Respected Monks,

I recently inherited some legacy perl-code (in a Linux environment) that to a large extent contains shell script code such as:

$dir = "/tmp/foo";
`rm -rf $dir`;
[download]

I often find myself re-writing these statements using built-in perl functions or CPAN modules:

• rm -> unlink
• rm -r -> rmtree (File::Path)
• mkdir -p -> mkpath (File::Path)
• cp -> copy (File::Copy)
• mv -> move (File::Copy)
• tar -> Archive::Tar (and possibly Compress::Zlib)

I dislike the 'shell' technique for a number of reasons, namely because

• It requires the shell commands to be present in PATH.
• It is hard to interpret return codes and detect failure reliably.
• It is platform dependent.

What is the Monks opinion on mixing shell-script in perl code? The subject has previously been discussed here. Should I use perl if it's possible and easy? Which are the obvious and not-so-obvious candidates for re-implementation?

Best regards,
--
Andreas

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