passing params to an exe in a perl script

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

I have a perl script from within which I need to call an .exe and pass a param and grab the return value. The problem is that the .exe issues a prompt and from with a shell script I would normally use a here document to pass the parameter

#!/bin/ksh

myexe <<-EOF
param1
EOF
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This produces a reference number. e.g. 07F1E07F0007F0C

I don't have the source for myexe (a C program) but am required to use it's output. However from within the perl script I am not sure how to achieve the same thing. The current relevant perl code looks like this

my %NameAlreadyProcessed;
for my $i (0 ..$#{$Details}) {
  my $Name = $Details->[$i][0];
  my $contact = $Details->[$i][1];
  next if $NameAlreadyProcessed{$Name};
  $NameAlreadyProcessed{$Name} = 1;

  my $result = qx{ myexe $contact };

  print "$Name $result\n";
}
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This doesn't work . It's producing garbage in $result so I am assuming it's not being passed to myexe properly. Any help on this would be most welcome. I'm not a prolific perl programmer.

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Re: passing params to an exe in a perl script by Anonymous Monk on Jul 05, 2012 at 11:18 UTC
Are you sure the bash syntax `myexe <<...` isn't the same as pipe? same as `echo ... \| myexe`?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: passing params to an exe in a perl script by Anonymous Monk on Jul 05, 2012 at 11:29 UTC
If I use a pipe then I get the prompt as well as the result as part of the return value. Using a here document doesn't return the prompt.	[reply]
Re^3: passing params to an exe in a perl script by Anonymous Monk on Jul 05, 2012 at 11:44 UTC
What qx is doing is calling the shell perl -V:sh, and shell usually doesn't like newlines (which is apparently why in bash you use heredoc), so you have to quote/escape/encode/serialize those args, for which you can use String::ShellQuote ( or Win32::ShellQuote ) Or use IPC::Run3, its not backticks but it handles quoting for you Or use IPC::System::Simple capturex, its close to backticks, and it can handles quoting for you	[reply]
Re^3: passing params to an exe in a perl script by ww (Archbishop) on Jul 05, 2012 at 12:08 UTC
You could, of course, accept "the prompt as well as the result as part of the return value" and then remove the prompt -- with the likes of `=~ s///;`, among other possibilities.	[reply] [d/l]