Right. Well you need to decide whether you want system or exec. Although they are used in similar ways, their behaviour is very different. exec will terminate the current program, execute the external command - and never return. If that's not what you want, then use system.

Next thing is to use the multi-arg form of system. This bypasses shell processing and hence protects against the scenario I alluded to above. So you'll want something like this: 

my @args = ('/path/to/prn_to_file.pl', $param1, '/path/to/results/outp
+ut.txt');
system(@args) == 0 or die "Blah blah...:$!\n";

[download]

Three things to note:

  1. system will use the first argument in the list as the external command to be executed, and the remaining arguments will be passed to that command. So obviously in the above example, prn_to_file.pl needs to expect two arguments and know what to do with them.
  2. system will return the exit status of the external command (not its output) - so the "or die" may have to be adjusted accordingly.
  3. You should supply the full pathnames to any external commands or scripts. (This is probably why your initial attempts were failing, but I've deliberately left this point till last).

Cheers,
Darren :)

Update: - fixed code example (thanks Corion).

In reply to Re^3: Failed System/Exec Call under Right Permission with CGI by McDarren
in thread Failed System/Exec Call under Right Permission with CGI by neversaint

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