Thanks for everyones comments on the issue I was having simply replacing a '.' with '\.'. I've now realized that wasn't the issue. The code I had was working, it was looking at in in perl debug mode that was giving me a strange result.
I receive a tarred file that has the directory path within it. What I'm trying to do is untar the file into a different directory using pax. I thought the problem was due to the substitution not recognizing full stops within the directory name. However I have now found that whilst the command
pax -r -f pax.tar -s'/\/home\/kev\/pax\// \/data\/kev\/atlanta\/emtex\/invoices\//p'
works on the command line with the following result 
$ tar -tvf pax.tar
drwxrwxr-x 252 1        0 Aug 11 14:12:55 2010 /home/kev/pax/
-rw-rw-r-- 252 1        0 Aug 11 14:12:52 2010 /home/kev/pax/t1
-rw-rw-r-- 252 1        0 Aug 11 14:12:54 2010 /home/kev/pax/t2
-rw-rw-r-- 252 1        0 Aug 11 14:12:55 2010 /home/kev/pax/t3

$ pax -r -f pax.tar -s'/\/home\/kev\/pax\// \/data\/kev\/atlanta\/emte
+x\/invoices/p'
/home/kev/pax/t1 >>  /data/kev/atlanta/emtex/invoices/t1
/home/kev/pax/t2 >>  /data/kev/atlanta/emtex/invoices/t2
/home/kev/pax/t3 >>  /data/kev/atlanta/emtex/invoices/t3

[download]
when I try to embed the command into a perl script via 
my $homedir="/home/kev";
chdir $homedir;
my $cmd = "pax -r -f pax.tar -s'/\/home\/kev\/pax\// \/data\/kev\/atla
+nta\/emtex\/invoices\//p'";
system ( $cmd );

[download]
I get the error
pax: 0511-660 A replacement string was not added : 0511-661 An invalid trailing option was specified with the -s option
So what I *should* have been asking was, what am I doing wrong when I embed this pax command into my perl script?
Thanks guys and gals
Kev

In reply to Calling pax within a perl script (was stupid substitution question) by viffer

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