I'm trying to make something simple that I figured would take like a few minutes in PERL and it's been causing me headaches. I can't figure out why! So I'm hoping someone with wiser eyes might recognize my malfunction. Here's what I'm doing. I'm trying to very SIMPLY take incoming serial data, mark it with the time and date, and then write it to a file. But for some unknown reason, the variable that I capture into can be PRINTED, but when I try to run any function on that variable it dies. Here's the codes I've tried: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

sysopen(COM, "/dev/ttyS0", O_RDONLY | O_NDELAY | O_NOCTTY) or die "can
+'t open /dev/ttyS0: $!";

while(defined ($line=<COM>))
        {
        if (length $line > 1)
                {
                #print "read[$line]\n";
                system("./parse_smdr", $line);
                #goto breakout;
                }
        }

breakout:

close COM || die "COM Reader Halted";

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I've also tried this: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

sysopen(COM, "/dev/ttyS0", O_RDONLY | O_NDELAY | O_NOCTTY) or die "can
+'t open /dev/ttyS0: $!";

while ($len = sysread(COM, $buf, 16384))
        {
        print "READ[$buf]($len)\n";
        if ($len > 10)
                {
                system("./parse_smdr", $buf);
                }
        }

close COM || die "COM Reader Halted";

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and even: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use Fcntl;
use strict;

my $line;

sysopen(COM, "/dev/ttyS0", O_RDONLY | O_NDELAY | O_NOCTTY) or die "can
+'t open /dev/ttyS0: $!";

while($line=<COM>)
        {
        if (length $line > 1)
                {
                print "read[$line]\n";
                system("./parse_smdr", $line);
                }
        }

close COM || die "COM Reader Halted";

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And this doesn't work either.... 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use Fcntl;
use strict;

my $line;

open(COM, "cat /dev/ttyS0 |") or die "can't open /dev/ttyS0: $!";

while($line=<COM>)
        {
        if (length $line > 1)
                {
                print "read[$line]\n";
                system("./parse_smdr", $line);
                }
        }

close COM || die "COM Reader Halted";

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I'm about to lose my mind. Someone help! p.s. and before you ask, the parse script was just pulled out so it didn't make me wonder where my problem was. Here's the code in case you're curious: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

#print "SMDR Parse Called\n";

foreach $line (@ARGV)
        {
        print "Parse[$line]\n";
        ($Second, $Minute, $Hour, $Day, $Month, $Year) = localtime(tim
+e);
        #Parse the line by column
        $type = substr $line,0,4;
        $dest = substr $line,4,6;
        $trunk = substr $line,10,6;
        $src = substr $line,16,20;
        $dialed = substr $line,32,9;
        $time = substr $line,45,5;
        $duration = substr $line,51,8;
        #print "$Hour:$Minute:$Second,";
        #print "$type,$dest,$trunk,$src,$dialed,$time,$duration\n";
        open(OUT,">>/home/public/SMDR/smdr$Year$month$day.pbx");
        print OUT "$Hour:$Minute:$Second,$type,$dest,$trunk,$src,$dial
+ed,$time,$duration\n";
        close(OUT);
        }

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Edit by BazB: add readmore tags

In reply to Wierd File pipe problem... by bferlin

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