cheers guys for that.

that worked great, but if you don't mind, cna i ask you one more question? This is the script that i am using below:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Getopt::Long;

my ($username, $password, $domain);
my $result = GetOptions("username=s" => \$username,
                        "password=s" => \$password, 
                        "domain=s => \$domain");
                                                         
system ("adduser $username -g 100 -s /bin/false -d /home/$username -p 
+$password");
                                                                      
+          open (VFILE, ">> /etc/postfix/virtual");                   
+                                                                     
+         
print VFILE "$username\@ap3k.com\t$username\n";
close (VFILE);
                                                       
system ("postmap /etc/postfix/virtual");
[download]

when the command adduser is run, if it returns adduser: user foo already exists

i want it to break out of running the rest of the script and maybe just return an error

James

Edited: ~Wed Jul 31 23:07:40 2002 (GMT) by footpad: Added <code> and other HTML formatting tags.

first, please use code tags. As for your question of breaking out, check the return value of system ($?). Most unix commands return 0 upon success and something else upon failure (not quite sure what the failure codes are for adduser but I get a 9 when you try to add an all ready existing user).

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Getopt::Long;

my ($username, $password, $domain);
my $result = GetOptions("username=s" => \$username, 
                        "password=s" => \$password,
                        "domain=s" => \$domain );

system("/usr/sbin/adduser $username -g 100 -s /bin/false -d /home/$use
+rname -p $password");

if( $? >> 8 == 0 ) {
   # success 
   open (VFILE, ">> virtual"); # you should check for failure here
   print VFILE "$username\@ap3k.com\t$username\n";
   close (VFILE);
   # Do you need to check this?
   system ("postmap /etc/postfix/virtual");
} else {
   print STDERR "bailing with ret code of ", $? >> 8, "\n";
}
[download]

see system on interpretting return codes (that shifty bit stuff).

-derby

Ouch ...Please use code tags next time. On your question( at least what I think you question is ;) Try just using adding or die "whatever you want the error to be $!\n" to the system line -Aseidas


UPDATE:disregard my method for the error trapping. Please use Derby's method mine is very simplistic and in reading your post again will not really do what you want i.e; exit on that specific error but please do use code tags