Hi,
Please forgive me if the answer to this mystery is obvious. I've got a Perl script running on a Solaris 2.6 server, which processes some data files. At the end of the script I use a system call to sort the final output file, like so: 
system(" cat $file | sort -t\\| +1 -2 > $file.out ");

[download]
The script normally works fine, and has done so for months. Suddenly this week it has begun to misbehave, depending on the number of data files I'm processing. If I process more than 3 files (about 30mb each) it just skips over the system call, and the "sort" isn't executed. I thought there could be some memory limitation or something like that, but what's puzzling me is that I get no error messages. The script just skips the system call and goes on to the end. I've tried -w, $!, and all that to try and catch any sort of error, but nothing happens. The system call is just ignored. It's weird! I would be very, very grateful for any suggestions.
Thanks!

In reply to vanishing system call by Anonymous Monk

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.