in reply to how to pass colon and comma in exec args

Use the exec PROGRAM LIST form to call the external program. You will probably need a full path to the executable, but the shell won't mangle your arguments. 

# actually a list of tokens, not one string.
exec qw{/usr/bin/tcpreplay -i eth2 -N 192.168.0.1/32:1.1.1.1/32,192.16
+8.0.2/32:2.2.2.2/32 test.cap};

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Re^2: how to pass colon and comma in exec args
by billbabcock (Acolyte) on Nov 05, 2004 at 05:53 UTC
    So, of course, I simplified things a bit in the post. I'm using variables for this:

    exec qw{$tcpreplay -p $pps -i $eth -N $src_ip/32:$src,$dest_ip/32:$users->{$user}->{nets}{$src} $users->{$user}->{authcap} $datacap 2>&1}

    would be the equiv to your response in my code.

    That doesn't work, tho'. I get an error about 'No such file or directory' - but the binary is in the location specified in the variable.

    I've also gone the route of creating an @arg array with each token in it, and call it so:

    exec(@args) or die .....

    and I get the result that I posted.

    Thanks!
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      I also tried the qw with a different delimiter to avoid confusion and collision with my variables. :-)
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        'man perlop' says qw{} doesn't interpolate variables.
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        If you want to avoid the shell messing up your arguments, you could try the 'indirect object'-form of exec. 
        my $cmd = '/usr/bin/tcpreplay'; # or whereever

exec {$cmd} ($cmd, '-p', $pps, '-i', $eth); # and so on...

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        Note there is no comma after the first arg to exec. With this form exec will not use the shell and pass the list of args unchanged as argv[] to the command. This means you have to supply a value for argv[0], too (something one might forget coding too much perl...) Hope this helps....
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