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

Hello guys, I have a perl script that will pass a command to be excuted by a an expect script on the command line. the perl script doest the follwoing : 
$theScript ="temp.exp";
$cd     = "cd ../../logs/tu/tull";
$cmd    = "expect -f '$theScript' '$cd' pwd 'find . -name  '*.std*' -o
+ -name 'ULOG.*' -mtime +
9 -type f -exec rm {} \\;' pwd";    
print "$cmd\n";
system($cmd);

[download]
every thing get excuted fine in the front of me by the expect script , however , I get the following error : 
----------------------------
- Entering SHELL session . -
----------------------------
> cd ../../logs/tu/tull
> pwd
/logs/tuxedo/tuxbull
> find . -name  *.std* -o -name ULOG.* -mtime +9 -type f -exec rm {} \
+;
pwd
find: missing conjunction
> pwd
/logs/tu/tull

[download]
see the problem I think it that , the single qotes I put around *.std* and ULOG.* are not being passed , how can I make sure they will appear on the command line , can some one help , thanks much

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: single quote problem with system() (can't nest ')
by tye (Sage) on Apr 14, 2003 at 19:50 UTC

    You have single-quoted arguments inside of a single-quote argument: 

    "expect -f '$theScript' '$cd' pwd 'find . -name  '*.std*' -s 
           (^^^^^^^^^^) (^^^)     (^^^^^^^^^^^^^^)      (^^^

    [download]
    so the ' before *.std* is the end of one single-quoted string. Since you have no space there, the shell ends up concatenating all of those bits together and trying to match a very long wildcard. The shell likely ends up passing the following arguments to expect: 
    0: expect
1: -f
2: $theScript
3: $cd
4: pwd
5: find . -name  *.std* -o -name ULOG.* -mtime +9 -type f -exec rm {} 
+\;
6: pwd

    [download]
    but only if $theScript and $cd don't contain any ' characters and there were no files that matched the very long wildcard find . -name *.std* -o -name ULOG.* -mtime +9 -type f -exec rm {} ; (since none of the * characters were inside of single quotes as far as the shell was concerned).

    You'd be better off skipping the shell for this: 

        system( 'expect', '-f', $theScript, $cd, 'pwd',
        "find . -name  '*.std*' -o -name 'ULOG.*' -mtime +9 -type f -e
+xec rm {} ';'",
        "pwd",
    );

    [download]

                    - tye
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: single quote problem with system()
by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Apr 14, 2003 at 23:16 UTC
    Jassica,
    This looks almost identical to your first node. I understand that the help the monks gave you at that time was not what you were looking for. You were concerned with the single quotes and not a different way of doing it. I do however want to point you back to the wisdom of merlyn, which can be found here. It is concerning the precedence of the -o or operator. It is possible this is what you intend to do, or it is possible this is an oversight.

    I also see you are new to the monastery - welcome. Thanks for sticking with us. If you get answers to your questions that you are not expecting - do not hesitate to clarify yourself.

    Cheers - L~R

[reply]
Re: single quote problem with system()
by tall_man (Parson) on Apr 14, 2003 at 19:29 UTC
    You should use backslashes on the meta characters, like this: 
    '\\*.std\\*'

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom