Shell

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3perl)
Updated: 2001-02-22
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NAME

Shell - run shell commands transparently within perl

SYNOPSIS

See below.

DESCRIPTION

  Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 16:18:16 -0700
  Message-Id: <9409222318.AA17072@scalpel.netlabs.com>
  To: perl5-porters@isu.edu
  From: Larry Wall <lwall@scalpel.netlabs.com>
  Subject: a new module I just wrote

Here's one that'll whack your mind a little out.

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    use Shell;

    $foo = echo("howdy", "<funny>", "world");
    print $foo;

    $passwd = cat("</etc/passwd");
    print $passwd;

    sub ps;
    print ps -ww;

    cp("/etc/passwd", "/etc/passwd.orig");

That's maybe too gonzo. It actually exports an AUTOLOAD to the current package (and uncovered a bug in Beta 3, by the way). Maybe the usual usage should be

    use Shell qw(echo cat ps cp);

Larry

If you set $Shell::capture_stderr to 1, the module will attempt to capture the STDERR of the process as well.

The module now should work on Win32.

 Jenda

There seemed to be a problem where all arguments to a shell command were quoted before being executed. As in the following example:

 cat('</etc/passwd');
 ls('*.pl');

really turned into:

 cat '</etc/passwd'
 ls '*.pl'

instead of:

  cat </etc/passwd
  ls *.pl

and of course, this is wrong.

I have fixed this bug, it was brought up by Wolfgang Laun [ID 20000326.008]

Casey

OBJECT ORIENTED SYNTAX

Shell now has an OO interface. Good for namespace conservation and shell representation.

 use Shell;
 my $sh = Shell->new;
 print $sh->ls;

Casey

AUTHOR

Larry Wall

Changes by Jenda@Krynicky.cz and Dave Cottle <d.cottle@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Changes and bug fixes by Casey Tweten <crt@kiski.net>

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Time: 10:17:53 GMT, May 04, 2024