Your problem is most likely related to these lines:

$ cat 682776.pl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @fields=~'/opt/apache/1.3.27/cgi-bin/cspireutils/ldapsearch -h 172.
+30.58.243 -p 389 ..
__END__
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• Quotes
• Assignment operators vs regular expressions.

Hi,
I want the fields to hold the results of the ldapsearch for example :


field dn cn=t43311
field jrMailboxId poohbear@woods.com
field jrMailboxAliasStore 452125643
field jrPWPUID poohbear
field jrPWPUserPrefs poohbear
field jrUserFriendlyID poohbear
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As this information is used later in the script, the script is supposed to take the input from the cgi, which is the SID, the existing mail address and proftp information, the ldapsearch searches for the SID and is supposed to populate the array with the requested fields.

If the jrFriendlyID is unique, it modifies the user object to have the input from the cgi for mail address and proftp.

Your code has lots of problems. For starters, the line

 @fields=~'/opt/apache/1.3.27/cgi-bin/cspireutils/ldapsearch -h 172.30
+.58.243 -p 389 -D $dirsrv -w 'passwd' -b ou=subscribers,ou=users,ou=p
+rague,ou=domains,ou=cz,ou=domains,o=chello cn=$sid dn jrMailBoxId jrM
+ailboxAliasStore jrPWPUID jrPWPUserPrefs jrUserFriendlyID';
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A few lines further down, it looks like you're reading from stdin with

while (<>) {
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This kind of touches on another bug, which is that you have declared %thisrecord inside that while loop, but you try to use it later in the program. This doesn't make sense, and merely moving the %thisrecord declaration outside the loop probably won't result in a correct program.

And that relates to another bug: You try to use a field from the hash in a string, as "%thisrecord{'jrPWPUID'}... but that is incorrect; it should be "$thisrecord{'jrPWPUID'}... (Note the $, vice %.)

What in the world did you mean to be doing there? Well
I was trying to populate the @fields with the selected objects from the ldapsearch

The ldapsearch, if you do it outside of the script, returns with:


cn=t43311,ou=subscribers,ou=users,ou=country,ou=domains,ou=cz,ou=chell
+o
jrMailBoxId=poohbear@woods.com
jrMailboxAliasStore=5485113511
jrPWPUID=poohbear
jrPWPUserPrefs=poohbear
jrUserFriendlyID=poohbear
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but all that seems to get populated in the array is dn jrMailBoxId jrMailboxAliasStore jrPWPUID jrPWPUsersPrefs jrUserFriendlyID

Ok, well you're going about that all wrong. To execute an external program and get its output into an array of lines, use qx():

@fields = qx( /opt/apache/1.3.27/cgi-bin/cspireutils/ldapsearch -h 172
+.30.58.243 -p 389 -D $dirsrv -w 'passwd' -b ou=subscribers,ou=users,o
+u=prague,ou=domains,ou=cz,ou=domains,o=chello cn=$sid dn jrMailBoxId 
+jrMailboxAliasStore jrPWPUID jrPWPUserPrefs jrUserFriendlyID );
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then you can easily iterate over the lines with foreach.

Alternatively, you could use the while(<>) construct to read from a pipe connected to the output of an external program:

open P, $command  # as above
  or die "can't run $command - $!";
while (<P>)
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but note specially the use of an explicit filehandle inside the angle brackets. Omit that, and you'd be reading from stdin.

If you assign to @fields as above, you'll be overwriting the array of values you orginally assigned to it. Is that what you intended?

A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight

You say

while (<>) {
    my %thisrecord = ();
    # 11 lines of code to populate %thisrecord
}
print "$thisrecord{'jrUserFriendlyID'}";
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but the print statement is outside the scope of %thisrecord, so there's nothing to print.

Enable warnings if you'd like to be informed of this state of affairs.

Try writing a small program with output that shows you've successfully populated your hash with the data you're expecting to read. Change while (<>) to while (<DATA>) and put test data at the bottom of the program below a __DATA__ marker.