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

Hello,

I am having a bit of a problem.... I wrote a perl script that generates a report in excel. I am using cygwin perl. I made two batch files one calls perl directly and the other calls a makefile that calls perl.

Admin: make and batch work perfectly Power User: make and batch work perfectly User: batch work fine, but when i use the makefile i get this error: "Can't call method "SaveAs" on an undefined value at Y:/In/FileReport.pl line 183."

and make: *** fun error 9

Because of security reasons I am "forced" to get it to work on basic user rights.

I have also done some sort of fault tree analisis and it would come to some possibilities :

1. Restricted acces to excel services (over-ruled because batch still works)

2. Make environment somehow incompatible with basic user rights security policies (50% over-ruled because other makefiles still work under basic user rights)

3. Perl version not adequate for this such situation (20% over-ruled because it does work along with upscaling the user rights)

Can someone give me a hand with this, I am not an expert in these environments

  • Comment on cygwin, make, perl, win32::ole (excel) problem

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Re: cygwin, make, perl, win32::ole (excel) problem
by Bloodnok (Vicar) on Dec 02, 2008 at 12:39 UTC
    A little context e.g. pertinent file contents, would help significantly...that being said, it does sound like, within your perl script, your attempt to create a Win32::OLE object has failed, but you haven't died on the error - I strongly suspect that had you done so, it might point you in the right direction.

    A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))
[reply]
      Hello, I have included the sub function that handles the excel file. The nasty thing is that I am facing this error only when running with limmited access rights (basic user rights). So I believe that the perl script is not the blame, because when I call it from batch it works fine. 
      sub generate_reports
{
LogStart();
$Excel = Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', sub {$_[0]->Quit;});
###### handling of files
my @file_parts = split (/\//,$warning_files[0]);
my $file = $file_parts[-1];
chomp($file); $file =~ s/\r//g;    
$file =~ s/\.txt//g;
my $xls_filename =  "$xls_files[0]";
open XLSFILE, $xls_filename or my $flag_die = 1;
close XLSFILE;
    if ($flag_die eq 1) 
    {
printf ("\nDEBUG: Excel is: $Excel");

printf ("\nDEBUG: template_path is: $template_path");
#$template_path =~ s/\r//g;        
#$template_path =~ s/^\s*//g;             
#$template_path =~ s/\s*$//g;        
#$template_path =~ s/\//\\/g;          
#printf ("\nDEBUG: template_path (modified) is: $template_path\n");

$Excelbook = $Excel->Workbooks->Open("$template_path.\\filereport.xls"
+);
printf ("\nDEBUG: xls_filename is: $xls_filename\n");
#$xls_filename =~ s/\r//g;    
#$xls_filename =~ s/^\s*//g;         
#$xls_filename =~ s/\s*$//g;         
#$xls_filename =~ s/\//\\/g;               
#printf ("\nDEBUG: xls_filename (modified) is: $xls_filename\n\n");
printf ("\nDEBUG: Excelbook is: $Excelbook\n");
$Excelbook->SaveAs($xls_filename);
    } else {           # file exists -> open it for update
        if (!(-w $xls_filename)) 
          {
           printf ("\n$xls_filename is write-protected and can't be cr
+eated.");
            die;
          }
$xls_filename =~ s/\r//g;     # remove control characters
$xls_filename =~ s/^\s*//g;   # Kill leading blanks
$xls_filename =~ s/\s*$//g;   # Kill trailing blanks
$xls_filename =~ s/\//\\/g;   # replace "/" by "\"
$Excelbook = $Excel->Workbooks->Open($xls_filename);
    }
my $firstSheet = $Excelbook->Worksheets(2); # activate warning sheet
$firstSheet->Activate();
$Report_Sheet = $firstSheet;

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[reply]
[d/l]
        Hi ,

        My point was that the error tells you that the call $Excelbook->SaveAs is being made against an undefined value, hence $Excelbook is undefined after $Excelbook = $Excel->Workbooks->Open("$template_path.\\filereport.xls"); has executed, so if you changed it to read 

        $Excelbook = $Excel->Workbooks->Open("$template_path.\\filereport.xls"
+) ||
    die "Cannot open - $template_path.\\filereport.xls" . Win32::OLE->
+LastError;

        [download]
        instead, then, in all probability, you'd get a bit, tho' probably not much, more help from Windoze itself as to why the open failed.

        A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))
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