Re: Auto-restarting script if it dies

[EdwardG]

-e doesn't need you to open and read the contents of the file. It's purpose is to test for the existence of a file, like this:

if (-e $checkme) {
   print "woo hoo\n";
}

And what about the script that checks check_if_its_running.pl is still running?

Here's a meta solution ;-)

for (my $i = 2 to MAX_INTEGER) {
   if (-e "$checkme.$i") {
      print "woo hoo\n";
   } else {
      start_it($i);
   }
}

[mojodaddy]

Thanks for that. Maybe I misunderstood your response, but $checkme isn't the tempfile, it's the file with the name of the tempfile written in it. That file is going to exist no matter what. (Isn't it?) And since the checker script doesn't know the name or filehandle of the tempfile, it can't go looking for it, so that's why I create a file whose name it does know, wherein it will find the name of the tempfile, whose existence it can then verify. So -e is checking the existence of $line, which in this case is the name of the tempfile as read from $checkme.

However, MAX_INTEGER sounds intriguing. I'm going to have to look that up... : )