Perl on Windows: 32bit or 64bit?
<p>For several scripting tasks, our team currently uses <a href="http://strawberryperl.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Strawberry Perl</a> 5.14 / 32bit and I'm looking into upgrading to the latest 5.24(+) version.</p>

<p>I have always used the 32-bit version on Windows, and I found <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21697954/does-64-bit-perl-includes-all-32-bit-perl-modules">some</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32336342/invalid-access-to-memory-location-on-64-bit-strawberry-perl-only">references</a> that the 32-bit version may be <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/1jm2vd/32_bit_vs_64_bit_activestate_for_windows/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a little bit less troublesome</a> in general, but how true that is today, I have no clue.</p>

<p>In general, today on my Win7-Win10 installations, I try to install the 64bit version of a tool if there is one available, but since perl is not a tool but a toolbox, the choice seems a bit more complicated.</p>

<p>Of course, it's no problem at all having two Strawberry Portable/ZIP Versions in parallel on the same box, but obviously we as a team want to minimize version variations as much as possible, so I guess the question could be summed up as a </p>

<p><strong>TL;DR</strong>: Default to 32-bit Strawberry Perl and use the 64-bit one when needed, <em>or</em> default to 64-bit Strawberry Perl and use the 32-bit one when a package only has a 32-bit version?</p>

<p>I checked, and if it's relevant, the only packages we currently have in addition to the Strawberry 5.14 defaults are <code>DBD::Oracle</code>, <code>HTML::Formatter</code>, <code>XML::LibXML</code> and <code>XML::LibXSLT</code></p>

<p>Oh, and <strong>of course</strong>, <em>"it doesn't matter, because there are only some obscure modules, or you'll know exactly when it matters (e.g. 32bit vs 64-bit MS Office)"</em> is indeed a valid answer, which doesn't make the question per se opinion based IMHO.</p>

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<p>I'll note that the Strawberry homepage lists both the 64-bit as well as the 32-bit version as recommended, but lists the 64-bit version first.</p>