Re: What was the programmer trying to accomplish?

in reply to What was the programmer trying to accomplish?

Are you sure about the single quotes? Could be backticks.

Happy New Year to everybody!

Comment on Re: What was the programmer trying to accomplish?

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Re^2: What was the programmer trying to accomplish? by amir_e_a (Hermit) on Jan 01, 2010 at 14:02 UTC
Indeed, maybe backticks (``) could be used on this line directly: $isacon = `/apps/home/pfuser/scripts_56/GENERAL/pers_lookup.csh $sids[$index]`; Backticks, like the double quotes (""), interpolate the string, which means that they translate every variable to its value. Then they run the string as a shell command and return the output. Since you are not sure about the programmer's intention, you should still test it first with double quotes and check the result, for example by printing it, and only then you should run it with backticks or system. Read more about all the different types of quotes here: Quote-like Operators in perlop.	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^2: What was the programmer trying to accomplish?
by amir_e_a (Hermit) on Jan 01, 2010 at 14:02 UTC

Indeed, maybe backticks (``) could be used on this line directly:

$isacon = `/apps/home/pfuser/scripts_56/GENERAL/pers_lookup.csh $sids[$index]`;

Backticks, like the double quotes (""), interpolate the string, which means that they translate every variable to its value. Then they run the string as a shell command and return the output.

Since you are not sure about the programmer's intention, you should still test it first with double quotes and check the result, for example by printing it, and only then you should run it with backticks or system.

Read more about all the different types of quotes here: Quote-like Operators in perlop.

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