Dynamically Create a file

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

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Re: Dynamically Create a file by starX (Chaplain) on Aug 01, 2008 at 05:18 UTC
I see a couple places you're going wrong. First and foremost, system() returns the exit status of the command, not the commands output. If you want the output of "lin --help", you should run it as `qx/$command/`. Of course, `qx//` doesn't pay attention to STDERR, so if you're interested in capturing that, you should re-write the command as `$command = "lin --help 2> $test";` `2>` is the shells way of redirecting STDERR to someplace else. Try this on for size... use strict; use warnings; $testCase = "testing"; my $test = "./$testCase.txt"; $command = "lin --help 2> $test"; my $result = `$command`; print $result; [download] Note the `use strict;` and `use warnings;` directives. Those are your friend. EDIT: I should probably mention that I used `qx//` rather than `system()` because the former will return a program's output, and the latter only returns the return status. --starX www.axisoftime.com	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Dynamically Create a file by Anonymous Monk on Aug 01, 2008 at 04:48 UTC
`#!/usr/bin/perl -T -- use strict; use warnings; my $testCase = 'testing'; my $command = 'lin --help'; my $test = sprintf "/usr/anil/scripts/ActData/%s.txt", $testCase; open (STDERR, ">", $test ) or die "couldn't create $test : $!"; $t = system($command);` [download] See perlopentut, perlsec, sprintf	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Dynamically Create a file by jethro (Monsignor) on Aug 01, 2008 at 11:02 UTC
I tried your script and testing.txt was created without problem. So either /usr/anil/scripts/ActData doesn't exist (spelling?) or it is not writable by you. Or this code path is never executed (in a supposedly bigger script).	[reply]