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in reply to Using Cron to Run Script

I ran into a similar problem once with a script that was making backups of files. It ran correctly from the command line, but didn't run correctly from cron. To be honest, I never really did figure out why it didn't work in the cron, but I ended up with a work-around that solved the problem. I don't have a Linux machine at hand, so I haven't tested this to make sure that it will work in your situation, but it worked for me with my backup script. 
$logdir = "/whatdir/";

opendir(LOGDIR, $logdir) or die "Can't open $logdir: $!\n";
chdir $logdir;
foreach $file ( grep {-f && (-M > 5)} readdir(LOGDIR) ) {
    unlink $file;
}
closedir(LOGDIR);

[download]
As I said, I haven't been able to test that to confirm that it will work in your situation, but the situation I had was very similar, and it worked for me.

HTH
___________________
Kurt

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Re: Re: Using Cron to Run Script
by wileykt (Acolyte) on Dec 28, 2001 at 22:34 UTC
    Thanks,
    For some reason chdir works even though before I was telling it where to find the file to delete in the unlink.
    Keith
[reply]
Re (tilly) 2: Using Cron to Run Script
by tilly (Archbishop) on Jan 05, 2002 at 19:06 UTC
    The reason for the problem is that the filetests are going against the file names directly. So if you are listing files in directory /foo while you are in /bar, you are looking at whether /bar/baz is an old file when what you really wanted to know is whether /foo/baz is an old file.

    You have posted one workaround. The other is: 

    my $logdir = "/whatdir/";

opendir(LOGDIR, $logdir) or die "Can't open '$logdir': $!\n";
foreach my $file (
  grep {-f && (-M > 5)} map "$logdir$_", readdir(LOGDIR)
) {
    unlink $file;
}
closedir(LOGDIR);

    [download]
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