Re: Check for another program availability

in reply to Check for another program availability

I'd avoid reimplementing how your shell uses $PATH. If this command is being run in a wrapper, it could be as simple as a commandline argument,

$ perl ./my/script.pl $(which myprogram)
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If you don't know the name of the program at first, then,

  my $full_program = `which $program`;
  chomp $full_program;
[download]

Note: which will not "find" a program in $PATH for a file where -x is not also true. In other words, which requires the "found" file to have executable permissions by the effective user. So, yeah; don't try to reimplement which.

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Re^2: Check for another program availability by hrcerq (Scribe) on Apr 11, 2021 at 22:49 UTC
I see, but, would that be portable? I mean, the which program itself may not be available.	[reply]
Re^3: Check for another program availability by haukex (Archbishop) on Apr 12, 2021 at 05:34 UTC
I see, but, would that be portable? I mean, the which program itself may not be available. That's correct, it's not portable, and I don't agree with the above advice, also due to the use of backticks (see Calling External Commands More Safely). which is just a short shell script (at least on Debian), it's not magic.	[reply]
Re^3: Check for another program availability by perlfan (Vicar) on Apr 12, 2021 at 10:15 UTC
> portable You didn't say it had to be "portable on Windows".	[reply]
Re^4: Check for another program availability by hrcerq (Scribe) on Apr 12, 2021 at 11:55 UTC
It doesn't. But even on Unix I have no guarantee that which will be installed on the system.	[reply]
Re^5: Check for another program availability by Tux (Canon) on Apr 12, 2021 at 13:50 UTC
Re^6: Check for another program availability by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Apr 12, 2021 at 23:51 UTC

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