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

I have the following regex: $_ =~ s/<!--PERLINSERT:transformXML-->/`sabcmd $boilervalues{'XSLTPath'}\\$xsl $xml`/gie; It works but...I need to replace the <!--PERLINSERT:transformXML--> with the output from the `sabcmd $boilervalues{'XSLTPath'}\\$xsl $xml` and am not getting the output!!! sabcmd is an app that is on the path so the program IS being run. Please help!!!
  • Comment on Executing an app and returning output in a regex.

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(Ovid) Re: Executing an app and returning output in a regex.
by Ovid (Cardinal) on Dec 07, 2000 at 02:05 UTC
    Not sure what your difficulty is, but here are some thoughts:

    • Try specifying the absolute path to sabcmd: /usr/bin/sabcmd or something similar.
    • I assume you realize that \\$xsl is escaping the escape and therefore interpolating $xsl.
    • Have you tried printing $boilervalues{'XSLTPath'}, $xsl, and $xml to verify that they are getting values?
    • Try print the results of `sabcmd $boilervalues{'XSLTPath'}\\$xsl $xml` to verify that it is returning something. Even if it is fine, it may be a problem with the regex itself failing to match.
    • Have you verified that the target text is really there? Try printing that out, too.

    Cheers,
    Ovid

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Re: Executing an app and returning output in a regex.
by kilinrax (Deacon) on Dec 07, 2000 at 02:04 UTC
    That code should work, if `sabcmd ...` is returning a value.
    Try testing it by breaking that secion of code into two chunks: 
    my $sabcmd = `sabcmd $boilervalues{'XSLTPath'}\\$xsl $xml`;
print "SABCMD: $sabcmd\n";
$_ =~ s/<!--PERLINSERT:transformXML-->/$sabcmd/gi;

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[d/l]
      Well that works! Of course I was wondering why I had all the extra output until I noticed the print "SABCMD..." line :) Tx for the help!!! I am still wondering why it didn't work in the regex though?
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Re: Executing an app and returning output in a regex.
by chipmunk (Parson) on Dec 07, 2000 at 02:14 UTC
    The structure of your substitution worked fine for me; when I changed sabcmd to echo and set some values for the variables, I got back the results of `echo ...` in $_, as expected.

    Could you provide some more details about what happens when you run your program?

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Re: Executing an app and returning output in a regex.
by c-era (Curate) on Dec 07, 2000 at 02:06 UTC
    That is the correct regex, what do you get if you just run the sabcmd expression?
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