How can I determine the bitness of the OS using Perl on Windows?

Question

Using Perl, how can I determine whether my program is running on 32 bit Windows or 64 bit Windows?

Is there any API available?

I can think of a couple of opt

Answer 1

Testing for the existence of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node is the most reliable method

 #!/usr/bin/perl

use strict; 
use Win32::Registry;

my $bitReturn = &bitter();

print "OS Bit: $bitReturn \n";

# Testing for the existence of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node is the most reliable method
sub bitter {
    my $Register = "Software\\Wow6432Node";
    my ($hkey,$bitReturn);

    if ($HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->Open($Register,$hkey)) {
        $bitReturn = "64";
    }
    else {
        $bitReturn = "32"
    }
    return $bitReturn;
}

Here is another easy method, checking Environment Variables

sub bitter {
     my $bit;
     my $OSbit = `set`;
     if ($OSbit =~ m/Files\(x86\)/i) {
         $bit = "64";
     }
     else {
         $bit = "32";
     }
     return $bit;
}