On 3/11/09 Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:36 AM, "neckha...@penntraffic.com" <neckha...@penntraffic.com> scribbled:
> Hi guys, > > I am starting to learn Perl as the ksh scripting language (which I > don't know either) looks less than powerful. > > I have used C many years ago, and write my stuff in REXX on a > mainframe, so Perl looks like the best of both worlds. > > My environment is AIX 5.3 running some sort of 5.8 PERL. Oh hell, let > me check..... 5.8.2. > > Most of the documentation and tutorials I find are for version 5.10 so > I am running into the stuff in the manuals and tutorials that do not exist > in 5.8. That would be peculiar, as 5.10 only recently came out. I have no books that cover 5.10. There were only a few things added, so most tutorial material will cover both 5.8 and 5.10. Just use 'print' instead of 'say', avoid the 'given/when' and 'state' statements, and you should be OK. You can always download, build, and install 5.10. > > As a starting project to learn the language, I want to execute an AIX > command and be able to read the output of the command in the script. The usual way to execute an external program and capture the output is to use backticks (`program`) or qx(program). > > EXEC doesn't work, because the program ends at the EXEC statement. exec (case matters) substitutes the specified program for your Perl program and never returns to it. > > SYSTEM does not appear to be available at the 5.8.2 level. system has been available in all recent perls (and maybe forever). > > I tried what usually works in other scripting languages of just > putting the command in quotes. Putting "ls" in the script actually > executes the command, and sends the output to the terminal. I want the > output in a file, so I tried "ls > out" and I get an error (shown > below). "ls" is just a string. `ls` will execute the ls command and return its output. > > I also tried to OPEN, PRINT then CLOSE a file, but the OPEN appears to > fail as if the function is not recignized, and no form of the OPEN > statement seems to work. I have included the script and results below. All of those should be in lower case. > > This seems like it should be simple, but something escapes me. > > Thanks, > Neal > > Script: > > #/usr/bin/env perl -w > "ls > out"; > print "RC = $?"; > open OUTFILE, '< out' or die 'problem'; You should include the reason why the open failed: open OUTFILE, '< out' or die "problem: $!"; > print while <OUTFILE>; > close (OUTFILE); > > > Results: > > test.pl[2]: ls > out: not found. > RC = 127 > test.pl[4]: open: not found. > test.pl[5]: 0403-057 Syntax error at line 6 : `;' is not expected. Those look like shell errors. Are you sure you are callilng the perl interpreter? Try a different first line (and always include the next two lines shown): #/path/to/perl use strict; use warnings; ... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
