What I'm trying to do:

I have to get the SNMP value from several Object Identifiers (OIDs) that mean the same thing, but aren't present on all devices. IE: A Cisco 6509 may support the .chassisId OID, but the next device doesn't. I don't want to have to write 18 different subs for all the different devices I have.

What I want to happen is have the getSnmpInfo sub recognize that it was passed a list variable then run itself against each list entry. And if it was passed a scalar, just run against that one value.

I suppose one kludge is to collapse the list with a delimiter, search for it in the sub and expand the list if found.

I seems like there must be a better way though. It feels like I'm missing something fundamental here. And it doesn't help that my previous XP is all in PHP, bash, and .bat files *shudder*

Please excuse my coding if you find it hideous... I'm a newbie to Perl.

Here's the sub:

# main section 
my (
    $sysChassisID, #and other stuff
);

# define OID of system Chassis ID attribute (serial number)
my @sysChassisIDOID = (
    "1.3.6.1.4.1.9.3.6.3",        # .chassisId
    "1.3.6.1.2.1.47.1.1.1.1.11.0",    # .entPhysicalSerialNumber.0
    "1.3.6.1.2.1.47.1.1.1.1.11.1",    # .entPhysicalSerialNumber.1
    "1.3.6.1.4.1.9.5.1.2.19.0",    # .CiscoStackMIB.chassisSerialNumbe
+rString
);

# calling the sub: (this takes place inside a while loop as 
# the script goes through a list of IP addresses.
# I borrowed heavily from cdppoll.pl.

$sysChassisID = getSnmpInfo (@sysChassisIDOID)


sub getSnmpInfo {
    my($crap , $value , $result);
    my $varType = ref($_[0]);    # Get the variable type from ref()
    if ($varType eq "ARRAY") {
        my @tmp = $_[0];
        print "\n    DEBUG::GET_SNMP_INFO: OID is an array" if $debugg
+ing;
        # march through the array until a valid value is collected the
+n
    # return that value.
    while (@tmp) {
        my $tOID = shift @tmp;
        $value = getSnmpInfo($tOID);
        return $value if ((ref($value) eq "SCALAR") and ($value =~ m/[
+A-Za-z0-9]{1,}/));
        next;
    }
    } elsif ($varType eq "SCALAR") {
            print "\n    DEBUG::GET_SNMP_INFO: OID is a scalar" if $de
+bugging;
    } else {
            print "\n    DEBUG:GET_SNMP_INFO:: OID is an illegal varia
+ble type ($varType)" if $debugging;
        return 0;
    }
    
    my($oid) = $_[0];
    $session = (defined $_[1]) ? ($_[1]) : ($session);
    unless ($session) {
        print "\n    DEBUG::GET_SNMP_INFO: session not established in 
+getSnmpInfo sub-routine, check scopes and pass as option 2 to getSnmp
+Info" if $debugging;
        print "\n    WARN::GET_SNMP_INFO: getSnmpInfo returning null, 
+session unavailable.";
        return 0;
    }
    print "\n    DEBUG::GET_SNMP_INFO: fetching OID: $oid" if $debuggi
+ng;
    $result = $session->get_request("$oid");
    return unless (defined $result);
    ($crap , $value) = %$result;
    print "\n    DEBUG::GET_SNMP_INFO: OID value: $value" if $debuggin
+g;
    return $value;
}
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Thanks for taking your time. - Rowshi