Skip to Main Content
Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition
book

Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

by Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour
June 2002
Beginner content levelBeginner
759 pages
80h 42m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Win32::Shortcut

This module allows you to create and manipulate Windows shortcut files (.lnk files) through Perl. The methods and properties of this module apply to shortcut objects created by new:

use Win32::Shortcut;
$link = Win32::Shortcut->new(  );

This creates the shortcut object $link, on which you can set properties and save into a file. If you supply a filename as an argument to new, the file will be loaded into the shortcut object.

The object can also be accessed as if it was a normal hash reference. The following properties (hash keys) are available:

$link->{'File'}               
$link->{'Path'}
$link->{'ShortPath'}
$link->{'WorkingDirectory'}
$link->{'Arguments'}
$link->{'Description'}
$link->{'ShowCmd'}
$link->{'Hotkey'}
$link->{'IconLocation'}
$link->{'IconNumber'}

See Section 22.18.1 for a description of each property.

The following example assumes you have a shortcut file named test.lnk in your current directory. This simple script will tell you where this shortcut points to:

use Win32::Shortcut;
$link=new Win32::Shortcut(  );
$link->Load("test.lnk");
print "Shortcut to: $link->{'Path'} $link->{'Arguments'} \n";
$link->Close(  );

But you can also modify its values:

use Win32::Shortcut;
$link=new Win32::Shortcut(  );
$link->Load("test.lnk");
$link->{'Path'}=~s/C:/D:/i;   # Move the target from C: to D:
$link->{'ShowCmd'}=SW_NORMAL; # Runs in a normal window

The methods provided by Win32::Shortcut are as follows.

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Perl by Example, Fourth Edition

Perl by Example, Fourth Edition

Ellie Quigley
Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington
Perl in a Nutshell

Perl in a Nutshell

Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour
Learning Perl, 7th Edition

Learning Perl, 7th Edition

Randal L. Schwartz, brian d foy, Tom Phoenix

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596002416Errata Page