Update: Actually....

perl -le '$ENV{sauoq}="() { echo sauoq; }"; print `bash -c sauoq`'
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The following was my original reply. When I updated this node after finding a Real Answer™ for the OP, I struck this out. The suggestions below aren't wrong though and someone may still find them useful; so I'm unstriking them.

As far as I know, there's no way to do exactly what you are asking for. Every process has an environment, and yes, perl gives you access to its with %ENV; but not every process has bash functions... if you see what I mean.

There are ways you might be able to get around it. You can call your perl script from a bash script which itself declares and exports the function you want available to the shells started from your perl script. Something like this:

#!/bin/bash
sub sauoq() 
{
    echo sauoq
}
export -f sauoq
./script.pl
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#!/usr/bin/perl
print `bash -c sauoq`
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Or, you might try opening a pipe to a bash process, writing the functions out to that pipe and keeping it open to run your other scripts.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Heya sauoq,

Thanks for taking the time to check it out. I just had to delete a whole bunch of response text, as I finally got it to work under cygwin using the following script:

#!perl -w 
$CYGWIN_BIN="C:\\cygwin\\bin";
$ENV{TEST_FUNC} = "() {\necho Hey, it works!;\n };\n";
system(("$CYGWIN_BIN\\bash.exe", "-c \"declare -f\""));
system(("$CYGWIN_BIN\\bash.exe", "-c \"TEST_FUNC\""));
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Initially, using your
perl -le '$ENV{sauoq}="() { echo sauoq; }"; print `bash -c sauoq`'
I had problems where bash didn't understand what sauoq was. However, the script above does the trick

Thanks to everyone for the interest guys (especially sauoq) - you guys saved my butt!
Mike

open( SH, "| /path/to/bash" ) or die "Can't open a shell: $!";
my @scripts;
{
  local $/ = undef;
  for my $file ( "first_shell_script", "second_shell_script" ) {
      open( SCR, $file ) or die "couldn't read $file: $!";
      push @scripts, <SCR>;
      close SCR;
  }
}
print SH $scripts[0];
print SH $scripts[1];

# and then do whatever magical stuff this shell can do,
# now that it has these scripts in its arsenal...
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Update:Turns out you can do this. See sauoq's reply above. Sorry for the bad info!

I don't think functions are inherited across bash shells like you think they are.

For example, if I type set, I can see a function rs defined in my current shell. If I run /bin/bash --norc from this shell, I no longer see the rs function.

I think that each time bash starts up, it reads the appropriate rc files and re-defines the functions. If that's the case, you could use the BASH_ENV environment variable (see bash(1)) to point to a script containing all of the function definitions.

Another thing worth noting, although it may not be useful in your case: The easiest way to pass information like function definitions back to the shell from Perl is to print the definitions to stdout, then run something like eval `perl script.pl` in the shell.

Another thing worth noting, although it may not be useful in your case

I'm guess it isn't useful in this case. If I read it correctly, he wants to make functions available to his subprocesses (which is doable) rather than trying to make something available to his parent process (which is not doable without jumping through hoops like this one.)

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Hey guys, I have another related question....

I have a WindowsXP system running ActivePerl 5.8.0. I've defined the environment functions as described in the discussion above, but I've noticed that somewhere along the line, the function names are being made into all caps. ie this works

#!perl -w 
$CYGWIN_BIN="C:\\cygwin\\bin";
$ENV{TEST_FUNC} = "() {\necho Hey, it works!;\n };\n";
system(("$CYGWIN_BIN\\bash.exe", "-c \"declare -f\""));
system(("$CYGWIN_BIN\\bash.exe", "-c \"TEST_FUNC\""));
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....whereas this doesn't:

#!perl -w 
$CYGWIN_BIN="C:\\cygwin\\bin";
$ENV{test_func} = "() {\necho Hey, it works!;\n };\n";
system(("$CYGWIN_BIN\\bash.exe", "-c \"declare -f\""));
system(("$CYGWIN_BIN\\bash.exe", "-c \"test_func\""));
[download]

Any ideas? This could be an issue with the windows environment, and could explain the reason why sauoqs solution didn't work for me....

Cheers guys!
Mike