How do I Set the Correct Path for system calls?

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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do I Set the Correct Path for system calls? by lestrrat (Deacon) on Jul 17, 2001 at 11:03 UTC
This may be a moot point if you really couldn't find out where your gzip program is, but shouldn't it sort of scare you to just call an external program without specifying the absolute path to it? I personally REALLY don't like relying on PATH when you are calling something from a script. Of course, it may not make that much of a difference, but I would recommend hardcoding the location in your script. Maybe <cdde> my $gzip_cmd = '/usr/local/bin/gzip'; # or use vars qw/ $gzip_cmd/ ; # global # or %cmds = ( gzip => '/usr/local/bin/gzip' ); </code> Or some such thing. Just my $0.02	[reply]
Re: How do I Set the Correct Path for system calls? by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jul 17, 2001 at 04:22 UTC
You're clobbering the rest of $ENV{'PATH'}, in particular "/usr/bin:/bin". Use `$ENV{'PATH'} .= ':/home/mysite';`.	[reply] [d/l]