so?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Config;
use File::Spec::Functions qw(catfile file_name_is_absolute);

my ($binary) = file_name_is_absolute($^X)
    ? $^X
    : (
        grep -x,
        map catfile($_,$^X),
        split /\Q$Config::Config{path_sep}/, $ENV{PATH}
    );

my %interesting =
    map +(
        $_ => do {
            (my $rwa = $_) =~ s/^install|exp$//;
            $rwa . (/^install/ ? 3 : /^exp$/ ? 2 : 1);
        }
    ),
    grep {
        /^(?!installusr|ta|mv|mu|d_)\w*
          (?:bin(?!compat)|arch(?!name|obj)|priv|
          (?:vendor|site)(?!lib_|prefix))
          [a-z]*
         /x
    }
    keys %Config::Config;

print(
    "Binary is at: $binary\n\n",
    map {
        my $lf = /^install/ ? "\n" : '';
        sprintf("%-20s        %s\n", $_, $Config::Config{$_}) . $lf;
    }
    sort { $interesting{$a} cmp $interesting{$b} }
    keys %interesting
);
[download]

Makeshifts last the longest.

Aristotle wrote:


my ($binary) = file_name_is_absolute($^X)
    ? $^X
    : (
        grep -x,
        map catfile($_,$^X),
        split /\Q$Config::Config{path_sep}/, $ENV{PATH}
    );
[download]

As far as I can see, you are calling grep in a scalar context and would normally be putting "1" (0x1) into $binary using this code. Am I wrong?

I (being the one who has to maintain this code) kept to my own version of what is less convoluted / obfuscated, but have added credits in the POD for pointing me towards a better code block for getting the fully-qualified path to the perl interpreter. Thank you.

    me


-- 
use PerlMonk::Tye qw(:wisely);

No. my ($binary) is list context. my $binary would be scalar context. So what happens here is that the first match from the grep is stored in $binary and the rest, if any, are discarded.

Makeshifts last the longest.