You have a few choices, as always.

The simplest solution, the one more or less given by others, and the one I've been using, is to simply put the script in an external file, and run it. In my case, I just create a scripts subdirectory and run from there. The script is not embedded in my perl code. (I do have a lot of code to genericise this, including ensuring permissions, copying to remote filesystems, etc.)

However, it's not the only solution. If it's important to keep the code and its metadata together, which is understandable, there are a couple more options I can think of.

The first is to try to parse the first line of the CHECK_CODE directly, and if it looks like a shell, to use it with a "-c" flag to run the rest. This is not only non-trivial, but error prone. However, if you can pull it off, it requires no change to your existing data. You'd eventually be left with something like: 

my ($shell, $code) = mystical_extraction_goes_here($check{CHECK_CODE})
+;
open my $fh, '-|', $shell, -c => $code or die "Can't run shell $shell:
+ $!";
my @return = <$fh>;
close $fh;

[download]

The second is to have the data do this for you. Have the shell, its options (including the -c), and the script, in your data. I don't know the original format of the data, but I'd suggest you'd end up with keys such as SHELL, SH_OPTS, and CHECK_CODE. And maybe CODE_OPTS. The _OPTS would be arrays. And then you'd get code like this: 

my @cmd = $check{SHELL};
if (exists $check{SH_OPTS}) {
  push @cmd, ref $check{SH_OPTS} eq 'ARRAY' ? @{$check{SH_OPTS}} : $ch
+eck{SH_OPTS};
}
push @cmd, $check{CHECK_CODE};
if (exists $check{CODE_OPTS}) {
  push @cmd, ref $check{CODE_OPTS} eq 'ARRAY' ? @{$check{CODE_OPTS}} :
+ $check{CODE_OPTS};
}
open my $fh, '-|', @cmd or die "Can't run check code: $!";
#...

[download]
What makes this solution cool is that a) you don't have to write a bunch of ugly guesses as to potential shells the next guy might want to use, and b) you allow that person to use other "shells". Like awk. Or sed. Or even perl. No limitation to just sh-compatible shells with the -c flag.

In reply to Re: Running blocks of shell script from within perl script by Tanktalus
in thread Running blocks of shell script from within perl script by lilgreen

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.