Has anyone seen perl losing arguments?

ted.byers has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

It is hard to imagine how one can get this wrong, but the following is giving me grief on one machine (and only that one out of the several that I use).

print "$ARGV[0]\n\t$ARGV[1]\n\t\t$ARGV[2]\n";

This is obvious and well documented, and something I have used for years without problems. However, on a new server (hosted in the cloud, if that matters), it is failing in a manneer that is a show-stopper. The buld of Activestate Perl is:

This is perl 5, version 14, subversion 1 (v5.14.1) built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread

The problem is that with this particular machine, perl scripts invoked as:

system("2_CleanXMLfiles.pl \"$now_string\"");
system("3a_MakeTDVfilesA.pl \"$now_string\" $start_date $end_date 1>Ma
+keTDVfilesA.pl.stdout 2>MakeTDVfilesA.pl.stderr");
[download]

loses the arguments. The above lines of code are the last in a driver script, and intermittently, the above lines of code behave as if the following had been executed instead:

system("2_CleanXMLfiles.pl");
system("3a_MakeTDVfilesA.pl");
[download]

It doesn't matter whether I am executing these programs using back ticks or using system, the behaviour is the same, but on this new machine, it happens about 80% of the time, and never on the other machines I use. That, especially, has me baffled.

Has anyne else seen this? If so, what is the fix? If not, does anyone have any ideas on how best to fix this?

Thanks

I appreciate any help I can get

Ted

Comment on Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? Select or Download Code

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Re: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 28, 2011 at 20:17 UTC
Your file association is broken. Specifically, the "`%`" is missing in your association. `>assoc .pl .pl=Perl >ftype Perl Perl="C:\...\bin\perl.exe" "%1" %` [download] Either fix the association using `ftype`, or don't rely on the extension. `system("perl 2_CleanXMLfiles.pl \"$now_string\"");` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ted.byers (Monk) on Sep 29, 2011 at 18:12 UTC
No, the file association is OK. Files with a pl extension are associated with perl. Execution of my driver scripts relies on that.	[reply]
Re^3: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 01, 2011 at 21:44 UTC
What does one have to do with the other? What's the output of `>assoc .pl .pl=Perl ---- \ \ \| v ---- >ftype Perl ???` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Sep 28, 2011 at 19:03 UTC
You may find it helpful to print out the values of `$now_string`, `$start_date`, and `$end_date`. --MidLifeXis	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ted.byers (Monk) on Sep 28, 2011 at 19:39 UTC
Oh, I printed everything;$now_string,$start_date and $end_date. Especially when debuggin the programs, I print out everything used as input to a function, command line arguments, &c. If I assign the comand to be executed to a variable, and print that variable before executing it via back ticks or 'system', I see what is supposed to be there, but that has no effect ont he behaviour. On my other machines, it all works as expected. On this server in the cloud, it is causing problems.	[reply]
Re^3: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Sep 28, 2011 at 20:15 UTC
Ok, and what were the results? What I see in your post is that the results are undef. Perhaps it would also be useful to print the argument, as a whole, that is passed to `system`. --MidLifeXis	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by Anonymous Monk on Sep 28, 2011 at 19:56 UTC
Oh, I printed everything; Did you escape (Dumper) it? What shell are you invoking on the cloud? `$ perl -V:sh sh='cmd /x /c';` [download] See the problem is, you're not escaping $now_string and $start_date, see Re^2: perl windows backtick problem, String::ShellQuote Or avoid the shell completely, use IPC::Run3	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ted.byers (Monk) on Sep 29, 2011 at 15:28 UTC
Re: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by Anonymous Monk on Sep 28, 2011 at 20:21 UTC
Add this: `system('perl -e "print qq[ARGV: @ARGV\n]" a b c');` [download] Do these arguments disappear also?	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ted.byers (Monk) on Sep 29, 2011 at 18:08 UTC
No, those arguments don't disappear.	[reply]
Re: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by pvaldes (Chaplain) on Sep 29, 2011 at 09:29 UTC
mmmh... this line... `system("2_CleanXMLfiles.pl \"$now_string\"");` probably I'm not understanding the question but... 1-Where is the "verb" for this line? No action here. 2-Why do you need to put the first arg to the subordinate perl script inside ""? 3-... And what args do you expect to be passed to the perl script 2_CleanXMLfiles.pl called by the main script? I suggest you to rewrite the system line avoiding to be ambiguous, like this: system ("VERB", "ARG1", "ARG2", ...); i.e. adjust to your needs and try: `system ("perl", "2_CleanXMLfiles.pl", "\"$now_string"\"");` If you can, avoid also to call \"ARG1\". Wrap ARG in "" directly inside 2_CleanXMLfiles.pl	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Has anyone seen perl losing arguments? by ted.byers (Monk) on Sep 29, 2011 at 18:25 UTC
Invoking 2_CleanXMLfiles.pl this way relies on the association of perl with .pl, and has worked on all the other flavours of Windows I have used (I had left that call as it was for years, because up until now, it has worked - and if it ain't broke, don't fix it). $now_string is wrapped in quotes because it has a format like "Tue Sep 20 2011 A". Failure to wrap it in quotes would have that misinterpreted as 5 arguments.	[reply]