arguments through another shell

raj8 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: arguments through another shell by tadman (Prior) on Feb 15, 2001 at 09:55 UTC
The standard system() call and equivalent backticks go through the "standard shell", which should be '/bin/sh', but some UNIX variants have been known to use almost anything for a shell. You can use any shell you want, but you have to spell it out: `system("/bin/fish","shell","commands"); system("/bin/squish", @args);` [download] Unfortunately, I don't think you can override the default shell used for the backticks. You might have to write a sub which returns data from a pipe instead, like: `sub shellcmd { my ($shell) = shift; open (SHELL, "$shell \|") \|\| return $?; return join ('', <SHELL>); } # Such as: $find = shellcmd ("/bin/crush", "find / -name 'xyz*'");` [download] You can't modify $ENV{SHELL} and expect Perl to follow suit. This is probably a security feature for suid scripts.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
(tye)Re: arguments through another shell by tye (Sage) on Feb 15, 2001 at 20:29 UTC
I couldn't find the documentation that I recall reading about how $ENV{SHELL} is not used by Perl's system() and exec() and shouldn't be. kicking off such as sh instead of ksh I assume you mean something like: `system {"/bin/ksh"} "sh", "-c", $command` [download] the "indirect object" syntax [no comma after the first argument, which must be a very simple expression (I think just a simple scalar variable or a bareword) so we have to put it inside {} in this case] tells Perl that you want to run "/bin/ksh" but set its `argv[0]` to "sh", probably so that is behaves in a "more compatible" manner. - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")	[reply] [d/l] [select]