Calling interactive programs from with a script

Pearte has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

People, I want to call functions like passwd and smbpasswd from within a perl script. I have tried using system(), fork() and exec(), as well as puting the line in ``. In all cases, there seems to be a background process running, but I do not see the prompts. The problem is not that the process isn't running but that I cannot see the function's prompts for the new passwords. Thoughts? p

Comment on Calling interactive programs from with a script

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Re: Calling interactive programs from with a script by mce (Curate) on Aug 28, 2002 at 09:56 UTC
Hi, First, look here for formatting your post. Second, this is really a unix question, not a perl one, since this is the way passwd works. Please look at Expect for some clues how to solve your problem. Yours, --------------------------- Dr. Mark Ceulemans Senior Consultant IT Masters, Belgium	[reply]
Re: Re: Calling interactive programs from with a script by thor (Priest) on Aug 28, 2002 at 12:48 UTC
Second, this is really a unix question, not a perl one, since this is the way passwd works. I disagree. He's not having problems with passwd per se, he's having problems accessing it through perl. There is a difference. As for the original question, I think that part of the problem can have some light shed on it by the answer to the question "where do stdout and stderr go when you do a system call?" . Also, passwd expects a tty to be communicating with it, and has provisions to prevent things like scripts interfacing with it. Fortunately for you, Expect.pm is around. Expect simulates a tty, allowing you to script an interface to things like passwd. thor	[reply]