How to read in data with pipe characters

[w3ntp]

This is a clarification of my prior question:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
chomp($_=$ARGV[0]);
system `echo   $_  > /tmp/gerbil.txt`;
exit;

If I run the script this is what I get

/try.pl a|b|c|d
bash: b: command not found
bash: c: command not found
bash: d: command not found

The program above is passed live data one line at a time. It does not contain any # charters. Any thoughtt? thanks

[ww]

Don't "clarify" by starting a new thread. Edit, <strike>ing as necessary (but leave an audit trail of your original post, so as to keep any replies in context.

Reaped: How to read in data with pipe chars has been considered for reaping.

[cdarke]

/try.pl a|b|c|d

It is unusual to run a script from the root directory, you probably mean:

./try.pl 'a|b|c|d'

but that is a shell question, it has nothing to do with Perl.

[Anonymous Monk]

The pipe character means something special to your shell: for most, it means to pipe the output of one command to the input of the next. Quote your argument string, eg "a|b". See your shell's documentation for quoting rules and special characters.

[JavaFan]

/try.pl a|b|c|d
bash: b: command not found
bash: c: command not found
bash: d: command not found

That's an error you're getting due to bash, not Perl. You tell bash to call "/try.pl" with the argument 'a', and pipe the result into b, its result into c, and that result into d.

You probably want /try.pl 'a|b|c|d'. But, we aren't done. Once you have 'a|b|c|d', you feed it back into a shell. So, again, you need to escape it, but putting quotes around $_.

But why are you writing a Perl program which all it does it take input, and feed the input back to another shell? Why not just:

#!/usr/bin/sh
echo $1 > /tmp/gerbil.txt

However, if you do write it in Perl, why both the backticks, and system? Do you even know what the backticks do? Now you are saying: "Perl, please start a shell, and execute the command I'm giving you. Gather the output, and starts a second shell, executing whatever was written to STDOUT by the first shell." Is that really your intention?

[Anonymous Monk]

The data is already in @ARGV, so you're done :)

Your previous post is Read into stdin pipe characters

Also, you never want to use system, backticks, echo, and file redirection like that, its not a workaround