Hi Perl Monks,

I'm trying to sort a large file using the cygwin sort (so maybe this question should be rather addressed to a cygwin forum, but I don't actually think that it is a cygwin problem). As the file is much larger than can fit in memory, I set the directory where cygwin should store any sorted runs temporarily. As I like to keep my tmp directory small (I think /tmp is just a waste of space in most cases), I typically set that directory to `pwd`. This works for the cygwin internal version of perl: 
$ perl -e 'system "sort -T `pwd` --buffer-size=10 ../somefile.txt"' | 
+head

[download]
But fails for an external installation of perl (I also tried the external 32 bit version, which fails just the same): 
$ /cygdrive/c/Perl64/bin/perl -e 'system "sort -T `pwd` --buffer-size=
+10 ../somefile.txt"' | head
sort: cannot create temporary file: `pwd`/sort1JB3UE: No such file or 
+directory

[download]
The perl versions are: 
$ perl --version

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for cygwin-thread-multi-64int
(with 8 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2006, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License
+ or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source ki
+t.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found 
+on
this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl".  If you have access to
+ the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Pa
+ge.


$ /cygdrive/c/Perl64/bin/perl --version

This is perl, v5.10.0 built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread
(with 3 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2007, Larry Wall

Binary build 1002 [283697] provided by ActiveState http://www.ActiveSt
+ate.com
Built Jan 10 2008 10:53:05

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License
+ or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source ki
+t.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found 
+on
this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl".  If you have access to
+ the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Pa
+ge.

[download]
Any explanation and/or work arounds (other than increasing /tmp) would be much apcodeciated!
Thank you,
bop

In reply to sort system call problem with activestate perl by bop

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