Thank you - appreciate your help. Whilst this works perfectly for
my $cmd = q{pax -r -f /home/kev/pax.tar -s'/\/home\/kev\/pax\//\/data\/kev\/atlanta\/emtex\/invoices\//p'};

When the directory name has several nodes and the filename being paxed/untarred is a variable I guess it isn't interpolating correctly

$command= q{pax -r -f $file -s'/DirPart1.DirPart2.DirPart3/SubDir\//\/data\/kev\/atlanta\/emtex\/invoices\//p'};

I have tried several variants of this, such as
$command= q{pax -r -f $file -s'/DirPart1\.DirPart2\.DirPart3\/SubDir\//\/data\/kev\/atlanta\/emtex\/invoices\//p'};
When running this I get the error:
A file or directory in the path name does not exist.
which makes me think the string isn't being interpolated correctly.
I can see how using a different delimiter would obviate the need for using backslashes in the first example that works,
but in the second example don't I need escape backslashes for the '.' if not for the subdir '/'?

In reply to Re^2: Calling pax within a perl script (was stupid substitution question) by viffer
in thread Calling pax within a perl script (was stupid substitution question) by viffer

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