in reply to Re: Scratching my head...
in thread Scratching my head...

My bad, actually the existing code already has the open() || die () syntax. That's what I get for trying too hard to scrub any meaningful proprietary content from it *g*.

So it isn't the ||s. One other thing to rule out: any kind of condition where it wouldn't be called at all -- this is main-line code in a subroutine called inside a while loop on the result set of a database query, with adjacent results both above and below it in the result set executing flawlessly. Like I said, this problem is spurious -- I can't pin down any cause (or even a predictable failure) whatsoever within the software.

Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

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Re: Re: Re: Scratching my head...
by turnstep (Parson) on May 01, 2001 at 01:35 UTC

    Well, if the file is not getting created, and nothing shows up on the die, and you have the parens correct (grin) then I would suggest:

    • Open is being blocked and hangin as it waits to open the file (not likely)
    • Something is erasing the file after it is written.
    • Something is intercepting your die messages.

    The first two depend on the rest of your code. The last can be checked with a quick insert of: 

    my $tmperror = "/tmp/temp.error";
open(STDERR, ">$tmperror") or 
  die "Ironic: Cannot write errors to $tmperror: $!\n";

    [download]
    right before the open and see if it catches anything. Throw an error in on purpose to see if the temp file gets the error.

[reply]
[d/l]

      Going through these one at a time:

      • Open is being blocked and hangin as it waits to open the file (not likely)
        You're right -- this seems highly unlikely in light of the fact that the script continues and processes the next record in sequence just fine.
      • Something is erasing the file after it is written.
        Maybe. It's the next angle to pursue I suppose. *grumble* I pretty well exhausted this one when I first learned of the problem... "Is the reaper functioning properly? etc."
      • Something is intercepting your die messages.
        I tested the test die call and it died cleanly.

      Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

[reply]
[d/l]

        • Something is erasing the file after it is written.
          Maybe. It's the next angle to pursue I suppose. *grumble* I pretty well exhausted this one when I first learned of the problem... "Is the reaper functioning properly? etc."

        News: This appears to be what's causing it. It doesn't appear as if the reaper itself is malfunctioning, it appears that the files are just *vanishing* surreptuously. Either way, it doesn't appear to be a perl problem....

        Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

[reply]

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