system call how-to

[elsiddik]

well i wanted to just mess a little with perl and try if it can give me the same result of a small shell script i wrote a little while ago but it doesnt seems to work out with me . here is my shell script

 #!/bin/bash

DIRECTORY="/usr/bin"

  for file in $DIRECTORY/*
do

   whatis `basename $file`

done

exit 0

i tried to run a similiar perl script by typing

perl -e "system qw (whatis /usr/bin/*)"

but its not giving me the same whatislog - what am i doing wrong ? cheers.

[shmem]

In your shell script, you build a list of files and strip off the directory part of each file with basename, whereas in your perl snippet you simply pass the string /urs/bin/* directly to whatis.

Not quite the same, is it? For basename in perl, see File::Basename. whatis doesn't work with the full path to a binary.

Since you invoke system with a list (as opposed to: with a string containing whitespace), no shell is involved, so /usr/bin/* is not even expanded.

[akho]

Doesn't whatis /usr/bin/* do the same thing your script does? Why do you need it then? Is it a part of a larger script?

AFAIK, system does not interpolate wildcards; that means * does not work. You can write an explicit glob:

$files = join ' ', glob '/usr/bin/*';
system "whatis $files";

[elsiddik]

now im i managed to use File::Basename. with this code

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Basename;

my $path  = "/usr/bin/*";
my $files = basename($path);
my $dir   = dirname($path);

print "dir is $dir , files is $files\n";

system "whatis $path";

the output of $files is listening all files in the directory - so far so good , but im still stuck with the same problem - the script is not giving me the real whatis command Output. any idea?

[cdarke]

Check that whatis exists in your Bourne shell. It could be an old version that does not have it (system uses the Bourne shell on UNIX by default). Check the return value, or $?.
If you want to capture the output in Perl, maybe you should be using qx (or back-ticks) instead?

[elsiddik]

well

$files = join ' ', glob '/usr/bin/*';
system "whatis $files";

gave me the same results so far - and  perl -e 'chdir shift || "/usr/bin"; system whatis => <*> ended up with  whatis : unknown option. ill give basename a shot - maybe it helps

[naikonta]

Yikes! Where did my parentheses go? So sorry elsiddik, it's really supposed to be:

perl -e 'chdir (shift || "/usr/bin"); system whatis => <*>'

as long as one-liner is concerned. The chdir functions takes higher precedence than the logical OR (||) operator. The truth is, I added the shift || part later on the textbox without retesting. My fault, my fault....

shmem privately messaged me correcting my answer, and suggested me to have some coffee. But I think I need more than that, perhaps taking a fresh bath :D Thanks, shmem :-)

[Moron]

The first example seems a bit long-winded already in bash and could be improved to:

ls /usr/bin | xargs whatis

It didn't look like a worthwhile goal anyway to just use perl -e to system() back to the shell. I'd try something that can be done without the system() call, e.g. counting the number of lines in each file.

[naikonta]

How about,

perl -e 'system whatis => </usr/bin/*>'

Gleh, that's what could happen if you just woke up and tried to do something before your mind was completely clear :-) I mean this,

$ perl -e 'chdir shift || "/usr/bin"; system whatis => <*>'

No wonder the first code gave me strange output :D

---

Update: fixed the snip, and added this update note.

[Anonymous Monk]

thx naikonta this  perl -e 'chdir (shift || "/usr/bin"); system whatis => <*>' works the way i want it :) cheers.