Re: [PLUG] perl -e with system()

[Chris Nehren <c.nehren/plug@shadowcat.co.uk>]

On Apr 19, 2011, at 11:01 , Walt Mankowski wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:39:58AM -0400, Chris Nehren wrote:
>>> perl -n  -e '($a, $b, $c) = split("\t"); chomp $a; chomp $b; chomp $c; if ($c) {system ("echo $c >> $a")} 
>>> else {system ("echo $b >> $a")}' < data.file
>> 
>> The problem is that you're not quoting things properly. The LIST
>> form of system does this for you, but it also doesn't invoke a
>> subshell (so you can't do >>).
> 
> That's not correct.  If system() is passed a single parameter, that's
> checked for shell metacharacters, and if any are found, the argument
> is passed to "/bin/sh -c".  At least on unix.  Different things will
> happen on other platforms.

Um, I never said anything about the single argument form of system. I can read the docs, too.

>> You really should be using open instead:
>> 
>> open my $fh, '>>', $file or die "open($file): $!";
>> print $fh $content;
>> close $fh;
> 
> That would certainly be a more robust solution, but it's also making
> it a pretty big one-liner...

Despite perl's reputation otherwise, not everything should be a one-liner.

>> Note also that $a and $b are special variables used by perl for
>> sort() and you shouldn't use them. See perldoc perlopentut for more
>> info, and please consider reading Beginning Perl so you don't make a
>> mess of things.
> 
> True, you definitely don't want to do that in a real program.  But it
> hardly matters in a one-liner where he's clearly not doing any
> sorting.

Better to develop good habits for writing real code.

-- 
Thanks and best regards,
Chris Nehren

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