Re: 'do' command is dead? Surely not?

[haukex]

You may want to try adding the error checking from the do docs:

unless (my $return = do $file) {
    warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
    warn "couldn't do $file: $!"    unless defined $return;
    warn "couldn't run $file"       unless $return;
}

Update: Oh, and of course Use strict and warnings.

[ACI]

Thanks haukex - swift reply!

What, me, not using strict and warnings? ;-) Have changed 'test.pl' to the following:

use strict;
use warnings;

print "Hello world!\n";

my $file='test-response.pl';

unless (my $return = do $file) {
    warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
    warn "couldn't do $file: $!"    unless defined $return;
    warn "couldn't run $file"       unless $return;
}

print "Did that work?\n";

Output is now

Hello world!
couldn't do test-response.pl: No such file or directory at test.pl lin
+e 10.
couldn't run test-response.pl at test.pl line 11.
Did that work?

The file 'test-response.pl' is certainly there.... (the files are on my desktop and I'm calling them from a command prompt having changed directory to the desktop, by the way).

[Eily]

You can check perl's current directory with Cwd (no matter how unlikely it seems for something to be the cause of a defect, if you're stuck, it's better to check than "just know"). You can also check which files .pl perl sees in the current folder with:

use Data::Dump qw( pp );
pp <*.pl>;

I used Data::Dump instead of a simple print, because it will explicitly display characters that might go otherwise unnoticed. If you don't want to install it, you can use Data::Dumper and set $Data::Dumper::Useqq to 1

[KurtZ]

do docs say "searches the @INC", so maybe check if "." is missing.

[davido]

Recent versions of Perl (v5.24.1+) removed '.' from @INC, so this is probably right on the mark. If the OP is using a recent enough Perl version it will not look in the dot path unless something like this happens:

use lib '.';

Though that is subject to the challenges that the dot path has always faced. It would be better to do something like this:

use FindBin;
use lib "$FindBin::Bin/../lib"; # Or whatever is accurate for this scr
+ipt's needs.

This eliminates sensitivity to where the script was invoked from.

See also: FindBin, lib, and perl5241delta.

[haukex]

The file 'test-response.pl' is certainly there...

Not to Perl it seems... I would investigate this further. For example, try things like print -e $file ? "exists\n" : "doesn't exist\n";, use Cwd; print getcwd, "\n";, or my $file='/absolute/path/to/test-response.pl';. Also, what version of Perl are you using?

[ACI]

Thanks both, nice tips.

Can confirm that both 'test.pl' and 'test-response.pl' are recognised in the following tests

my @files=();
@files=glob('*');
print join("\n",@files),"\n";

and

use Data::Dump qw( pp );
pp <*.pl>;

and that this test yields '/home/Andy/Desktop' as expected

use Cwd;
my $dir = getcwd;
print "$dir\n";

Finally, %inc contains:

warnings/register.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/warnings/register.pm
overload.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/overload.pm
vars.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/vars.pm
Cwd.pm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24/Cwd.pm
Exporter.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/Exporter.pm
overloading.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/overloading.pm
File/Glob.pm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24/File/Glob.pm
warnings.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/warnings.pm
Data/Dump.pm
/usr/local/share/perl/5.24.1/Data/Dump.pm
strict.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/strict.pm
/etc/perl/sitecustomize.pl
/etc/perl/sitecustomize.pl
XSLoader.pm
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24.1/XSLoader.pm
subs.pm
/usr/share/perl/5.24/subs.pm

Confusing!