Illegal seek error for system()

P0w3rK!d has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am making a call to system() and receive the following error: system(./ftp_shell ftp_flow.conf MoveTest.txt TAG1 TAG2 report.txt None) failed: 512 Illegal seek What does this mean? Am I sending system() too much information?

Comment on Illegal seek error for system()

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Illegal seek error for system() by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 17, 2001 at 22:35 UTC
Sounds to me like you are looking at `$!` after `system`. Don't. Look at `$?` instead. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: Re: Illegal seek error for system() by P0w3rK!d (Pilgrim) on Jul 18, 2001 at 19:28 UTC
Actually..I am saving the error in a logfile as: system() failed: $? $! Why am I getting these errors? Where can I look them up?	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Illegal seek error for system() by bikeNomad (Priest) on Jul 18, 2001 at 19:32 UTC
$! isn't reliable after a system(). The 512 means that the called program returned 512>>8, or 2. So look at the called program's manual page or other documentation, and find out what would make it exit with an error 2.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Illegal seek error for system() by P0w3rK!d (Pilgrim) on Jul 19, 2001 at 22:36 UTC
Re: Illegal seek error for system() by lestrrat (Deacon) on Jul 18, 2001 at 00:04 UTC
You would think system() set $! to the appropriate value, but nope, that doesn't happen. Learned it the hard way...	[reply]