If it was a bash problem, why does the awk example work? Also, the tools you gave me are ways of calling bash from perl. I'm having trouble calling perl from bash.

again ...qx/nslookup $1/ ... should do.

> why does the awk example work?

no nested backticks?

> are ways of calling bash from perl

exactly, thats the ill thing about your construct, your calling perl from bash to call a system command.

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE:

> No commentary on the fact that I should just write the whole program in perl, please. I would if I could.

LOL. This is a Perl help board, if you're not interested to learn our solutions you should consider hiring someone who does the tricky things for you.

Thanks, I see it now. You have answered me perfectly.

Unfortunately, it's more a restriction that "all my programs be in bash" for maintainability by other admins who potentially don't know perl. Using perl like I am here is a bit of a stretch, but it seems silly to use 6 pipes with alternating awk and sed lines when this is more readable and flexible, especially because the whole line can be commented as "get the hostname using DNS". Alas.

floobit:

Because the awk example, as mentioned by LanX doesn't try to nest backticks.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.