Without seeing your error, why dont you do some testing with absolute paths. like:  system("source /home/perlmonkey/.profile").

For debugging purposes, I would suggest using the backtick approach to see any stdout: print `source /home/perlmonkey/.profile`

Do note, your sourced profile will exist in the subshell you called it in. So to test it further you will have to do something like print `source .profile;echo $PATH` which assumes that there exists a path var in the shell.

Hopefully your in some type of linux enviroment, otherwise the commands you were calling would be somewhat faulty.

UPDATE:Take a look at the answer in the following node 616002 as it addresses the problem of sourcing a license which could be quite similar to your problem.

In reply to Re: the command - system ( "source ./profile") not working by rgiskard
in thread the command - system ( "source ./profile") not working by sagibeli

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.