in reply to output of one program doesn't show in another on server

What AnomalousMonk said. What happens there is that length evaluates @ret in scalar context which gives either 0 or 1 and then takes the length of this string which is 1 in both cases.

Your real problem though is one with the working directory as Apache doesn't change it to that where the CGI lives so ./runthis.pl is not found. Try an absolute path or FindBin (ISTR the latter had some problems with CGI environments as well but it's worth a try)

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Re^2: output of one program doesn't show in another on server
by gideondsouza (Pilgrim) on Dec 18, 2012 at 16:25 UTC

    Thanks a million for your help guys

    1. I do have #!/usr/bin/perl on the top of my runthis.pl
    2. I'm running on RHEL/Apache2 on an AmazonEC2 instance.

    I updated my code according to NetWallah and AnonymousMonk's suggestions, I get the following error as predicted:

    Error running runthis.pl : No such file or directory at /var/www/html/abc.cgi line 15

    My files are in this path : /var/www/html , this is where I've configured apache to run .cgi and .pl scripts. I changed my line like this:

    my @ret = `\usr\bin\perl /var/www/html/runthis.pl`;

    No Luck, still says No such file or directory.

    1. Forgive my stupidity here, is my absolute path formed wrong?
    2. I didn't quite understand how I should use the FindBin module mbethke mentions. Any clues here would be awesome. Thanks!
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       qx// `` (backticks) is double-quotish-interpolating, so  \usr\bin\perl is really: 

      >perl -wMstrict -le
"print qq{'\usr\bin\perl'};
"
Unrecognized escape \p passed through at -e line 1.
'Sinperl'

      [download]

      (Were you using warn-ings?)

      Update: Oops... Fixed example code to include initial backslash. (And always, always avoid Sinperl!)

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        Thanks very much for your reply. Forgive me but I don't fully understand your answer though. Should I trying using qx instead of backticks?
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        Hey thanks so much. It works in the end. I updated the original post (top post) with my findings. Thanks so much.
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