EXEC fails, sometimes

simpsope has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have ActiveX Perl installed on two Windows servers. On one machine, my "Maintain Teradata LOGINs" applications works just fine. I (destructively) branch from one Perl program to another using the EXEC statement. On the other machine Perl scripts only work when executed from a command prompt. The EXEC statement always fails. This is probably an install and/or environment problem, but am stumped as to where to look. AHWBA (Any help would be appreciated) simpsope

Comment on EXEC fails, sometimes

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Re: EXEC fails, sometimes by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 15, 2005 at 16:17 UTC
Do you check for errors? `exec(...) or die("Unable to spawn ... application: $!\n");` [download] The above would tell you the reason the program couldn't be launched.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: EXEC fails, sometimes by simpsope (Initiate) on Dec 15, 2005 at 16:29 UTC
Yes, I get this error text: Invalid Arguement	[reply]
Re^3: EXEC fails, sometimes by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 15, 2005 at 16:33 UTC
Ah, the `exec` is NOT failing. It's the Perl script that's failing. It doesn't like the arguments you passed to it. You probably used `exec("program $arg1 $arg2")` without quoting and escaping the contents of arg1 and arg2. (Injection attack vulnerability!) You could properly quote and escape their contents properly, or use `exec("program", $arg1, $arg2)` which calls the program directly instead of passing the command string to an intermidary shell.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: EXEC fails, sometimes by simpsope (Initiate) on Dec 15, 2005 at 20:31 UTC
Re^5: EXEC fails, sometimes by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 15, 2005 at 21:25 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re: EXEC fails, sometimes by secret (Beadle) on Dec 15, 2005 at 16:17 UTC
do something like : `exec ('foo') or print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";` [download] What is the error message ?	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: EXEC fails, sometimes by simpsope (Initiate) on Dec 15, 2005 at 16:28 UTC
Invalid Arguement	[reply]
Re^3: EXEC fails, sometimes by secret (Beadle) on Dec 15, 2005 at 16:32 UTC
Well, then are you passing the correct arguments ? Since they are windows server : be carefull with white space. Can you post your the code exec call ? update See ikegami's answer , it's much better :\|	[reply]